e-Forex Magazine July 2016

Cover interview: Vincent Sangiovanni and his leadership team at GTX
Resilience, Redundancy, Flexibility and Capacity: Can the managed service model meed the future needs of FX?
FX Clearing house: How block chain could triple Spot-FX liquidity
Principles, Actions, Results: Achieving a more robust process of Best Execution in FX
FX Prime Brokerage: An industry transforming itself
Sharpening the tools of the trade: New developments with FX strategy back testing platforms
The Middle East: Scope for growth in electronic FX

Gravity and the Brazilian real

Currency Clips

The performance of emerging market currencies can often be split between domestic factors and overall sentiment towards EM in general. One of the major forces driving overall sentiment over recent years has been expectations of higher interest rates from the US Federal Reserve. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is the fear of and/or actual reversal of flows that were driven by the Fed’s easy monetary policy of recent years. Second is the pressure from EM dollar denominated debt, increasing the funding pressure on EM governments and corporates. But it’s not been the be all and end all of the past 3 years, which have seen EM FX as an asset class lose around one-third of its value....show more

More to come from the Yen

Currency Clips

As the Brexit referendum looms, the focus is on GBP pairs both before and after the vote results. Here in the Middle East, investors will be the first to trade the currency market immediately after the referendum purely due to the time difference. At the moment Middle East investors overwhelmingly believe that the UK will remain in the EU. As a result, these same investors will likely turn to GBPJPY due to its fast movements, and this is good for ‘hit and run’ traders. Despite the notable rise across the board that began in December of last year and has continued until today, it appears that there is still more to come from the yen in the next few weeks. USDJPY has lost more than 14.5% since mid-December of last year, despite the introduction of negative rates by the Bank of Japan and the Government delaying a sales tax increase until 2019. ...show more

The CHF set to strengthen on Brexit fears

Currency Clips

Unlike many other financial market events, the EU referendum not only has potentially extreme consequences but is also purely binary. Opinion polls are showing a dead heat between the “leave” and “stay” votes, with numbers well within the margin of error. This could mean the UK is in the EU on June 23 and planning an exit strategy on June 24. For financial markets, Brexit would have significantly greater consequences than a “remain” vote, so that is what we are focusing on – not because we like chaos but because that is where the greatest risk lies....show more

A roller coaster ride with the Aussie Dollar

Currency Clips

The Aussie Dollar has had a roller coaster start and after a massive selloff, we have reached a low after touching the 0.685 mark. Investors are facing the question as to whether this is a line in the sand or not but the only way to answer this is to look at the policy stance by the Royal Bank of Australia....show more

Vulnerability of Asian currencies in the next half

Currency Clips

For the second half of 2016, Asian currencies continue to be vulnerable owing to weakness in economies and uncertainty on US rate hikes prospect. We look at some of the issues on 4 of the biggest economies in Asia. ...show more

A company working to transform the future of FX trading

Provider Profile

e-Forex talks with Peter Jörgne CEO and Henrik Dubajic, Global Head of Sales at Aphelion, the award winning technology company whose team of software architects and partners have been working in the e-FX market since 1996....show more

MFX Compass: Levelling the e-FX playing field

Provider Profile

In an increasingly volatile market, it has never been more important for FX market makers to have a robust, agile and profitable e-FX risk management offering....show more

MFX Vector: Empowering the buy-side with state of the art technology

Platform Profile

Investors today are confronted by a bewildering array of execution tools. While all undoubtedly have their place, the challenge lies in knowing what to use and when.Equally important is the justification of those execution decisions after the fact; to internal stakeholders, regulators and clients....show more

FX Clearing House: How Blockchain could triple Spot-FX liquidity

CryptoCurrencies

The creation of a digital distributed ledger Clearing House promises to increase participation in Spot FX markets, breaking a choke on the current access to liquidity. When non-bank electronic market makers entered the FX space they found a set of rules and agreements from the 20th century. The sell-side dominance of liquidity provision, based on the size of their balance sheets, gives them an untenable grip on who can trade with who. Now Baxter-FX has designed a model that will allow all-to-all trading in Spot-FX, by creating central clearing with a distributed ledger called “FXCH” (FX Clearing House). e-Forex talks to Franck Mikulecz, Managing Director of the firm to learn more about it....show more

The evolving Blockchain and what it might mean for FX

CryptoCurrencies

There’s more to distributed ledgers than just distribution and book-keeping, as William Essex discovers....show more

The Middle East - scope for growth in electronic FX

Regional eFX Perspective

There is still plenty of scope for growth in e-FX trading across The Middle East region and Richard Willsher reports on how leading providers are meeting the need for the benefits it brings....show more

