Although, most of us had forgotten about June long time ago, it is worth to return to previous month for a moment and summarize the result achieved in the Forex market by the biggest and most important investors.
If you are curious how the volumes of CME Group, ICE, Thomson Reuters, CLS Band and Hotspot FX have looked at the end of the Q2, you have to acquaint with our summary!
CME Group
CME Group as one of the first brokers published report on the total value of June’s contracted volumes. Within a month, the total amount of futures and options generated the 338 041 611 result, which allowed to notice an increase of 22.4% compared to the previous year and a 4.6% increase month over month.
What was the impact for such big increase of volumes over the past 12 months? Certainly, a jump of 61.6% in interest rate products. On a monthly basis, equity index (24.9% higher) was mainly responsible for the growth. At the same time, foreign currency options and futures outperformed May results by 7%.
Equity index activity occurred in spite of declining global stock indexes, slowing the rally which began with the New Year. Despite the decline in stock prices, volatility has increased significantly, resulting in volumes increase in the same time.
It should be noted however, that the value of investments in precious metals decreased by 11%, compared to the previous month. Despite lower prices in the volatility market, there was a decrease in the activity. It may seem, that systematic traders are slowly moving away from precious metals, which in the past often have been used in barter agreements with other asset classes.
In Forex, the monthly increase was provided by higher levels of futures. Throughout June, the trade in these contracts rose by 7.9% compared to the month of May – at the same time, options volume fell by 6.5%. This decline has caused confusion on the ranks of CME Group. So far it was one of the most active product they had! If we want to put money on the table, the average daily volume for the month of June would be about $146 billion.
For individual currencies, Japanese yen trades still achieve sales growth over the current year – all thanks to high volatility. As a result, the activity of futures contracts in the Japanese currency rose by 164% compared to the same period last year, closing the gap with the euro, one of the strongest products on the market. Activity also increased in the Australian dollar, which was the third most traded currency in CME Group.
ICE
Just a few moments after the publication of CME’s report, IntercontinentalExchange decided to do the same and also made their June’s results available. During the recently closed month, AVD for FX products amounted to 59 919 contracts. This made it possible to achieve 36% year over year increase and 38.4% increase compared to May.
The broker also announced that it has achieved record-breaking daily trading volume, after the sharp sell-off in U.S. currency. Generally speaking, daily trade volumes in ICE amounted to 3 459 509 contracts – it is result 4% lower than last year, but 4.4% higher than in May. The increase in sales contracts was provided mainly trough equity index products, which record an astounding increase in activity in June by 86%! In addition, ICE has shown growth in agricultural contracts, where volumes increased by 70% compared to the previous month.
The part II of my summary will be published on thursday:)
EDIT: Ok, part II was published – you can find it here.
