Recently the Bank of England has published the semi-annual turnover survey for the Foreign Exchange Joint Standing Committee. The surveys are conducted to calculate the total turnover of the Forex industry in the United Kingdom. The results of the survey are rather distressing as the overall daily turnover averaged $2,611 billion in October 2018 when in April 2018 the average turnover per day was $2.727 billion.

Although there are no clear reasons named yet many are blaming the current political situation particularly Brexit. As the UK is 2 months away from the historical date the fact that there is still no clarity about the Brexit deal disturbs many of the investors and makes them more cautious when it comes to investments.

The Global trend

The same survey was conducted in other countries as well and the results are similar to the UK survey. The Foreign Exchange Market Committee in Singapore has also reported a decrease in the average daily volume of Forex activity in October 2018 compared to April 2018 by 3%. The same results were shown in the survey of Tokyo Foreign Exchange Committee and according to the survey conducted by the Australian Foreign Exchange committee, the turnover in October is slightly lower compared with the results of the previous mid-annual survey.

Almost all leading countries have seen a decrease in the turnover of the Forex industry in October, however, some still assume that the case with the United Kingdom is slightly different again due to the political situation. As the UK survey showed even the most liquid currency pair EUR/USD has seen a drop by 6 percent during the reported period. Generally, the events surrounding Brexit had put many of the brokers into trouble and the traders are not left with any other choice than to wait and watch the further development of events. Many of them have already started transferring their funds from UK brokers to the EU brokerages and while the UK brokers are struggling, according to this KontoFX review the firms in EU are flourishing as they are getting ready to accept the so-called Forex trader migrants.  

London stands still

Out of the six regions surveyed in the United Kingdom, London showed the largest proportional rebound. As reported the spot turnover in London rose by 3 percent from six months ago.

At the same time, all of the results of the surveys held worldwide confirm that London still remains the biggest currency trading hub. Even with the decreased turnover all over the UK, the daily turnover of Forex is still more than a double in London than in New York. However, we have yet to see the results of the survey from the US as the ones that were published contained some errors. The errors are expected to be fixed shortly and soon we will have the exact figures but it is unlikely that it will change London’s position.