CME Group Reports YoY Drop in FX Trading Volumes in February

CME Group, a derivatives marketplace, has published its trading volumes for February of this year today, revealing that the average daily volume (ADV) for the month reached 19 million contracts.

When compared to the previous month, this figure is up by 7 percent. However, when measured against February of 2018, which achieved a record ADV of 27.3 million contracts, this is 30.4 percent less.

Following along a similar trend, open interest (OI) at the end of February was 126 million contracts. While this is higher than the previous month by three percent, it is still down when compared to February by the same percentage.

FX Volumes Fall YoY for CME

Taking a look at the total foreign exchange (FX) volume during the month of February, the number of contracts traded averaged 762,000 per day. Again, this is lower than the average number of contracts traded per day in the same month of the previous year by 30 percent.

However, although the overall performance of the sector was disappointing, there was one highlight. In February 2019 a record number of offshore Offshore Chinese renminbi futures were traded on February 11, coming in at 5,800 contracts.

The agricultural trading volume averaged 1.7 million contracts per day during the month, which represents a year-on-year decline of 13 percent. However, similar to FX, there were a number of highlights despite the overall decline.

One of these highlights is corn options, where during the month of February, the ADV climbed by 32 percent year-on-year to reach 100,000 contracts. The ADV for wheat options during the month also achieved an annual uptick of 23 percent, hitting 45,000 contracts.

The CME Group also reported an average of 2.7 million contracts traded per day for its Equity Index segment in February. However, this couldn’t hold up against February of 2018, as 45 percent fewer contracts we traded in the current month.