Record foreign exchange trading volumes seen by Deutsche Bank in January

dbFX.com recently announced a doubling of trading volumes on the Arabic version of its trading platform, dbfxarabic.com, since its launch in October 2007.

Deutsche Bank was the first international investment bank to offer an Arabic retail online margin foreign exchange trading platform in the Middle East.

The FX market is estimated to be growing by 30% a year and the Arabic language web site enables investors to participate, utilising FX as an alternative asset class for investment and trading.

dbFX customers also benefit from the security, service, pricing and expertise you would expect from the world's leading FX bank.

Nearly half of all trades executed during January over the dbFX.com platform were Euro/USD transactions, compared to an average of 15% in the three months prior to August 2007's credit crunch.

In January, this trend peaked on 16 January when seven out of every ten trades for the day were between this currency pair.

Immediately after the FED's first interest rate cut announcement of 75 base points on 22 January, the dollar lost ground against the Euro and as investors took the opportunity to make profits, the trading volumes for the Euro/USD currency pair increased to 40% of all trading volumes on 23 January and nearly 50% on 24 January.

As a result of the FED's cut, the next day's trading of the Japanese yen was down against the world's other major currencies, most notably against the Euro where volumes were slashed by half to just 8% of daily trading volumes. Trading of the Japanese yen against the US dollar continued to decline and accounted for less than 10% of January's total volume on dbFX.com, down nearly half against the previous month's figures.

Commenting on January's volumes, Catherine Hardiman, head of dbFX EMEA said,

"As the world observed tumbling equity prices during January 2008, investors sought to optimise alternative asset classes where they could diversify their portfolios into financial investments that were uncorrelated to equity or bond markets. FX presented such an opportunity. January's market conditions meant that investors turned to a 'flight to quality' around their currency trading. dbFX.com's trading platform provides simple functionality and easy access to market information that enables investors in over 70 countries worldwide to leverage market conditions in real-time at the touch of a button".

Launched in 2006, dbFX.com is available in multiple languages and accessible in over 70 countries around the world and has 34 currency pairs available to investors on its platform. Deutsche Bank was ranked the No. 1 Foreign Exchange Bank in 2007 by Euromoney magazine for the third year running.