Global FX turnover hits $9.6 trillion a day

What the survey actually measured

The Bank for International Settlements runs its Triennial Central Bank Survey every three years, and the 2025 round put average daily turnover in over-the-counter foreign exchange markets at $9.6 trillion during April 2025. That is up 28% from $7.5 trillion three years earlier.

The survey is the closest thing the FX market has to a census. There is no exchange with a tape to read, so central banks collect the numbers from the dealers in their own jurisdictions and the BIS consolidates them. April is chosen as a representative month, which matters when you read the figure: it is an average trading day in one month, not a peak.

The dollar's position has not moved

The US dollar was on one side of 89% of all trades, and the ten most traded currency pairs all involve it. That is not patriotism or momentum — it is plumbing. Converting one smaller currency into another is usually cheaper as two trades through the dollar than as one direct trade, because the dollar leg has more depth on both sides.

For a beginner this has a practical consequence that outranks anything else in the survey: dollar pairs carry the tightest spreads. Since the spread is a cost you pay on every single trade, learning on EUR/USD or GBP/USD rather than an exotic pair is a decision about your costs, not your ambition.

What a number this large does not tell you

Turnover figures are quoted constantly in forex marketing, and almost always to imply opportunity. It is worth being precise about what the number supports.

It tells you the market is deep. Your order will fill, at a price close to the one you saw, in normal conditions. On a major pair you are not going to move the market or struggle to exit.

It does not tell you there is money available to you. The overwhelming majority of that $9.6 trillion is not speculation. It is companies paying for imports, funds hedging currency exposure on foreign assets, and institutions moving money because they have obligations in another currency. Those participants are not trying to profit from the exchange rate; many are paying a cost to avoid it.

It says nothing about your odds. Market size is not edge. A deep market means your costs are lower and your fills are better, which is a genuine advantage over trading something illiquid — and that is the entire extent of it.

The number worth checking instead

If you want a figure that actually bears on your outcome, it is not the market's size. It is the percentage of retail accounts that lose money at the specific broker you are considering — a disclosure FCA rules require each firm to publish and recalculate quarterly. That number is on the broker's own site, it is current, and it is about a population you are about to join.

A $9.6 trillion market and a broker's loss disclosure are both true at once. Only one of them changes what you should do next.

Further reading

Our lesson on what forex actually is covers the same ground for a complete beginner, including the part most introductions skip: as a retail trader you are usually not buying currency at all, but opening a leveraged contract with your broker.