Daily spot FX trading fell on all four institutional venues tracked by FinanceMagnates.com in October. The Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan (BOJ) both left interest rates unchanged during the month.

FXSpotStream reported average daily volume (ADV) of $163.22 billion, down 8.9% from the all-time high it set in September, when both central banks raised rates. Cboe FX fell 9.0%, Euronext FX 5.9% and 360T 2.6%.

Combined spot ADV on the four venues was about $247 billion, down 8.0% from $268 billion in September. That still made October the third-busiest month of 2026, after March and September.

It was also 25.6% above the roughly $196 billion of October 2025, by FinanceMagnates.com's calculation, a month when dollar volatility pushed institutional FX volumes to a three-month high.

London's trading industry is coming home!

FXSpotStream Posts Its Third-Best Month

FXSpotStream, a multibank price-streaming service, traded about $3.59 trillion over 22 sessions. Its total ADV was 25.9% above the $129.61 billion of October 2025.

Only September, at $179.12 billion, and March, at $173.60 billion, were higher in the venue's monthly record, according to FXSpotStream's figures. Spot ADV fell 9.8% to $116.81 billion, and non-spot products slipped 6.5% to $46.40 billion.

Euro-Dollar Gains Share as Yen Trading Cools

Cboe FX matched $1.234 trillion in spot, an ADV of $56.08 billion. That was 9.0% below September's $61.64 billion and 8.4% above October 2025.

It was also far below the $74.47 billion of March, when a volatility spike lifted Cboe FX volumes 43% from a year earlier.

The busiest day overall was October 1, when Cboe FX matched $81.30 billion, and 360T and Euronext FX also had their highest totals of the month. The quietest was October 12, the US Columbus Day holiday.

Cboe FX, the only one of the four that publishes volume by currency pair, also shows which pairs drove the decline.

The mix reversed September's pattern. USD/JPY, the fastest-growing of its five largest pairs a month earlier, averaged $5.65 billion a day, down 28.4%, and its share of the venue's flow fell to 10.1% from 12.8%.

EUR/USD moved the other way. It rose 7.7% to $14.34 billion and its share climbed 4.0 percentage points to 25.6%, while USD/CNH fell 23.4% to $3.56 billion.

Neither central bank moved in October. The Fed kept its target range at 3.75%-4.00% on October 28 in a 10-2 vote. Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack wanted a quarter-point increase.

Two days later the BOJ held its policy rate at around 1.25% in an 8-1 vote.

Single yen days have carried the venue before: in July, two intervention days accounted for much of the month's activity. In October the busiest USD/JPY session was October 30, the day of the BOJ decision, at $10.30 billion, about two-thirds of September's $15.0 billion peak.

Euronext FX and 360T Stay Above Last Year

The two venues owned by exchange groups fell less than FXSpotStream and Cboe FX, and both stayed well above their October 2025 levels.

Euronext FX averaged $32.47 billion a day on $714.28 billion of monthly volume, 31.4% more than a year earlier.

That was the sixth-highest monthly average in the venue's daily file, which starts in January 2013. Its parent, Euronext, reported FX trading revenue up about 30% in the first quarter of 2025.

At 360T, owned by Deutsche Börse, ADV was $41.17 billion on $905.71 billion of spot volume, up 21.3% from October 2025.

Only March, June and September were busier this year, and the venue has stayed below March's $48.93 billion since the April pullback, when an Iran ceasefire cooled dollar trading.

360T's 2.6% decline was the smallest of the four venues in October.

Tokyo Futures Drop 28%

The Tokyo Financial Exchange (TFX) reported 1,604,046 FX futures contracts on Click 365, its exchange-traded margin FX market for retail traders. That was down 28.0% from September and 19.4% from a year earlier, with ADV of 72,914 contracts.

Click 365 counts contracts rather than dollars, so FinanceMagnates.com keeps it out of the four-venue total. Over-the-counter retail volumes at FX and CFD brokers are tracked quarterly in FM Intelligence's Broker Volumes tool.

TRY/JPY remained the largest pair at 612,015 contracts, or 38.2% of the total, while USD/JPY contracts fell 35.0% to 355,865.

This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.

Source: Finance Magnates