CLS's FX Trade Volume Report - March 2025

The analytics team at CLS Group has reviewed foreign exchange (FX) trading activity for March 2025, comparing the month against prior periods and analyzing daily and hourly trading patterns within the month. This resulted in the March 2025 FX Market Trading Report, which covers data from the FX spot, swap, and outright forward markets.

March Market Overview

Compared to the same period last year, overall FX trading volumes demonstrated a significant increase of 20.3% compared to March 2024. A deeper dive into the daily trading rhythm reveals that the average daily traded volume in March 2025 reached USD2.54 trillion, marking a substantial 10.3% climb from February.

This growth was seen across all trading instruments. FX swaps were up 16.6% compared to a year ago, contributing USD1.69 trillion to the total volume.

Concurrently, spot FX trading was up 27.3%, contributing USD619 billion to the total volume. Outright forwards also saw healthy growth of 31.4%, contributing USD226 billion to the total volume.

Granular Analysis

Nevertheless, single-month snapshots can sometimes be misleading. Figure 2 shows that there is a longer-term trend of declining spot volumes (although this decline seems to have flattened in recent months), but growing FX swap activity.

Delving into the intraday trading dynamics, the busiest trading day in March was the 5th, when USD864 billion was traded.

Daily spot volumes peaked on Wednesday 05 March

Subsequently, the CLS report adopts an even more granular approach, analyzing hourly data for spot trading activity in March 2025. This analysis reveals three distinct peaks in activity, corresponding to the main trading centers in Asia, Europe and the Americas, that are characteristic of the spot market. The busiest trading hour of the month occurred at 16:00 London time on Monday, March 31st, when USD148 billion traded.

Hourly spot volumes peaked at 16:00 31 March

Conclusion

The March 2025 FX trading data portrays a vibrant market experiencing a significant resurgence in activity across all products, particularly in FX swaps, spot trading, and outright forwards. While long-term trends point to an evolving landscape, the recent surge indicates renewed dynamism across the board. The detailed analysis of daily and hourly trading patterns further illuminates the intricate workings of this global marketplace.

CLS's Notes on the Data

The data in this report is based on trades submitted to the CLS settlement and aggregation services. The data is adjusted to equate to the same reporting convention used by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the semi-annual foreign exchange committee market reports. These surveys only report one side of any trade, and only the far leg of FX swap trades, to avoid double counting the total amount of trades. In determining the time of submission, only matched trades and the earlier of the two submission times as the trade time proxy are included. CLS receives confirmation on the majority of trades from settlement members within 2 minutes of trade execution.