You are here: Home » Money Markets
Money Markets - Articles and news items
April 2012 / 10 April 2012 / Frances Maguire, Columnist, FX-MM
All markets are presently in a state of flux and fixed income is no different. However, as well as grappling with the impact of regulatory change, it is also trying to catch up in terms of automation, while competing in an extremely fragmented market. But, writes Frances Maguire, fixed income is changing fast.
The fixed income market brings increased complexity and greater difficulty in automating due to the fact that it is largely an over the counter market, while the risks in not improving automation are much more significant than for those trades executed on exchanges.
The MiFID regime will be extended to all financial products and is likely to include fixed income products in its transparency and market structure requirements. This may result in Broker Crossing Networks being regulated as Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTFs), and would have a huge impact on fixed income infrastructures. The introduction of mandatory clearing for Over-The-Counter (OTC) derivatives will also impact the fixed income players in needing to connect to central counterparty (CCP) clearing houses, against a backdrop of new regulatory guidelines from Basel III, which will raise the minimum level of capital reserves across the board. (more…)
April 2012 / 5 April 2012 /
Tradeweb has pioneered the development of electronic multi-dealer-to-customer trading platforms across a number of fixed income, derivatives and money markets. Its FX options platform is the latest to go live.
Tradeweb has a 14 year history of developing and operating electronic marketplaces with a focus in Europe on dealer-to-customer platforms for fixed income and derivatives instruments. In that time, Tradeweb has built up a trading network of thousands of the world’s largest banks, asset managers, central banks, pension funds and insurance companies. It continues to develop new marketplaces across different asset classes, in every case aiming to deliver access to the high-quality liquidity and post-trade efficiencies that market participants demand.
How does Tradeweb’s newest platform work?
Tradeweb’s FX options platform is aimed at a broad suite of real-money institutional investors, hedge funds and corporate treasurers – a significant number of whom have existing relationships with Tradeweb in other markets. (more…)
November 2010 / 10 November 2010 / FX-MM
When the financial crisis first hit, governments the world over closed ranks, forming something of an ad hoc alliance to save the global economy. Yet, by October 2010, the talk has turned to conflict. As Drew Hillier reports, in the scrabble to carve out a decent economic recovery, the clear and present danger looms large that it’s going to be every government for themselves.
(more…)
Past issues, September 2010 / 23 September 2010 / FX-MM
This being summer – just about – the media is full tilt into that strange semi-somnambulant state commonly known as the ‘silly season’. Politicos head for their holidays, C-listers are checked into rehab and the usual daily diet of crisis dissolves, leaving newswires – suddenly unencumbered by editorial oversight – to spew forth stories of wacky diets and tap-dancing hamsters. And as Drew Hillier sees, the FX market undergoes a similar hiatus: the big guns spend August reacquainting themselves with their families, leaving a skeleton crew of lesser mortals to mind the shop, many of whom stave off divorce by the simple expedient of bringing their offspring into work to horse around in the trading room. Which can make for an illiquid, illogical and illusory market… especially when the kids start making deals!
(more…)
August 2010 / 16 August 2010 / FX-MM
It was a certain Julius Henry Marx – otherwise known as Groucho – who memorably announced he didn’t care to belong to any club that would have him as a member! Casting such Marxist sentiment aside, Drew Hillier sees how here in the UK, Pro-European captains of industry have been lining up to voice their belief that Britain should get with the euro some time in the future.
As far back as 2003, a pro-euro call went out from many of the Britain’s most senior business figures; despite all the recent kerfuffle over sovereign debt crises and plummeting credit ratings, by far the majority of these highprofile personalities still hold firm to the view that the country would be better off as a fully signed up member of the single currency. One such luminary, Sir Nick Scheele, former Chief Operating Officer of the Ford Motor Company, in explaining his reasoning, first pointed out how the eurozone is Britain’s largest trading partner by far, highlighting how nearly 70% of all the UK’s trade is done with eurozone currencies.
(more…)
June/July 2010 / 14 July 2010 / FX-MM
“Saigon… s**t! I’m still only in Saigon… Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle.” These are the now infamous first lines uttered by Captain Benjamin L. Willard – the main character played by Martin Sheen in the seminal Vietnam War movie, Apocalypse Now. With the markets currently bunkered down against the distinct whiff of contagion spreading across the EU battlefield and beyond, there will doubtless be many traders heading for their holidays paraphrasing those apocalyptic words!
(more…)
April 2010 / 17 April 2010 / FX-MM
There’s a curious proverb, the provenance of which I am not sure (and I promise I didn’t make up), that goes: “A pig on credit makes a good winter but a bad spring.”
