Continuing a marked upturn since the summer, LeapRate’s Retail FX Volume Index climbed 6% in October to $360 billion ADV – making October 2014 the best month ever for retail forex brokers, besting June 2013’s record $341 billion.
Several leading retail Forex trading platforms reported best-ever (or best-in-a-long-time) volume metrics for October such as:
- FXCM (first time ever for a non-Japanese broker above $500B monthly retail volumes)
- EXNESS (record $199B)
- GMO Click Japan (first time above $1 trillion since mid-2013)
- Saxo Bank ($392B, best since January 2013)
Institutional FX venues, however, did not fare as well. Thomson Reuters FXall and the now for-sale Hotspot FX saw a slight dropoff in October volumes, although ICAP’s EBS did report a 10% increase over September.
Sources: LeapRate research, monthly and quarterly volume reports of various Forex ECNs and Forex brokerage firms.
Gerald Segal, LeapRate Managing Director, commented:
The volume momentum from September continued well into October. The collapse of the Yen and Pound versus the Dollar, and the up-and-down moves of the all-important EURUSD, kept retail FX traders busy at their screens through most of the month.
Giving the index a big boost was Japan. The Japanese government’s continued policy of easing has sent the Yen into a prolonged freefall versus the dollar – injecting volatility into Yen pairs and creating a trading frenzy in the land of the rising sun.
The LeapRate Retail FX Volume Index is a monthly measure of activity, stated in billions of dollars per day. It is calculated using proprietary formulas developed by LeapRate. The data input into the model are based on examining monthly and/or quarterly activity levels put out by various retail FX brokerage firms; similar activity levels announced by other FX aggregators such as Forex ECNs (e.g. Thomson Reuters, ICAP-EBS, KCG Hotspot) and FX settlement firms (e.g. CLS Group); as well as anecdotal evidence we encounter as part of our general research activities in the Forex sector.
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