Fastmatch Volumes Surge to Record on Thursday, Only to Retreat to Year Low

Reacting to volatility in the Swiss franc and euro, volumes on forex order matching system Fastmatch surged to a record last Thursday. During the session, $24.4 billion in volume was traded, led by activity in the EURUSD and EURCHF. Fastmatch operates separate operating matching engines in London, New York and Tokyo. Volumes on Thursday were led by London with $17.1 billion traded, followed by $6.8 billion and $0.54 billion at New York and Tokyo respectively.

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Worth noting was the steep fall in volume that took place on Friday with only $4.87 billion reported to have been traded on the Fastmatch platform. Friday trading will typically underperform that of the rest of the week. However, the activity on Fastmatch contrasts to Hotspot which saw volumes only recede 20.9% from $61.7 billion on Thursday to $46.9 billion. For Fastmatch, Friday’s trading was their lowest Friday session of this month, even falling below January 2nd’s holiday session of $6.7 billion in volume.

As such, the drop in activity at Fastmatch may have been related to participants avoiding the platform as embattled broker FXCM owns a large minority stake in the firm. Regarding the FXCM ownership, Fastmatch CEO Dmitri Galinov commented publicly on LinkedIn about the platform achieving a record on Thursday, but also mentioned that the firm has been asked about “FXCM’s continuing operations related to volatile markets.” On this he forwarded readers to FXCM’s news of new liquidity of $300 million from Leucadia National Corporation. Therefore, it will be interesting to watch this week whether participants return to the venue or if negative sentiment from FXCM continues to overshadow trading on Fastmatch.