LeapRate Retail FX Volume Index increases 3% in June to a new record

The great reawakening of Japan’s Retail Forex industry leads to a restatement of our index.

LeapRate’s Retail FX Volume Index, sponsored by Leverate, hit another all-time record in June, rising nearly 3% to $329 billion daily. Forex industry trading volumes continue to sit about 20%-25% above last year’s levels. The increased activity in the retail FX sector was driven primarily by traders in the Far East, who continued to set records in Japan forex trading, as well as elsewhere in the region.

In a related development, given the large and it seems sustained increase in Forex trading volumes in Japan, we have gone back and restated our Retail FX Volume Index for previous months as well. As per above, we now set global retail forex trading volumes at about $329 billion per day — with about 43% of that total coming from Japan.

LeapRate’s Retail FX Volume Index is a monthly measure of global trading activity in the retail forex industry.

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Sources: LeapRate research, monthly and quarterly volume reports of various Forex ECNs and Forex brokerage firms.

Gerald Segal, LeapRate Managing Director commented, “The first half of 2013 has seen a great turnaround in the Retail Forex sector. We’ve seen record volumes from some of the world’s leading Forex brokers such as FXCM, GMO Click, Alpari, and Saxo Bank. We’ve seen a return of ‘Mrs. Watanabe’, the stereotypical Japanese forex speculator, in numbers never seen before sending Japan’s largest forex brokers over the $1 trillion per month volume levels. We’ve now seen the return of CFD broker IPOs, with the successful listings of Plus500 on the London Stock Exchange (AIM) and KVB Kunlun on the Hong Kong HKEx Exchange.”

“While conditions in the retail forex industry can — and often do — change rapidly, we expect more sunny skies for forex brokers in the coming months. Growth might not continue at the pace seen in the first half of the year, but at current volume levels many forex brokers should be able to generate record profits and continue to innovate for clients in the areas of latency, social trading and customer service.”

The LeapRate Retail FX Volume Index, sponsored by Leverate, is a monthly measure of activity, stated in billions of dollars per day. It is calculated using proprietary formulas developed by LeapRate. The data input into the model are based on examining monthly and/or quarterly activity levels put out by various retail FX brokerage firms; similar activity levels announced by other FX aggregators such as Forex ECNs (e.g. Thomson Reuters, FXall, ICAP-EBS, Hotspot FX) and FX settlement firms (e.g. CLS Group); as well as anecdotal evidence we encounter as part of our general research activities in the Forex sector.

LeapRate is a leading research and information firm serving the global FX industry. Through its partnership with Dow Jones, LeapRate publishes the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report, a comprehensive review of the retail FX industry. Other LeapRate services include Best-of-the-Web FX Research and our daily FX Research email for traders, the Forex Yellow Pages, Forex Exec Search job listings, and our Approved List of regulated FX brokerage firms worldwide. For more information please see our website at www.leaprate.com.

For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.

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