Global currency trading volume declined 6 percent to just under $100 trillion last year, after setting records in 2007 and 2008, as hedge funds placed fewer trades than in previous years, Greenwich Associates said.
Trading by fund managers fell 23 percent in 2009, leading the declines among the 1,497 corporate and institutional customers surveyed by Greenwich Associates in North America, Europe and Asia, according to the Stamford, Connecticut-based financial-market research company. The drop was partially offset by trading at retail platforms, which grew 16 percent, and by corporations, which rose 10 percent.
“Hedge funds have been a major driver of FX growth for the last several years and when their volume slows down, and it did a lot, the market as a whole feels it,” said Peter D’Amario, a Greenwich Associates consultant in Stamford. “You haven’t seen the opportunities that are generating a need to trade. Reduced volatility has reduced opportunity.”
Foreign-exchange trading volumes dropped as market stability returned in 2009, following the unprecedented volatility of 2008, as financial system turmoil spurred an increase in activity among companies and large financial institutions.
Foreign-exchange volatility, a measure of risk implied by option prices, reached a 19-month low in April, a JP Morgan Chase & Co. index showed, after trading the highest level since at least 1992 in 2008. Options traders expected on April 15 that currencies of the Group of Seven industrialized nations would fluctuate by an annualized 10.47 percent in three months, the lowest since September 2008. It reached as high as 26.55 percent on Oct. 24, 2008.
Source: Bloomberg by Ben Levisohn
