CLS, the market infrastructure provider of risk mitigation services to the global FX market, has just published its operating metrics for the month of April 2020.
The average daily traded volume submitted to CLS was USD1.55 trillion, down 29.4% from USD2.19 trillion in March 2020.
|
Average daily traded volume submitted to CLS by product (USD trillion)* |
April 2019 | March 2020 | April 2020 |
| Forward | 0.095 | 0.129 | 0.086 |
| Swap | 1.175 | 1.358 | 1.085 |
| Spot | 0.369 | 0.707 | 0.379 |
| Total average daily traded volume submitted to CLS (USD trillion) | 1.639 | 2.194 | 1.550 |
* Due to rounding, numbers presented throughout the document may not add up precisely to the totals provided, and percentages may not precisely reflect the exact figures.
CLS’s Head of Information Services, Masami Johnstone, commented:
“We saw average daily traded volumes in April 2020 of USD1.55 trillion, representing a decline of 5.4% compared to April 2019.
This includes FX swap volumes of USD1.085 trillion (down 7.7%), FX forward volumes of USD86 billion (down 9.5%), and FX spot volumes of USD379 billion (up 2.7%).
Compared to the record daily traded volumes in March 2020 of USD2.19 trillion, we saw an overall decline of 29.4%.This made April 2020 the lowest average daily traded volumes for over two years (the previous low was in December 2017).
As market volatility stabilized through April, volume across all FX instruments experienced a significant downward trend. The exception to the overall reduction in volumes was the activity observed during the end of month ‘London Fix’. In the hour following the fix at 16:00 BST, 30 April, a record USD515 billion was traded, a 38% increase on the previous record of USD371 billion seen on the last day of February 2020. This was driven, in part, by traders buying euros to rebalance their portfolios which contributed to record volumes for the following EUR crosses: EUR/USD, EUR/JPY, EUR/AUD and EURCAD.”
