In line with what we have seen at other Forex ECNs such as ICAP (EBS), and leading retail Forex firms such as FXCM and FxPro, Hotspot reported very slow December FX volumes at just $38 billion per day, down from $56 billion in November, although higher than (traditionally-slow) December last year’s figure of $36 billion.
This continuing downward drift seems to point toward two overall trends:
- volumes in Forex trading were very much down at the end of last year, in line with declines in equity volumes at major exchanges worldwide, and
- the larger ECNs (e.g. ICAP) were hit harder than the smaller ECNs (e.g. Hotspot), as market share continued to spread more evenly across all players.
It will be interesting to see, as certain Forex firms start to report financial numbers in addition to volume numbers, if revenue-per-volume figures at Forex firms also fell (we believe they did) as competition heated up for the existing lower volumes. Stay tuned….