Leading retail FX firm FXCM, the world’s largest online FX broker, announced a nice jump in May trading volumes. Numbers came in at $304 billion retail volume for the month, up 23% from April, and $138 billion institutional volume, up 34%.
FXCM is a very good proxy for overall global trading volumes in the online FX business. It is the only FX brokerage with significant volumes in the each of the world’s three major markets — Europe, the U.S. and Japan. FXCM’s nice results for May are in line with our expectations for the month, which we wrote about toward the end of May when we introduced the monthly LeapRate Retail FX Volume Index. We expect to see a nice pickup in reported FX trading volumes in May as volatility in the currency markets was much higher than that seen in the prior half-year. So far, these expectations have been confirmed by FXCM and the CME Group, although Forex ECN FXall reported basically flat volumes as compared to April.
For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.
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