A daily average of 926,100 contracts was traded on CME last month, down 14.5% from September when an average 1.1 million contracts changed hands each day. The lower volume of traded contracts is also reflected by a fall in their average daily notional value, which amounted to $122 billion in October, down 15% from September.
The average daily value of EURUSD futures fell 16% to $57.1 billion while the corresponding figure for EURUSD options, which accounts for more than 60% of options trading on the CME, fell by the same percentage to $3.7 billion.
Meanwhile, volumes of all currency and futures options traded on IntercontinentalExchange, home of the benchmark US dollar index, also suffered a significant decline from last month’s yearly highs.
The volatility experienced in September would have encouraged leveraged funds to use options on the dollar index as a useful hedging tool but as volatility has receded, so too have the ICE’s volumes.
The average daily volume of FX contracts traded on ICE was 35,330 in October, a 32% decline from the 51,671 contracts traded the previous month.