Hotspot beefs up market share to 10.1% of daily institutional volume in February 2012

Hotspot part of the giant Knight Group has announced promising results for the month of February. The latter stage of 2011 and January 2012 were poor months in terms of transactions. The uptake in volumes show positive signs for the market as the Greek crisis is still in tact.

1. FEBRUARY 2012 Volume: Hotspot FX volumes continued to climb in February 2012. Average Daily Volume (ADV) increased by 20.6% to $59.3 billion versus January 2012 and a total of $1,244.2 billion transacted on the platform. In terms of market share of publicly reported spot FX volumes (ICAP/EBS, Reuters, Hotspot FX), Hotspot achieved its highest levels on record, accounting for 10.1% in February 2012; up from 9.2% in January 2012 and 8.8% in February 2011. FEB 2012 Statistics:

• Hotspot FX posted an ADV of $59.3 billion. (based on 21 trading days)
  • ADV increased 20.6% versus January 2012. (January 2012 ADV: $49.1 Billion)
  • ADV increased 9.0% versus February 2011 (February 2011 ADV: $54.3 Billion)
  • Total Volume: $1,244.2 billion.

Monthly Statistics:

2. FEBRUARY 2012 Volume Breakdown Comparing February 2012 to January 2012 activity, the Asian session continued to show strength, capturing market share from the other sessions with an increase of +3.52%. Alternatively, the European and Americas sessions decreased by 1.3% and 2.23% respectively. Volume percentages by time zone were:

The top five currency pairs by volume percentage were as follows:

In February 2012, EUR/USD remained firm as the # 1 pair; however, its 2.89% decrease in market share was dispersed amongst the majority of our Top 10 pairs. Most notably, USD/JPY overtook AUD/USD as the #2 most active pair, increasing by +2.16 and USD/MXN rejoined as the 10^th most active pair. The majority of the remaining pairs in the Top 20 experienced minimal changes to ranking and volume. The exception being, USD/SGD and USD/RUB which joined the listing, whilst the Aussie crosses, GBP/AUD, AUD/CAD, were removed from the Top 20. Our top 20 currency pairs by volume percentage and time. 3. FEBRUARY 2012 Relative Volume Chart In February 2012, Hotspot dramatically outperformed other reporting venues in both MoM and YoY measures (MoM +20.6%, YoY +9%), and achieved our highest market share to date at 10.1%. Hotspot was the only reporting venue to show YoY growth and also recorded the highest MoM growth rate of all of the reporting venues. The MoM and YoY volumes reported by other competitive venues were: CME +15% and -9%, Reuters +7% and -5%, EBS/ICAP +9% and -9%. Forexmagnates team have compiled a detailed report on the daily volumes in the institutional market, available in the current quarterly report. Sources: Hotspot FX, CME Group, ICAP, Reuters Notes: Hotspot FX volumes reflect the total client volume transacted on the platform which is equal to the sum of all activity executed by each client during the period. All comparative volume data has been normalized to account for different counting methodologies. Average Daily Volume (ADV) reported by each platform may not be based on the same number of trading days for a given month due to observed national or bank holidays unique to a given platform. Hotspot FX counts each day that the platform is open as a valid trading day.