Integral reports strong rebound in FX volumes, up 9pct MoM
Currency trading on Integral’s platforms rose in January from a year earlier as increased volatility across financial markets led to greater activity on institutional FX venues.
Average daily volumes totaled $48.7 billion in January 2022, which is up 6 percent compared to the same period in 2020. Taking a month-over-month perspective, this figure was up by more than 9 percent when weighed against $44.6 billion in December 2021.
Reported ADV represents volumes traded across the group’s entire liquidity network, including TrueFXTM and Integral OCXTM.
Trading desks at some of the largest players in the foreign exchange market saw higher volumes in January spurred by uncomfortably high inflation and constrained supply chains that encouraged speculators to pile back into the market. The trend of strong turnover was observed in the monthly figures from institutional venues like FXSpotStream, as well as hybrid platforms like Exness, which saw its monthly volumes top the $1.5 trillion milestone for the first time in the group’s 13-year history.
Integral teams up with CMC Markets
Integral’s Open Currency Exchange (OCX) brings a wide spectrum of FX market participants into a single integrated network of liquidity, where they can trade with each other. Clients of the OCX pay a monthly fee for access to the exchange, instead of per-trade fees. While it initially launched with a monthly subscription cost of $275, it was soon lowered to accommodate the trading volume of each user, rather than imposing an even charge to clients of all sizes.
Since the deployment of the platform in 2015, the Silicon Valley-based company has been working on several enhancements to bring major changes for existing clients that use the OCX, and attract new customers.
Integral announced last week a partnership with CMC Markets’ institutional arm to join its centrally cleared platform for contracts for difference (CFDs). The initiative enables investors in the wholesale markets to benefit from significantly reduced risks in the settlement of CFDs transactions.
London-based trading provider has set ambitious growth targets for their B2B arm of business which CMC expect to achieve by catering to a greater range of institutional client types and their respective trading strategies.
The partnership taps into Integral’s pricing engine infrastructure to facilitate trading in standardized CFD products including major indices, commodities and cryptocurrencies. Further, it utilizes the prime brokerage services of FXCM Pro in conjunction with liquidity from market makers including Jump Trading.
