Integral grapples with weak FX Volumes amid summer doldrums
Institutional trading platform provider, Integral reported its monthly trading volumes for July 2021, which declined from a month earlier as volatility calmed after a turbulent June.
During July 2021, Integral disclosed that a total ADV of $44 billion was traded, which was lower by 14 percent over a monthly timeframe, compared to a $51 billion reported back in June 2021. Reported ADV represents volumes traded across the group’s entire liquidity network, including TrueFXTM and Integral OCXTM, in aggregate.
July volumes were, however, above those reached in the same month a year ago as the company continues to integrate a slew of new buy-side systems into Integral’s OCX ECN. The electronic communication network encourages more trading across all transaction types, including spot, forwards, and swaps. This also highlights that market volatility is still higher and reflects extra volumes from Integral and Jefferie’s TrueFX platform.
Volumes were higher on a yearly basis when volatility was less than its current levels. However, since most traders took their summer break and volatility approached seasonal lows, it became more difficult to find arbitrage opportunities between even the most liquid assets.
This decline in trading volumes despite ongoing Cocona-led volatility also reflects a return of the “internationalization” trend, where dealers and global banks preferred to offset risks of their client trades on their own books rather than passing them to multi-user platforms.
Integral has recently upgraded all aspects of the technology stack for its relationship-based trading platform FX Inside (FXI).
The upgraded FX liquidity aggregation solution addresses the business needs of brokers, banks, institutional and algorithmic trading clients. Specifically, the web-based trading solution is now available through HTML5 browser and mobile devices, and it will enable users to offer a single dealer platform (SDP) to their customers.
This actually catches up with a major shift occurring in the FX market demand for SDP platforms driven by customers’ need for asset class diversification, post- trade support, research and market data.
A cloud-based environment included in the solution allows for complete customization, as well as RFS and ESP trading in spot, outrights, swaps, NDFs, precious metals and CFDs.
