Intraday volume-volatility nexus in the FX markets: evidence from an emerging market

Abstract

Using a dataset on local banks' daily FX transaction volume segregated into counterparty and transaction types, this article investigates the relationship between trading volume and intraday realized volatility for the US dollar/Turkish lira parity (USDTRY), one of the most traded emerging market currencies against US dollar. We question whether type of counterparty and transaction affects intraday volume-volatility relationship across various trading sessions around the world. We reveal that only the spot transactions of domestic customers have positive contemporaneous relation with realized volatility and this significance is valid only in global trading sessions that mostly overlap with the local trading hours. Furthermore, we utilize a metric for the belief dispersion on the level of future exchange rate via currency options and find that the dispersion significantly strengthens the volume-volatility nexus, confirming the Dispersion of Beliefs Hypothesis.