Whilst a large number of retail FX firms completed the first quarter of 2014 without signs of a repeat of last year’s stellar volumes, Alpari’s Russian operations flourishes
Alpari’s Russian operations has today released its trading metrics for the first quarter of 2014, which serve to demonstrate that by contrast to the slow start to this year, trading activity in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has remained extremely buoyant.
Alpari has reported a total trading turnover for Russia and the CIS of $378.4 billion, a figure which was bolstered by March’s 18% increase over February’s total trading turnover.
During March, Alpari experienced a turnover of $130.9 billion from its client base in Russia and the CIS, quite clearly demonstrating that the political difficuties which have taken place this year in Ukraine have not affected the retail FX sector in the region.
Comparing Q1 2014 to Q4 2013 results, the highest individual growth was the 24 bln USD increase, or 30%, seen in the GBPUSD currency pair. Turnover in the USDJPY pair grew by 11% to $26.9 billion. At the same time, the growth in the most popular currency pair, EURUSD, fell in comparison with the previous period by 12% to $21.3 billion.
“It has not been a straightforward start to the year, following on from the traditional drop in trading volume during the January vacations there has been a period of political tension over the events in Ukraine. At the same time, the most popular currency pair amongst traders, EURUSD, showed very little volatility. All the same, we can say with some satisfaction that towards the end of the quarter the level of turnover returned to normal, and was actually 2% up on the previous quarter”, said Boris Shilov, CEO of Alpari in a corporate statement today.
The number of lots traded in Q1 of this year was 2,826,030 lots, while the number of client accounts in Russia and the CIS on March 31, 2014, surpassed 1.1 million.
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