SGX
Bid FX recently announced that Singapore Exchange (SGX) has bought a 20% stake in the company, with an option to acquire a controlling interest. The firm’s CEO, Jean-Philippe Male, talks to Profit & Loss about the rationale behind the deal, and some of the structural trends that he sees shaping the FX market. Profit & […]
Singapore Exchange (SGX), has acquired a 20% stake in BidFX, including an option for additional shares to gain a controlling interest, for a total cash consideration of $25 million.BidFX was spun off as a division of TradingScreen (TS), a provider of a multi-asset execution and order management systems, in January 2017. It offers a cloud-based, front-end trading platform aimed at helping hedge funds, traditional asset managers and regional banks trade, improve access to liquidity, generate alpha and simplify workflows. Its liquidity aggregation platform supports FX spot, swaps and forwards for G10 and Asian currencies.SGX says that the investment is part of its strategy to build core pillars of growth across multiple asset classes, while BidFX indicates that it plans to utilise the funds to further grow its reach and offering among institutional investors.
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.
Trading on SGX’s FX Futures more than doubled to $914 billion in 2018 as the exchange saw a record monthly volume of $96 billion traded in December.In aggregate, 1.76 million FX futures contracts were traded on SGX in December, up 87% from the same month in 2017. Meanwhile, the notional volume of $96 billion traded on the platform was a 122% year-on-year increase.“The robust annual growth is strong evidence of the role SGX plays as a key risk management venue for market participants as they manage their Asian currency risk exposure,” says the exchange group in its monthly newsletter.
Singapore Exchange (SGX) has successfully completed the first USD/CNH Flexible FX futures trade.The transaction involved Bank of China (Singapore) and ICBC (Singapore) executing two CNH FlexC FX futurised swap trades on SGX. A total notional value of $8 million changed hands.“The transaction marks a major step forward in bringing together the listed and OTC markets in FX. With global regulatory initiatives such as Basel III and MIFID II coming into play, financial institutions are facing an increasing burden of capital requirements that include Leverage Ratio, Liquidity Coverage Ratio and Counterparty Credit Risk charges, as well as Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) for OTC derivatives.
The total volume of FX futures traded on SGX in July was 1.7 million, down 8% month-on-month, despite the exchange seeing record volumes in its USD/CNH futures.
Although volumes were down last month compared to June, they were still up 124% year-on-year. The monthly decrease appears to have been driven by a decline in volumes on SGX’s INR/USD futures, with trading down 23% m-o-m but still up 81% y-o-y.
The bright spot for SGX in July was trading on its USD/CNH futures, as a record $61.5 billion in notional was traded on these contracts, bringing the total volume of these contracts cleared to over $255 billion this year.
Singapore Exchange (SGX) today reported a net profit of S$363.2 million for the year ending June 30, a 7% increase from the previous year.
This partially driven by a 12% increase in revenues from the exchange’s derivatives business, up to S$339.8 million, meaning that this business line contributed 40% of SGX’s total revenue.
Loh Boon Chye, CEO of SGX, says: “FY2018 was a record milestone in our financial performance as we achieved our highest revenue since listing in 2000 and the highest profit in five years.
In this week’s In the FICC of It podcast, Colin Lambert apologises to the English nation and Galen Stops talks about the needs of a millennial.
They also discuss the week’s news from the FX world including SGX launching futurised OTC products and LCH going live with deliverable FX options clearing, as well as deliberate upon how hedge fund performance is measured; US regulators’ attitudes to cryptocurrencies; and the latest blow to the desktop terminal industry. They close out with a quote from their favourite profession – the legal industry – which rather aptly reinforces something Colin Lambert has been saying for some years – and let’s face it, if he says enough at some stage a lawyer somewhere will have to agree, it’s the law of averages!
In case you missed some of the original coverage this week, you can catch up here:
SGX Launches “Futurised” OTC FX Product
LCH Goes Live with Deliverable FX Options Clearing
US Regulators Shift Attitudes Regarding Cryptocurrencies
Hedge Funds Suffer in June: BarclayHedge
And Finally…(subscription required)
“It’s not rocket science, but it is a different approach compared to other exchanges,” says KC Lam, head of FX and rates at SGX, when discussing the exchange’s new FlexC FX futures, which aim to “futurise” certain OTC FX product offerings.
This is, of course, a reference to the recent product initiatives launched by various exchange groups in an attempt to bridge the gap between OTC and listed FX trading.
While Eurex has launched rolling spot futures, which mimic the trading of OTC FX spot contracts, combined with the daily usage of a tom-next (T/N) swap in order to roll over the value date of the spot position, and CME has launched CME Link, spot FX basis spreads offered on Globex to create a central limit order book (CLOB) between the OTC spot FX and CME FX futures markets, SGX is indeed taking a very different approach.
Singapore Exchange (SGX), is launching a new product, SGX FlexC FX Futures, with the aim of “futurising” certain OTC FX product offerings.
Targeted for launch on August 27, SGX FlexC FX Futures – developed in consultation with market participants – enable bilateral trades that are privately negotiated with tailored expiration dates to be registered and cleared like a standard SGX FX futures contract. This feature will be available for INR/USD, KRW/USD, TWD/USD, USD/CNH and USD/SGD contracts.
Michael Syn, head of derivatives at SGX, says: “Access to counterparty credit, especially for tenors longer than spot, is increasingly scarce and expensive in the OTC FX markets.
