The situation in Europe shows positive signs, with mixed outcomes in North America and a weaker performance in Asia. That's the fastest way to summarize the January results for spot foreign exchange (FX) volumes among institutional players. Despite December being a shorter trading month due to the holiday season, which usually results in quieter trading, we observed mixed results entering the new year when comparing month-to-month.

Spot FX Volumes at Cboe FX Markets Show Mixed Results

Cboe FX Markets data reveals that January ended with $960 billion in trading volume, marking an increase from December's $890 billion. However, it's important to note the difference in the total number of trading days. While December had 20 trading days due to the holiday break, January saw an increase back to 22 trading days, similar to November and October.

Consequently, the average daily volumes (ADV) were lower at $43.6 billion, slightly down from December's $44 billion. For Cboe, this represents another month of declines, following November's total trading volume exceeding $1 trillion, with an ADV of $46 billion.

Cboe FX Markets' consolidated quarterly data indicates a total trade volume of $2.5 trillion over the three months from October to December, with an average daily volume of $39.8 billion.

Europe's Situation: 360T and Euronext FX

Euronext FX reported a total volume of $576 billion for the month, showing an increase from December. This growth was additionally reflected in the ADV, which modestly increased from $24.5 billion to $25 billion.

Deutsche Börse's 360T platform reported an ADV increase from $27.7 billion to $29 billion, with a total trading volume of $576 billion compared to the previous month's figures.

Therefore, the spot FX volumes for major institutions in Europe were more favorable than those in America, while Asia continued to report negative results for another consecutive month.

Click 365 Experiences Significant Declines

Click 365, the FX platform of the Tokyo Stock Exchange , reported a decrease of 12.5% in trading volumes compared to December, dropping to 2,052,657 contracts. The annual decline was even more pronounced at 23%. The ADV fell from the previous month's 111,661 to 93,303.

The most significant nominal decreases were observed in contracts related to the USD/JPY currency pair where the trading volume was 852,012, falling 8.5%. On an annual basis, the depreciation nearly reached 40%.