CME Group Reports Record-Breaking 2018, FX Volumes Jump

CME Group, , announced this Thursday that it reached a new record average daily volume (ADV) in 2018, hitting 19.2 million contracts. In fact, the firm managed to achieve a number of records during the past year.
The annual ADV for foreign exchange (forex) contracts hit a new record in 2018, reaching 1 million contracts. When measured against the previous year, this is a jump of 9 per cent. The annual ADV for metals also hit a record of 638,000 contracts, representing an uptick of 12 per cent year-over-year.
CME Group also recorded multiple for its fourth quarter. This includes the Equity Index ADV reaching 4.5 million contracts during Q4 and Interest Rate electronic options ADV of 1.5 million contracts.
During 2018, there were 91 trading days where the number of contracts traded exceeded 20 million. This is almost three times the amount in 2017, where only 34 trading days had such a high volume.
Forex trading highlights for CME Group
In December last year, forex volumes averaged 1 million contracts per day. When measured against , this figure is flat. Despite this, there were some highlights, such as the volume of Japanese yen futures and options growing by 7 per cent to hit 177,000 contracts during the month.
The ADV for Australian dollar futures and options was also up, climbing by 11 per cent to 113,000 contracts. The trading of Canadian dollar futures and options also grew in popularity during the month, with the ADV jumping by 10 per cent to 105,000 contracts.
Taking a look at the CME Group-operated BrokerTec, which offers fixed-income trading and EBS, which offers forex trading, the average daily notional value for Spot FX rose by 16 per cent to $76.2 billion. On BrokerTec, the U.S. Treasury average daily notional value increased by 35 per cent to reach $200.8 billion.
The total metals volume for December 2018 averaged 439,000 contracts per day. This is down when compared to December 2017 by 17 per cent. Nonetheless, the ADV for precious metals options increased by 28 per cent to 58,000 contracts.