Currency trading through online retail brokers jumped by almost a quarter to $364 billion a day in the first quarter of this year, industry data showed on Thursday. Previously viewed as a side-show to the trading between banks and big investment and pension funds that forms the core of the $5 trillion a day global currency market, the retail sector has grown steadily in the last three years.
A retreat in wholesale volumes has also made retail accounts a larger part of overall market activity, and new quarterly numbers showed trading rose in both quarterly and annual terms at the start of this year.
Data and estimates from Finance Magnates Business Intelligence (www.financemagnates.com) showed volumes at nine of the top 10 brokers rose by double digits in percentage terms in a sometimes frantic opening to the year marked by a stock market sell-off and worrying slide for China's currency, the yuan.
Two Asia-focussed brokers - GMO Click and DMM.com - continued to lead the website's rankings in terms of monthly volumes, rising 79 and 56 percent respectively.
Total volumes at Japan-based GMO reached $961 billion for the month, more than triple that of the biggest US and European brokers.
Daily trade in Japan - the biggest market for small leveraged bets on currency movements from non-institutional players - almost doubled to $189 billion a day.
Outside of Japan, FXCM was the leader by volume at $310 billion a month, or around $14.5 billion a day in trade. US-based Gain Capital and Denmark's Saxobank both saw volumes rise around 30 percent to $287 billion and $257 billion a month respectively.
Two recently-floated European brokers - CMC and Poland's XTB - saw little change in volumes on the quarter, according to the numbers. XTB's monthly trades rose to $67 billion from $65 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, CMC's to $87 billion from $80 billion.
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