… however retail forex volumes are about 25% above last year’s levels.

LeapRate’s Retail FX Volume Index, sponsored by Leverate, decreased by 7.5% in July to average $305 billion daily, down from an all time high of $329 billion per day in June.

The drop was not unexpected, as forex (as well as equity and fixed-income) trading volume metrics typically fall off in the northern hemisphere summer vacation months of July and August. The drop of 7.5% in July forex volumes was fairly mild, given the rapid runup of retail forex volumes in the first half of 2013, culminating with a retail forex trading record of $329 billion per day in June.

Gerald Segal, LeapRate Managing Director, commented, “Another interesting anomaly we noticed was some increasing concentration in the retail forex sector. Larger forex brokers, such as FXCM (-1%), Gain Capital (-5%), and GMO Click in Japan (-2%) saw a very small drop, while the majority of the July swoon was borne by medium to small sized forex brokers. We’ll need to see if this trend continues during the rest of the year.”

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.

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.