Profit & Loss understands that two FX traders at Goldman Sachs have left the firm to set up a sports betting site called Sportstack. The two traders, Kristian Brauten-Smith and Nick Smith were both based in London, Krauten-Smith had been at Goldman for seven years as a G10 spot trader and Smith had been at the bank for just under three years also as a G10 spot trader, having joined from a similar spell on Citi’s FX desk in London.
A Global Foreign Exchange Committee working group has released a paper on the role of disclosure and transparency in FX markets intended to serve as a source of information for market participants seeking to learn about, develop and navigate the FX disclosure landscape. The paper is the work of a special working group set up by the GFXC to study the issue after feedback on last look practices highlighted concerns amongst participants that disclosures and transparency levels could be enhanced.
As part of its report on disclosures and transparency, the Global Foreign Exchange Committee (GFXC) has unveiled some initial views on a second stream of work by its disclosures working group on practices in the anonymous e-trading platform sector.
The work centred on the knowledge of counterparties and expectations around counterparty behaviour, although the report does note that given that the landscape of e-trading platforms is diverse with different features and business models across infrastructure providers and users, the working group will continue work to consider this portion of the disclosure landscape
A second working group set up by the Global Foreign Exchange Committee (GFXC) in 2018 to look at how market participants operating the “cover and deal” model utilise last look has published a paper highlighting areas in which it believes practice can be improved. Primarily, the report stresses the importance of those operating cover and deal models ensuring that there is adequate disclosure of the practice, the way in which it is being used, and the clarification of the role and capacity in which the participant acts.
The 2018 FX Global Code Survey results have been released and while, expectedly, the last year saw significantly increased adoption rates amongst firms, there are areas of potential concern for proponents of the Code.
The survey aims to measure the awareness, adoption, implementation, and effects of the Global Code for market participants. The GFXC says the information collected through the 2018 survey is an important input as it continues to promote, maintain, and update the Code and embed it in the fabric of foreign exchange markets.
Trading on SGX’s FX futures hit an all-time in January, with $105 billion in notional value and 1.87 million in aggregate contracts traded. Year-on-year, this represents a 60% growth in terms of notional value and a 30% growth in the volume of contracts traded. Average daily volume (ADV) of contracts traded last month grew to approximately 85,000 contracts from 68,000 in January 2018, while the notional ADV traded per day grew to $4.8 billion in January 2019, up from $3.1 billion the same month the previous year.
