The major ECNs in the foreign Exchange trading industry have started reporting on the outcome of the first month of the second quarter after the first three months of the year have been very upbeat. The figures we have seen from CBOE FX, GAIN Capital’s GTX, Fastmatch, and FXSpotStream so far, are not materially different from the positive Q1, but trading volumes are broadly lower.
The main reason for the drop is trading ranges that have dominated the month of April with only the final several days of the month serving as a major catalyst higher. The beginning of the year was dominated by a massive increase in trading volumes as traders flocked to sell the US dollar. This trend appears to have been reversing as of the final days of last month.
CBOE FX (Hotspot)
The CBOE’s FX trading unit which it acquired after the absorption of BATS Global Markets has marked $36.3 billion in average daily trading volumes on the FX market. The figure was down 5 percent when compared to March 2018 and higher by 31 percent from April 2017.
CBOE FX’s total trading volumes amounted to $763 billion, a number that was lower by 9 percent month-on-month and higher 38 percent year-on-year.
GAIN Capital GTX
The Institutional Trading unit of GAIN Capital, GTX, also posted a decline in trading volumes. The company marked a total of $14.6 billion per day, with the firm’s ECN and SEF facilities contributing $13.3 billion daily, while the swap dealer only added $1.3 billion. The ADV (Average Daily Volumes) metrics at GAIN Capital’s GTX were lower by 14 percent month-on-month and higher by 4 percent year-on-year.
Looking bath the total trading volumes metric, GTX posted $306.5 billion during April. This number was lower by 18 percent when compared to March and higher by 9 percent when compared to a year ago.
Fastmatch
The foreign exchange subsidiary of Euronext, Fastmatch, posted an upbeat result when compared to industry peers as its ADV metric increased by 3 percent month-on-month and by 2 percent year-on-year. Total trading volumes only declined by 1.5 percent when compared to March and were higher by 7 percent when compared to April 2017.
FXSpotStream
Trading volumes at FXSpotStream somewhat subsided after multiple records in the first quarter of the year but remained materially higher when compared to the spring of 2017. The company posted an ADV of $24.6 billion in April, a figure which was lower by 10 percent month-on-month, but higher by 47 percent year-on-year.
Total trading volumes amounted to $516 billion, a figure which was lower by 15 percent when compared to March 2018 and higher by 50 percent when compared to April 2018.
