FIX
I noticed that an old favourite turned up in the news cycle last week – indeed I suspect it is moving into the market’s general psyche given more people are talking to me about it – and that is peer-to-peer matching, more specifically asset managers seeking to by-pass the banks because the latter are able […]
I have previously argued that the FX industry needs to pay attention to the outcome of the Mark Johnson trial. Reading through the appeal documents, however, indicates the stakes have been raised. The prosecution’s original case was, in my opinion, flawed when looking at how the FX market works, but the new charges take this to a new level and they throw into a harsher light the reluctance of certain trade associations to engage and educate the US authorities earlier in this case – we can only hope it is not too late.
Just two weeks after the three members of the notorious Bloomberg chatroom The Cartel were acquitted in a New York court of manipulation of FX markets, a group of banks are facing yet another lawsuit from a class action of investors over their FX market activities.
The action has been brought by a group of major investors who explicitly opted out of the class action settlement last year that saw 14 of the 16 banks accused pay over $2.3 billion in damages (a 15th settled later).
Richard Usher, Rohan Ramchandani and Chris Ashton, the three members of the now notorious “Cartel” chat room, have been found not guilty of FX market manipulation by a jury in New York.
It was alleged that between 2007 and 2013 Usher, Ramchandani and Ashton worked in coordination to fix prices and rig EUR/USD markets, participating in telephone calls and electronic messages, including near-daily conversations in a private electronic chat room, in order to achieve this. The indictment against them was issued in January of this year.
If found guilty the three could have each faced a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
I have been reading through the application for bail lodged by Mark Johnson’s lawyers following his conviction and sentence to two years’ jail and not only do I think it previews his full appeal, but while I understand the job of the counsel is to make the best case they can by stretching facts to the limit, my natural reaction has also been that something went badly wrong during the trial for the verdict to be delivered the way it was.
I have long had a healthy distaste for certain phrases used in the foreign exchange industry, roll out a “client centric”, a “best of breed”, an “innovative” or even a “we are a disruptor” and my eyes start rolling and my attention wanders. These have, therefore, all been ruled out of the inaugural Irrational for Phrase of the Year, not least because they have been around for decades.
But while the winner of the Irrational has also been around for a while, as far as I can work it out it barely registered on the industry’s consciousness before 2016.
Two of my pet hates have long been the blurring of lines between retail and institutional in FX markets, and the Fix. The start of the Mark Johnson trial, and many peoples’ reaction to it, have only served to increase my rage as it has highlighted both the increasingly loud (to my mind too loud) voice of the retail trader and the stupidity of using the Fix. Put simply, if you want a flash crash every afternoon in London listen to these people.
Seven banks have had a number of claims against them for FX market manipulation dismissed in an ongoing US civil litigation court case.
The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets, Société Générale, and Standard Chartered Bank (collectively, the Non-Settling Defendants or NSDs) are the seven banks named in the court documents released yesterday.
The NSDs are accused of conspiring to fix FX prices around the 4pm WMR benchmark, but moved to dismiss the claims against them.
Pragma Securities has launched TradeBase, a relational database that provides clients real-time access to their parent and child FIX order messages. The aim of this new database is provide clients with greater transparency when facilitating their risk management, compliance, and monitoring of their algorithmic orders. “Transparency is at the heart of our value proposition, and […]
