…but remain well below first half of the year metrics.

We asked last month ‘What is wrong with Saxo Bank’ when the Denmark-based retail forex broker reported its fifth consecutive month of declining volumes, at $220 billion. Well things improved somewhat in October, but not that much.

Saxo Bank October forex volumes came in at $238 billion — 8% above September’s low figure, but still 31% below average first-half-of-the-year levels, and about 10% below last year’s second half figures.

One positive point of light we see here, is that October apparently wasn’t nearly the disaster in the retail forex space that it was in the institutional space. We reported earlier today that institutional stalwarts CME Group and EBS both reported their lowest FX trading volumes in years during the month of October.

It looks like institutional traders stayed largely on the sidelines during October, waiting out the US Government Shutdown (and low volatility), while retail traders weren’t quite as bothered or distracted by the Republican-Democrat theatrics, and just kept on trading.

We’ll know more in the coming days, as more retail forex brokers and institutional Forex ECNs report their October figures. Stay tuned to LeapRate….

For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.