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Daily retail FX volumes surge in first quarter, industry data show

Reuters - UK Focus

By Patrick Graham

LONDON, June 9 (Reuters) - Currency trading through online retail brokers jumped by almost a quarter to $364 billion a day in the first quarter of this year, industry data showed on Thursday.

Previously viewed as a sideshow to the trading between banks and big investment and pension funds that forms the core of the $5 trillion a day global currency market, the retail sector has grown steadily in the last three years.

A retreat in wholesale volumes has also made retail accounts a larger part of overall market activity, and new quarterly numbers showed trading rose in both quarterly and annual terms at the start of this year.

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Data and estimates from Finance Magnates Business Intelligence (www.financemagnates.com) showed volumes at nine of the top 10 brokers rose by double digits in percentage terms in a sometimes frantic opening to the year marked by a stock market sell-off and worrying slide for China's currency, the yuan.

Two Asia-focussed brokers - GMO Click and DMM.com - continued to lead the website's rankings in terms of monthly volumes, rising 79 and 56 percent respectively.

Total (LSE: 524773.L - news) volumes at Japan-based GMO reached $961 billion for the month, more than triple that of the biggest U.S (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) . and European brokers.

Daily trade in Japan - the biggest market for small leveraged bets on currency movements from non-institutional players - almost doubled to $189 billion a day.

Outside of Japan, FXCM (NYSE: FXCM - news) was the leader by volume at $310 billion a month, or around $14.5 billion a day in trade. U.S.-based Gain Capital (NYSE: GCAP - news) and Denmark's Saxobank both saw volumes rise around 30 percent to $287 billion and $257 billion a month respectively.

Two recently-floated European brokers - CMC (BSE: CMC.BO - news) and Poland's XTB - saw little change in volumes on the quarter, according to the numbers. XTB's monthly trades rose to $67 billion from $65 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, CMC's to $87 billion from $80 billion. (Editing by Larry King)