<figure class="image"><img src="https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/019/277/confusedtravolta.jpg" alt="Confused Travolta | Know Your Meme"></figure>&nbsp;Who’s Turned The Volume Down?All good parties have the volume turned up, and March rocked, but the party looks a bit empty now that the volume has been turned down in April across all markets. Who turned it down? Where has everyone gone?&nbsp;March was a great month for a lot of the major FX venues that actually report their volume data, but Spot FX Volumes across the board were sharply down in April, heading into territory that is lower than most of 2022 (CLS is yet to report its figures).&nbsp;Cboe FX (formerly Hotspot) is notable in that their volumes reached a multi-year high (discounting the COVID-related anomalous peak of March 2020 - the same for all platforms) in March and suffered a sharp reversal down 18% March-April. It was all looking really good - what happened?&nbsp;Retail broker Exness are still banging away at $1 trillion total a month (not just FX), but their platform data shows a decline of 11%.&nbsp;FXSpotStream and EBS (who seem to be extremely closely correlated over the past 12 months) are both reporting volumes at their lowest for 15 months. S’up yo?&nbsp;The Fixed Income markets are also showing a mixed picture. TradeWeb reported that U.S. government bond ADV was down 11.5% Year on Year to $120.2 billion, while. European government bond ADV was up 9.7% to $36.8 billion.&nbsp;Crypto the same - Binance, the largest Crypto exchange by an order. of magnitude, is hearing the birds tweeting outside as their volumes in April fell almost 50% (<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/05/10/crypto-exchange-binance-trading-volume-fell-almost-50-in-april/?mc_cid=9a6c438470&amp;mc_eid=aea9d1ed23">see Coindesk’s coverage of CCData’s analysis</a>). Maybe Pepe coin, and its AltCoin friends, might get the party pumping again in May?&nbsp;<a href="https://ir.nasdaq.com/static-files/465d2157-c476-4546-a9f7-8d7ad0c9be77">Nasdaq showed a considerable decline</a> in volume in US equities in March - April, from 49.797 billion shares traded in March, to 31.773 billion in April, a decline of 36%, the lowest report for 2023.&nbsp;I asked around over the weekend for some industry view on this decline in volumes. The owner of a Wealth Management Firm and multi-asset brokerage told me that “on top of the banking issues and the debt ceiling leading to a wait-and-see attitude, lots of algos and trading systems have refrained from trading recently. Sometimes doing nothing or laying back and watching is the best investment - especially so in such an uncertain environment”.&nbsp;If anyone can shed some light with further ideas as to what is happening in the markets in terms of volume decline - please share thoughts below.

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Why were market volumes down across the board in April 2023?

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