National Bank of Abu Dhabi - gearing up to be a market leader in electronic distribution across the MENA region

Regional Provider Profile

e-Forex speaks with David Wilkins, Head of Global Markets e-commerce at National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD). ...show more

CMC Markets

Meet the team

e-Forex speaks with Richard Elston, Head of Institutional at UK-based CMC Markets (CMC), one of the leading international providers of CFD and FX trading....show more

FX Prime Brokerage - an industry transforming itself

Special Report

The FX prime brokerage industry has transformed in recent years with new prime of primes (PoPs) emerging to fill the gap created by the retreat of tier one prime brokers’. Nicholas Pratt reports on the latest developments....show more

Best Execution in FX - do Algos have a role to play?

Algorithmic FX Trading

The use of execution algorithms in the currency markets has increased significantly over recent years and it would appear that this trend is set to continue for the foreseeable future. In this article Pete Eggleston, Co-Founder of BestX Ltd explores the potential benefits and pitfalls of using algorithms within an execution process....show more

Broker In A Box: Hype or a faster way to bring your business to market?

FX Brokerage Operations

Is a Broker In A Box solution the ideal way to establish and grow a successful FX and CFD brokerage? Simon Blackledge, Director, itexsys, guides us through the opportunities and obstacles created by opting for a ‘one stop shop’ set up....show more

Are spreads the key criteria when selecting a Liquidity Provider?

FX Mythbusters

According to Paul Groves, Sales Director at CFH Clearing, retail brokers can often be unaware as to how best to select a Liquidity Provider. They focus on spreads as their key driver without always considering other priorities such as depth of market, quantity available at the Top of Book (TOB), commission, service levels, speed of execution, order handling and rejections. In our Mythbusters feature about liquidity, he identifies the top misconceptions he believes are most commonly experienced by brokers worldwide....show more

Resilience, Redundancy, Flexibility and Capacity: Can the Managed Service model meet the future needs of FX?

Networks, Hosting and Connectivity

Dan Barnes explores some of the operational and cost benefits of the Managed Service model for both sell-side and buy-side FX trading firms and how it can specifically help them with their trade lifecycle operations....show more

India’s Economy – The road ahead

Recent Events

Advisory Council for India - City of London – May 2016 In the midst of Brexit, the City of London Advisory Council and the High Commission of India invited me to a panel discussion providing an update on the economic reforms taking place in India. Since the start of 2016 Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promoted the phrase ‘reform to transform India’, further committing to his government’s plans for rapid economic growth....show more

AFME’s 11th Annual European Fixed Income and FX Market Liquidity Conference

Recent Events

Thursday 25 February 2016 St. Paul’s, London In a hospital pass during the panel about China I was asked what I thought about BREXIT? (At time of writing the decision had not come through) I said that as a New Zealander I was perhaps not qualified to answer that question on behalf of the British people but seeing as Immigration had, at the time become one of the main issues then perhaps I was fully qualified to answer that question....show more

ADS Securities LLC launches Prime-of-Prime offering

Product Launch

Tighter regulation, reduced risk appetite and the decline in the number of Prime Brokers (PBs) are affecting growth in the global FX market, according to ADS Securities. An estimated 25 per cent drop in available FX trading lines is leading to wider spreads, higher prices and increased foreign currency exposure for many participants. ...show more

IPC’s new FX Hub benefits customers

Product Launch

IPC recently launched its FX Hub, a low latency, co-located performance solution engineered to address the industry’s most complex trading challenges....show more

How to transform your business into a fully automated trading company

Expert Opinion

The traditional approach to quantitative trading involves using tools like Excel, MatLab and Bloomberg to perform development and back-testing, while using proprietary software code for live trading of strategies. But this model is highly inefficient and difficult to maintain – for example, when making changes to trading logic....show more

GTX: The Electronic-Voice Hybrid that delivers a full service offering

e-Forex Interview

e-Forex talks with Vincent Sangiovanni, CEO of GTX, the institutional arm of GAIN Capital Holdings, Inc....show more

MT5 on the rise

Ask Tom

Tom Higgins, CEO, Gold-i has created a multi award-winning technology company renowned amongst retail brokers worldwide for its MT4 expertise. With a wide portfolio of innovative software products which help brokers using MetaTrader to more make more money, cut costs and reduce risk, Gold-i has helped over 150 brokers across the globe to enhance their operations and differentiate from competitors. In the next in our series of Ask Tom articles, Tom gives his views on the anticipated surge in MT5 and highlights the latest technology which will result in significant uptake of MT5 amongst retail brokers across the globe....show more