The FinancialFollowing the reports of falling FX trading volumes across a variety of institutional brokers and exchanges, Saxo Bank has become the latest leading global FX broker to report some disappointing volume figures for the month of November 2019.
The broker announced that its November 2019 FX trading volumes had fallen to $107.4 billion. If compared to October 2019, at $141.2 billion, it is lower by 23.9%. This drop is significant because it is the lowest reported at the broker for all of 2019. On a yearly comparison, last month’s volume has shrunk by 37.4 per cent, against a trading volume of $171.7 billion in November of 2018.
The monthly trading volume for commodities was also down month-on-month. Specifically, it fell by 4.7 per cent from $33.7 billion in October of 2019 down to $32.1 billion in November, with an average daily volume of $1.5 billion. However, when weighing it against the same period of the previous year, trading has increased by around 34.0 per cent.
While such swings it trading volumes are to be expected historically, it raised tougher questions regarding brokers’ ability to generate revenues during times of low volume trading and low volatility. It is expected that volumes operate cyclically together with trader’s behaviors around holidays and other major events, but it is a broker’s ability to prepare for such slowdowns that differentiates between profitability in business and loss