THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF TRADETECH FX 2026
Chart created by CME Group
FX Link Market participants often call for the electronification of FX swaps, and over the past eight years, CME Group’ s FX Link has played a market leading role in driving that shift. It works on a so-called“ hard match” basis- providing truly firm, no last look pricing in FX swaps in an all-to-all, anonymous marketplace where participants don’ t need credit against each other, and where the far leg of the trades are centrally cleared, providing material balance sheet relief. Volumes in FX Link are up over 30 % year-to-date through June 2026, with large volume days seeing over $ 14 billion per leg traded.
EBS Market Our EBS Market CLOB continues to play a critical role as the primary venue for price discovery and the reference price of the market in EUR, JPY, CNH, CHF and 1M APAC NDFs. The large market movements in JPY at the end of July 2026 clearly illustrate this.
On July 30, a total of $ 102 billion of USD / JPY traded across EBS platforms(~$ 87 billion on EBS Market CLOB), with peak activity occurring during a two and a half hour window with $ 76 billion traded.
USD / JPY saw a significant movement of 516 pips during this window, printing a low of 157.80 and a high of 162.96. By the end of this period, 96 % of all available price points within this range were traded on the platform – demonstrating robust liquidity and the unique value of our markets during times of market stress.
FX futures and options CME Group’ s FX futures and options saw average volumes of over $ 95 billion per day in H1 of 2026, with more than 1,100 institutions actively participating in the market. This makes FX futures the largest of all the spot ECNs available to traders, providing an essential pool of liquidity and access to a wide ecosystem of customers. The deep, robust liquidity in the futures CLOB has been further augmented by investment from multiple tier one banks to provide an automated solution which allows customers to trade directly with those banks, leaning on OTC liquidity before holding any resulting position as a centrally cleared FX future or option.
The bottom line The FX market is huge and set to see continued growth in daily traded volumes. The choice of venues remains equally large, creating a fragmented marketplace for traders to navigate. While a variety of trading modalities provide value, it remains critically important to bring the market together in centralised CLOBs to ensure overall market functioning, providing price transparency and liquidity when it matters most to traders around the globe.
The official newspaper of TradeTech FX 2026 TheTradeNews. com 11