Retail FX brokerages set records in April, but Forex ECNs were mostly treading water.

Continuing the mixed-results FX volumes trend for April we’ve seen so far at the CME Group (down 16%) and at ICAP EBS (up 7%), Thomson Reuters and its FXall unit each reported ho-hum FX volumes results for the month. Thomson Reuters was down 1% from March at $130 billion per day (keeping it marginally in the Forex ECN lead ahead of EBS’s $128 billion in April), and FXall was off 2% from its all-time-record March volumes at $108 billion per day.

FXall was also named recently as Euromoney’s top-ranked multi-dealer FX platform, in Euromoney’s annual FX survey. FXall came in with a market share of 26.1%, a sharp rise from 21.7% last year. Not sure how that happened — we don’t doubt FXall’s rise in the standings the past two years, but volume-wise it is still well behind EBS and parent Thomson Reuters.

The results of the Forex ECNs (and futures market CME) contrast with the knock-the-cover-off-the-ball record volumes in April we have reported for major retail brokers such as FXCM (best-ever $549 billion) and GMO Click in Japan (a whopping $913 billion).

Are the large retail brokers taking away business from the ECNs? FXCM did see a record $183 billion of institutional volume in the numbers it reported. Stay tuned to LeapRate…

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