Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity in April 2007 ¿ Preliminary global results ¿ Turnover

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: