CLS, a provider of settlement services to the FX industry, has released its monthly trading report for May 2018. The industry giant saw a minor month-on-month increase in its average daily trading volumes due to an increase in spot FX trading.

In April,  an average daily trading volume of $1.24 trillion in FX swaps. Last month that figure decreased to $1.19 trillion, representing a four percent month-on-month decline. From , things were more positive, as the firm grew its average FX swaps trading volume from 0.99 trillion, an approximately 20 percent increase.

Spot up

Things were better for CLS in the FX spot markets. The firm saw its average daily trading volumes increasing to $507 billion in May. This represented a 17 percent month-on-month increase from April and an approximately 12 percent year-on-year increase from May of 2017.

The forwards market remained comparatively stagnant as the firm reported an average daily trading volume of $98 billion for May. This was a slight decrease from April when the firm averaged $106 billion in daily trading and a smaller decrease from May of last year when the firm reported $104 billion in average daily forwards trading.

These results combined meant that CLS saw a minor month-on-month increase in its total average daily trading volume. The firm finished May with a total of just over $1.79 trillion in average daily trading volume, a 0.8 percent increase on April when the firm reported a total average daily trading volume of 1.78 trillion.

From a year-on-year perspective, the improvement was even greater as the firm finished May of 2017 with a total of $1.55 billion. This represented an approximately 16 percent increase.