ICE Releases July’s Trading Metrics, HSBC Blames FX for Decline in Revenues

Leading international exchange and clearing houses network Intercontinental Exchange, Inc announced its volumes for July 2014, which showed that the average daily volumes for options and futures fell 23 percent from a year ago to 4.3 million contracts.

The ADV for commodities fell 4 percent year on year, with the 22 percent decline in natural gas ADV partly tapered by a 26 percent growth in Brent Crude ADV. The financial ADV fell 40 percent over the period owing to the low interest rates in the euro area. The ADV for US cash equities fell 4 percent while US options ADV accelerated 1 percent in the year through July 2014, said ICE in a press release posted on its website.

Meanwhile, weak FX revenues pulled down UK bank HSBC’S revenues in the second quarter. The bank reported that revenues from credit trading grew 34 percent YoY to $246 million while the revenue from rates rose 32 percent to $496 million. However, FX revenues declined 34 percent to $631 million over the period, along with revenues from stock trading that fell 22 percent YoY to $247 million.

HSBC blamed harsh market conditions for the poor performance, citing “lower market volatility and reduced client inflows”. It singled out FX business for the 12 percent decline in markets revenues in the second quarter and also for the 7 percent drop in the first half. Markets revenues stood at $1.6 billion in Q2 2014 compared to $1.8 billion in Q2 2013.

Revenue adjusted for debt-valuation adjustments, stood at $4.8 billion. The pre-tax profits from global banking and markets rose 2 percent to $2.2 billion in the second quarter, compared with a decline of 11 percent in Q1 2014.