Not exactly the news which many in the retail forex world were looking for, but it looks like July will not provide any respite from the low-trading-volumes environment we’ve seen so far in the first half of 2014.
The (northern hemisphere) summer months are traditionally slow in the trading world, and so far it looks as if this year will be no different.
KCG’s Hotspot FX, now giving us daily figures, reports daily average FX trading of just $22.2 billion in the first half of July, off about 20% from June’s $27.5 billion. And while we’re still pinning down some of the last data points from June, in our discussions with various retail forex brokers around the globe we’re getting a generally similar picture for July.
Unless volumes improve in the second half of July, this will be Hotspot FX’s slowest month since 2012 – a phenomenon we’ve seen recently elsewhere, such as at Alpari.