The CLS settlement system has reported an -8.3% drop in the average daily value of FX trades settled through their platform in Feb 15, taking volumes back to the Dec 14 levels of $4,870bln/day.
The monthly drop is to far lower than that reported last week by the major FX spot platforms which saw falls ranging from down -15% to -27%.
Details from the platform and charts are as follows:
CLS value of instructions submitted: $4,870bln/day, down -8.3% on the $5,310bln/day in Jan 15, and down -5.4% compared to Feb 14.
CLS number of instructions submitted: 1,185,696 was down -16.5% on the 1,,419,369 in Jan 15, although still +3% up on Feb 14 level of 1,150,663.
Average Trade size: $4.1mln was up 10% on the $3.74mln in Jan 15 although still down -8.2% compared to the $4.48mln in Feb 14.
David Puth, CEO of CLS, commented:
“The FX market moved to a period of notably lower volatility during the month of February following the unprecedented movements that followed the Swiss National Bank’s announcement on 15 January. European currencies and the Japanese yen traded in a relatively narrow range during the month. As a result, average daily input volumes in CLS for February decreased by 16.5% while daily input values dropped by 8.3% month on month.
“During the past six months we have passed a number of major milestones with record activity at CLS. Ongoing investment in building capacity and resiliency in our systems has enabled CLS to process this increased activity seamlessly, on time, every day.”
CLS Data: Value and number of transactions submitted to CLS in Feb 2015
Note: CLS reports both sides of an FX transaction. To adjust the average daily value data to equate to the same reporting convention used by the Bank for International Settlements and the semi-annual foreign exchange committee market reports, the gross values should be divided by two.
