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Using BIS Surveys to Understand Forex Market Turnover by Counterparty

Article Quant Q&A · Author: matousc
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Summary

The document asks which participant groups influence foreign exchange prices and how much each contributes to market movements. Its answer points to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Triennial FX Survey, including tables that break down over-the-counter foreign exchange turnover by instrument, counterparty, and maturity. It also mentions the Bank of England’s semi-annual London FX turnover survey as another source.

These surveys can help quantify trading activity across counterparty categories and provide a grounded alternative to unsupported claims about market participants. However, turnover is a measure of transaction volume, not a direct attribution of price changes or influence. The document supplies no survey figures or method for estimating causal price impact, so the cited data can inform market structure analysis without answering precisely how much each group moves exchange rates.

Key ideas

  • The BIS Triennial FX Survey reports foreign exchange turnover broken down by counterparty and other dimensions.
  • The Bank of England’s semi-annual survey is offered as an additional source on FX activity.
  • Turnover statistics describe trading volume, not each participant class’s causal contribution to price changes.
  • The document points to data sources but provides no figures or price-impact analysis.

Tags

ForexMarket microstructureStatistics
Full text
# Who influences Forex prices and by how much?


# Who influences Forex prices and by how much?












May question is probably stupid, however I cannot find some reasonable explanation who (and to what extent) is influencing the prices at the Forex market.

Most of the stuff I found on the Internet sounds more like a conspiration theory and the explanation are not really consistent together.

Basically I would like to know, how big share of the changes in forex market is done by different user classes like: national banks, private banks, forex traders, etc...

I guess there would be some papers about this topic, however I am unable to find something decent (probably I am lacking keywords or other knowledge).

## Answer by user42108 (score 3, accepted)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/59207

Try the BIS Triennial FX Survey, latest was last year. https://www.bis.org/statistics/rpfx19.htm

E.g. https://stats.bis.org/statx/srs/table/d11.4?o=8:TO1,9:TO1 (table showing "OTC foreign exchange turnover by instrument, counterparty and maturity in April 2019, "net-net" basis")

EDIT: you could also try https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/london-foreign-exchange-joint-standing-committee/results-of-the-semi-annual-fx-turnover-survey-april-2019

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.