The shrinking forex market

published 16 December 2016

The foreign-exchange market is the biggest in the world but it is getting smaller, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

Daily forex trading volumes have shrunk by $300bn in the past three years to $5.1trn, the first decline since the BIS began monitoring the market 16 years ago. Increasingly risk-averse banks have withdrawn from the market amid tighter regulation, notably in the wake of currency-rigging scandals. Hedge funds and speculators have traded less as banks have cut back on their market-making role.

The smaller market will trim revenues in London, which accounts for 37% of global volume. A reduction in liquidity, along with the advent of high-frequency trading platforms, which execute large numbers of orders at high speeds, seem likely to make "flash crashes", such as sterling's recent 6% collapse against the dollar within minutes, more common, reckons the BIS.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.