Survey of major retail forex brokers from various jurisdictions showed January as a month of higher trading volumes and an incredibly optimistic start of the year 2016.
Compared to the previous quarter, monthly increase can be counted up to 20-30%.
From the respective brokers, BATS’s Hotspot FX reported January 2016 volumes rising to $30.7 billion ADV (average daily volume), what is 27.5% higher and hitting its best performance since March 2015.
FastMatch published its FX trading volumes up to $10 billion ADV, what is the first time since January 2014. Moreover, Friday (January 29) was the broker’s fourth best ever day volume-wise, reaching over $21 billion.
The volumes were driven by rising volatility during the month of January, spurred by the Federal Reserve’s rate-hike, China’s worries and massive sell-off on oil, luring more investors into forex and commodities, leaving equities.
Extreme jumps on commodity markets could be seen as so-called commodity currencies, when the Canadian dollar reached the range from C$1.3811 to C$1.4689, while the Australian dollar traded around 470 pips and New Zealand dollar reached the range of 400 pips approximately.
Oil was among the most traded financial instruments as well. WTI and Brent crude oil futures reached the range from their highs to lows over $10, reflecting mostly the Iranian comeback to global oil markets, while China’s slowdown and current global problems hinted slow recovery in demand for the black gold.
Leaprate has reported that October 2014 was the most extraordinary month during periods monitored by them, when the ADV reached $360 billion, nearly topped by last January’s $358 billion driven in part by the Swiss Franc spike of January 15, 2015.
We can expect the volatile global markets to continue in this turmoil and bringing more volatility, and so volumes to brokers. Thus, some of the next months could be candidates for even higher or at least similar volumes.
For any questions or recommendations, feel free to write us on hello@goforex.eu