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain – whose deliciously un-PC acronym is often considered somewhat objectionable – now, collectively, seem to be casting sensibility aside and going full-tilt towards living up to their PIGS tag. But we at last have a deal brokered in respect of Greece, so as FX&MM Editor Drew Hillier muses, we can look forward to a surge of confidence in the markets and a rally in the euro….err not quite.
(more…)
April 2010 / 17 April 2010 / FX-MM
Over twelve months since Spain saw its triple-A credit rating stripped by Standard & Poor’s, who then turned its guns on Portugal, and then more recently had a further go at Greece, debate has intensified about the impact and influence exerted by credit ratings agencies and the numerous channels through which capital account restrictions may affect economic activity. Drew Hillier looks at how such decisions weigh on the currency markets, and, furthermore, in terms of corporate activity, the potential risks that may arise in terms of currency mismatch if firms without foreign currency earnings increase their foreign currency debt leverage.
(more…)
February 2010 / 22 February 2010 / FX-MM
At the time of writing, as the great and the good headed home from Davos World Economic Forum, bankers have indicated that they may agree to far-reaching reforms whilst financial regulators warned that they could take drastic action to take some of the risk out of the financial industry. As to how this reflects – and indeed impacts – on the markets going forward, Drew Hillier speculates that we may not be going forward at all, merely differently sideways… tempered with an overwhelming feeling that as far as a recovery is concerned, we have yet to fully ascertain if the wheels may be either half on or half off! (more…)
December 2009/January 2010, Past issues / 22 December 2009 / FX-MM
As 2009 draws to a close, a huge degree of uncertainty remains as to the true efficacy of government programs aimed at rescuing the financial system and wider economy. In the hugely costly case of Quantitative Easing, authorities admit they cannot fully measure its effect; instead, they just think – or hope – it works. Whatever the whys and wherefores, we wave good riddance to the year just gone with yet more poor-to-dreadful news percolating out of the various global economies; Dubai, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and the UK… all of whom look in dire need of a virtual miracle to avoid a pretty grim decade yet to come.
(more…)
December 2009/January 2010, Past issues / 22 December 2009 / FX-MM
The foreign exchange market remains the largest financial market in the world, and the most liquid. And while it experienced a substantial decrease in early 2009, with US$2.9 trillion in average daily volume, a report published recently by Celent estimates the FX market should exceed US$4.0 trillion in average daily turnover by 2010.
(more…)
November 2009, Past issues / 12 November 2009 / FX-MM
For the horticulturally-minded among us who fancy getting proactive in putting down some green shoots, now’s the perfect time of year (or so I’m told) to get planting a tree or two. Mighty oaks from little acorns grow… as the saying goes, so FX&MM Editor Drew Hillier roots around the markets in search of something with potential for strong, sustained growth… which isn’t merely a hedge!
Of all trees, the Yew – or Taxus baccata – is supposed to be imbued with the most magical of properties, gaining a unique place within folklore as the preeminent of “nine sacred woods” used in the ritual fires of the Celts, who along with many ancient peoples, associated themselves with a so-called totem tree. The Euberones of Gaul, for instance, adopted the yew as their mystical tree of choice, from which strength, fertility and wisdom was drawn.
(more…)
November 2009, Past issues / 12 November 2009 / FX-MM
Muted whisperings that plans are underway to replace the dollar as the global monetary anchor have recently increased to a veritable deluge of more audible dissent, overtly calling into question the U.S. currency’s so-called ‘right of seniorage.’ In this month of Thanksgiving, napkin at the ready, Drew Hillier sits down to a turkey dinner – traditional in the United States since 1863 – and ponders how this November, it mightn’t just be the big bird that gets stuffed!
(more…)
October 2009, Past issues / 15 October 2009 / FX-MM
At the Summit Circus in Pittsburgh, President Barack Obama took to the Mount, delivering his sermonesque update on the new policies aimed at stimulating the global economy and bolstering recovery. But is it enough? Drew Hillier reports on whether recent events represent a case of so far so good, or not good enough. Or maybe it’s simply as Alistair Darling says, that “the biggest single risk to recovery is that people think the job is done.”
(more…)
Past issues, September 2009 / 10 September 2009 / FX-MM
News that Hong Kong recorded better than expected growth in the three months from April to June has given rise to much celebration recently. Coming hard on the heels of an upturn in the French and German economies, bringing to an end year-long recessions in two of Europe’s largest economies, Japan also subsequently announced its emergence from recession, all of which seems to indicate the global slowdown – if not at a halt – is at least easing. But as Drew Hillier reports, there’s plenty of work yet to be done before the global economy gets back onto its feet.
(more…)
Login Status