Trading
A brave new world for foreign exchange?
Talk of a new platform being launched by Lava and the CME/Reuters joint venture makes it feel as if the FX market is about to experience a revolution similar to that which it saw at the start of the millenium.
Creating an algorithmic safeguard
Stuart Crooks, vice-president, sales for FlexFX in London, points to algorithmic trading as a way to keep up with the increasing speed at which the market moves
Lava spreads to Russia
MOSCOW – Lava Trading will introduce trading in the Russian rouble on its FX trading platform, Lava FX, it announced at the ACI Russia International FX seminar in Moscow last week.
Play equities and bonds through FX
Adam Cole, senior currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets in London, analyses how currencies move as bond and equity markets fluctuate
Independence aids Saxo forecasting
Saxo Bank's "non-partisan, non-bureaucratic approach to market forecasting" keeps it at the summit of the one-month historical index, according to Kristian Siggaard Jensen, FX market strategist at Saxo in Copenhagen.
Central banks to diversify
LONDON – The world's central banks are increasingly looking at asset management as a diversifier for their historic hoarding of US dollars, according to a report from Merrill Lynch.
Orc adds FX coverage
STOCKHOLM – Swedish technology vendor Orc Software is expanding its multi-asset trading capabilities to the forex market by providing direct access to FXall and Hotspot FXi.
Down but not out
The Fukui scandal could bring about temporary depreciation for the yen, says Toru Umemoto , FX strategist at Barclays Capital in Tokyo
DrKW leads with bearish dollar view
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW) tops this week's three-month rankings due to its commitment to a bearish dollar view, said Tim Fox, FX strategist at the bank in London.
Barclays Capital picks dollar decline
Barclays Capital is ahead of the pack in the one-month historical index. It moved from fourth to second last week and tops the table this week.
Reuters ties to Standard Bank
NEW YORK & JOHANNESBURG – Standard Bank of South Africa has gone live with Reuters trading technology. The deal makes Standard Bank the first South African bank to make use of Reuters e-trading technology to power its FX e-commerce trading platform for…
Philips Electronics trades 98% of FX electronically
MONTE CARLO – The e-FX market received a strong endorsement last week, with Philips Electronics revealing that nearly all its FX is transacted electronically.
Structured note digital payout versus participation factor
Neil Bardsley , vice-president and FX options correlation trader at Bank of America, studies the use of an at-the-money spot basket option versus a digital payout in a structured note
Chinese volatility picking up
BEIJING - The daily central parity rate for USD/RMB last week had its largest fall since the renminbi's revaluation last July.
LONDON - Yield strategies for currency funds are undergoing their worst period since 1998, according to research by ABN Amro.
The Dutch bank's naive simulations of different currency management styles show that the yield strategy incurred losses as the carry trade continued to unwind with yen, Swiss franc and Swedish krona all strengthening. Sterling was the only carry currency…
Dollar focus in H1 set to continue
The focus on the dollar seen in the first half of the year is likely to continue for the rest of 2006 according to Matthew Foster-Smith, senior currency analyst at Thomson Financial in London.
RBS expands global sales team
GLOBAL – The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has boosted its financial institutions sales team with nine hires globally.
Speculative positions for all currency pairs
Senior portfolio strategist Henrik Degrér at SEB in Stockholm develops a proxy to gauge speculative positions for all currency pairs
Looking beyond US interest rates
The key themes underpinning most bearish US dollar forecasts have been the Fed ending its tightening cycle and a slowing US economy.
EBS boosts Hong Kong and Singapore dollar trading
HONG KONG – Spot broker EBS has added 10 currency panels per page to its EBS Spot screen in a bid to increase trading in Asian currencies.
E-trading for Calyon Financial
PARIS – Calyon Financial, the brokerage arm of French bank Calyon, last week launched an online forex trading platform called Calyon Financial FX Edge.
EBS hits daily volume record
LONDON – EBS hit another daily volume record last week, amid volatile market conditions.
A simple strangle for EUR/GBP vol
Currency managers can insure against unexpected moves in the EUR/GBP using a simple low-cost method, says Neil Mellor, currency strategist at the Bank of New York in London
V for victory in US dollar forecasts
Calyon has achieved consistent top-five placings in four of the six tables because it has "stuck to its guns" for the past 18 months, according to Daragh Maher, senior FX strategist in London.