Saxo Bank Sees 5th Consecutive Month of Declining FX Volumes

Saxo Bank, , has published its trading volumes for February of 2019, revealing an uptick in commodities trading volumes, but another month-on-month decline for foreign exchange (forex) activity, marking the fifth month in a row to see a drop in FX trading volumes.
, the total monthly volume was $198.9 billion. When measured against the previous month, which had a monthly volume of $227.4 billion, this is down by 12.5 per cent.

The total daily average across the month of February was $9.9 billion. Seeing as total volumes were down, the daily average was also down on a monthly comparison by 3.9 per cent.
FX Volumes Fall MoM and YoY on Saxo Bank
Taking a look at forex volumes in February, on a month-on-month comparison, the monthly volume fell by 10 per cent from $151.8 billion to hit $136.6 billion. This is the fifth month of consecutive decline in forex trading volumes.
February’s volume is also drastically less than that achieved in the same month a year ago, which was $433.2 billion, representing a drop of 68.5 per cent.
The daily average volume for FX trading in the second month of 2019 was $6.8 billion. This is slightly less of 2019, which was a daily average volume of $6.9 billion.
This was the lowest daily average trading volume that Saxo Bank has reported, for the FX market, since at least the beginning of 2016.
Although FX trading volumes were down in February, commodities managed to achieve solid trading volumes when measured against that reported in January. Specifically, the total monthly volume for commodities was $19.1 billion, which is up from January’s volumes by 2.1 per cent.
However, when factoring in February of 2018’s monthly commodities trading volume, which was $29.2 billion, this represents a drop of 34.6 per cent. During February of 2019, the average daily volume was $1 billion, which is higher by 11.1 per cent month-on-month.
Fixed income followed along the same path as that of FX, reporting a drop in monthly trading volumes of 20.3 per cent, from $6.4 billion down to $5.1 billion. Despite this decline, the average daily volume for the segment remained the same as the previous month at $300 million.