For the first time in 15 years, FX trading volumes contracted between two consecutive BIS Triennial Surveys. The decline in trading by leveraged institutions and "fast money" traders, and a reduction in risk appetite, have contributed to a significant drop in spot market activity. More active...

Trading in the FX market reached an all-time high of $5.3 trillion per day in April 2013, a 35% increase relative to 2010. Non-dealer financial institutions, including smaller banks, institutional investors and hedge funds, have grown into the largest and most active counterparty segment. The...

This article provides an overview of the foreign exchange components of the Triennial Central Bank Survey. It highlights key dimensions of this dataset and methodological issues that are important to interpret it correctly. It also compares the methodology of the Triennial to that of more...

Daily average foreign exchange market turnover reached $4 trillion in April 2010, 20% higher than in 2007. Growth owed largely to the increased trading activity of “other financial institutions”, which contributed 85% of the higher turnover. Within this customer category, the growth is...

Foreign exchange turnover evolves in a predictable fashion with increasing income. As income per capita rises, currency trading cuts loose from underlying current account transactions. In parallel, an increasing share of trading in the currency takes place outside the home country. At given...

This special feature looks at trading activity in the foreign exchange market between the Triennial Surveys conducted in 2010 and 2013 and in the months following. We estimate that the $5.3 trillion per day reported for April 2013 was a peak, with activity falling subsequently by $300 billion to...

The relationship between trading volume and volatility in foreign exchange markets continues to be of much interest, especially given the higher than expected volatility of returns. Allowing for non-linearities, this paper tests competing hypotheses on the possible relationship between...

Using a broad data set of 20 US dollar exchange rates and order flow of institutional investors over 14 years, we construct a measure of global liquidity risk in the foreign exchange (FX) market. Our FX liquidity measure may be seen as the analogue of the well-known Pastor-Stambaugh liquidity...

We provide a broad empirical investigation of momentum strategies in the foreign exchange market. We find a significant cross-sectional spread in excess returns of up to 10% p.a. between past winner and loser currencies. This spread in excess returns is not explained by traditional risk factors,...

Past trends in fundamentals linked to economic activity and inflation predict currency returns. We find that a trading strategy that goes long currencies with strong economic momentum and short currencies with weak economic momentum exhibits an annualized Sharpe ratio of 0.70 and yields a...