In April this year, 54 central banks and monetary authorities participated in the
Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity.
They collected data on turnover in traditional foreign exchange markets those for
spot transactions, outright forwards and foreign exchange swaps and in over-the-
counter (OTC) currency and interest rate derivatives. This was the seventh global
survey since April 1989 of foreign exchange market activity and the fifth survey
since April 1995 additionally covering OTC derivatives market activity. Today
participating central banks and monetary authorities are publishing their national
survey results and the BIS is releasing preliminary global statistics from the survey.
the two global headline trends from the April 2007 survey are the following:
- Turnover in traditional foreign exchange instruments increased by an
unprecedented 71% to $3.2 trillion. Although this was broad-based across
instruments, growth in FX swap turnover was particularly strong, up by
82% in April 2007. Reporting dealers' foreign exchange market turnover
with both other financial institutions and non-financial customers more
than doubled. As a consequence, the share of transactions between
reporting dealers and other financial institutions, which mainly comprise
hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies,
increased by 7 percentage points to 40%. - Activity in OTC derivatives markets continued to expand at a rapid pace.
Average daily turnover of interest rate and non-traditional foreign exchange
contracts increased by 71% to $2.1 trillion in April 2007. Turnover of foreign
exchange options and cross-currency swaps more than doubled to $0.3
trillion per day, thus outpacing the above-mentioned growth in "traditional"
instruments such as spot trades, forwards or plain FX swaps. Less brisk
growth was recorded in the much larger interest rate segment, where
average daily turnover increased by 64% to $1.7 trillion.
More detailed results and statistical tables on developments in the foreign
exchange and OTC derivatives markets as well as comprehensive explanatory
notes describing the coverage of and terms used to present the statistics are
included in the separate statistical release of the data.
The BIS plans to publish, in November 2007, the preliminary global results of the
second part of the triennial survey at end-June 2007, covering open contracts
outstanding in OTC derivatives markets and including, for the first time, credit
default swaps (CDSs). A more detailed analysis of the results for the traditional
foreign exchange markets will be published in the December 2007 BIS Quarterly
Review. The final global results of both parts of the 2007 triennial survey are
expected to be released in December 2007.
National results of central banks and monetary authorities that participated in the
survey and that publish their results at the same time as the BIS are available at: