Peer-to-peer forex services aim to bypass Wall St banks - Financial Times

Peer-to-peer forex services aim to bypass Wall St banks - Financial Times
Ten mistakes all successful FX traders should avoid - ForexLive
Vanguard Developing Blockchain Platform for $6 Trillion Forex Market - Coindesk
HYCM and Arabic Forex to Host a Trading Conference in Kuwait - Africanews English

Posted: 15 Oct 2019 08:41 AM PDT

Some of the biggest institutional investors in the foreign exchange markets are aiming to cut out Wall Street banks from their trades, saying that by linking up directly they could save hundreds of millions of dollars in charges.

Two separate groups of investors are backing platforms designed to net off currency trades between them, rather than doing deals with banks as intermediaries. Vanguard, which has more than $5tn in assets under management, is backing a members-only swap trading facility known as FX HedgePool, which will soon go live, according to its chief executive Jay Moore.

In Europe, meanwhile, a group of 11 big investors are homing in on FX spot trading. A study recently carried out by that group suggests that they could match more than one-quarter of their trades, saving them as much as $100 per million dollars traded across the most liquid currency pairs. Savings in emerging market currencies, where margins for the banks are higher, were nearly double.

"These results show that it is possible to net a significant portion of trades ahead of going to market," said Claude Goulet, chief executive of the London-based platform Siege FX.

The imminent launches of Siege and HedgePool come as big banks' trading operations remain under pressure on a variety of fronts, as regulatory changes and competition from smaller, nimbler start-ups squeeze businesses that once comprised the bulk of their revenues. At Goldman Sachs, for example, revenues from trading fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) came to $4.7bn over the first nine months of the year, down 7 per cent from the same period a year ago, with the bank singling out a lower haul from currencies.

A decade ago Goldman earned $6bn of FICC net revenues in the third quarter alone.

Other start-ups have in the past tried to develop peer-to-peer FX services but have struggled for traction. One of the key challenges has been the assumption that investors' bets would be too similar to make it possible to find offsetting trades for significant amounts of currency, which boosts the argument that banks are vital for the process.

Participants in such projects have also been wary of upsetting relationships with the big banks. While Siege or HedgePool could, in theory, wrestle away a chunk of the $6.6tn-a-day FX market from banks and brokers, both initiatives need some support from banks to provide credit and settlement services.

"I don't want to fall out with my relationship banks too much . . . but the potential for cutting trading costs is compelling," said one institutional investor at a private event in London this month.

Andrew Maack, Vanguard's global head of FX trading, has become the first member of HedgePool's member advisory council, which will shape the platform's direction. Standard Chartered, the UK-headquartered bank, will provide credit for trading among the members.

"In our opinion, for the foreseeable future, banks will remain central to any viable solution related to trading FX forwards and swaps. However, with the advancement of technology, their role will most surely evolve," Mr Moore of HedgePool told the Financial Times.

Carolyn Wegemann, a spokesperson for Vanguard, said the company "is currently piloting a project focused on improving the efficiency and reducing the risk of FX hedging".

Ten mistakes all successful FX traders should avoid - ForexLive

Posted: 14 Oct 2019 03:23 PM PDT

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Ten mistakes all successful FX traders should avoid ForexLive

Vanguard Developing Blockchain Platform for $6 Trillion Forex Market - Coindesk

Posted: 09 Oct 2019 06:00 AM PDT

Mutual fund giant Vanguard has partnered with Nasdaq Ventures-backed blockchain startup Symbiont to develop a trading platform for the $6 trillion currency market, the companies said.

With the new platform, Vanguard, which manages $5.2 trillion, aims to lower transaction costs for the trillions of dollars worth of currencies it trades annually by boosting peer-to-peer trading for investors, connecting them directly via blockchain technology.

Symbiont CEO Mark Smith told CoinDesk the company teamed up with Vanguard to build the currency platform, confirming a Bloomberg report that cited an anonymous source.

The platform has been operational for two months and completed its first trades during the time, according to the report.

A Vanguard spokesperson told CoinDesk:

"Vanguard is currently piloting a project focused on improving the efficiency and reducing risk of FX hedging."

The new platform is part of the fund manager's commitment to lowering the cost of investing for all investors, the spokesperson said. Neither company would provide further details of the pilot.

The project, if successful, would be another important milestone for Wall Street courtesy of Vanguard, which created the first index fund in 1975.

New York-based Symbiont actually worked with Vanguard on project related to its index funds before the currency trading platform, helping the fund manager in 2017 streamline its index fund data collection process with its patented smart contract technology.

The blockchain firm is focused on its smart contracts platform for institutional applications of its blockchain platform Symbiont Assembly to help build networks where multiple independent entities can share data and logic in real time.

The startup touted that it has been one of the most successful among its peers in the enterprise blockchain space when compared to Hyperledger, R3, Digital Asset and ethereum variants.

"I would argue that we are the only enterprise blockchain solution," Smith previously told CoinDesk. The others either aren't really blockchains, have privacy and security shortcomings or haven't produced anything beyond ideas, he argued.

Symbiont completed blockchain projects for other use cases and partners, including making the mortgage market transparent and more efficient with Wall Street legend Lewis Ranieri and optimizing the syndicated loans market with Ipreo's Synaps platform.

In January, Symbiont raised a $20 million Series B funding round led by Nasdaq Ventures, with other investors in the round including Galaxy Digital, Citi and Raptor Group.

As part of the Series B investment, Nasdaq Financial Framework, a software company owned by the exchange, set out to integrate Symbiont's Assembly smart contracts platform to explore new avenues involving tokenization.

Symbiont, founded in 2013, raised a combined $15.4 million from a seed round in 2014 and Series A in 2017. Earlier investors include the blockchain arm of retail giant Overstock and a Chinese software firm Hundsun Technologies, backed by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma.

Currency image via Shutterstock

HYCM and Arabic Forex to Host a Trading Conference in Kuwait - Africanews English

Posted: 15 Oct 2019 02:45 AM PDT

HYCM (www.HYCM.com), an established global forex broker, is presenting the Forex Trading Education Conference in collaboration with financial market news website, Arabic Forex, at the Jumeirah Messilah Beach Hotel & Spa, Kuwait on October 19^th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It is free to attend; those who wish to attend simply need to register. The conference will be in Arabic.

HYCM has always had a focus on the GCC region, recently being recognized as the Best Forex Trading Platform in the Middle East by the Global Forex Awards, and aims to continue supporting traders in this region by hosting this exclusive event. The conference will include comprehensive presentations delivered by some of the most reputable market analysts and traders in the Gulf region.

This exclusive event brings together market experts and forex enthusiasts to share and exchange their experiences and insights into the financial markets.

Featured presentations will include Investments: Between Efficiency and Safety in which finance and investment expert, Khaled Hassan, will address the factors involved in successful and effective investing, and the mechanisms of risk management, Dow Theory

addressed by Faisal Al Jassim, Financial Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Consultant, and Price Action Strategies, in which Mohamed Kamel, Head of Technical Analysis at Arabic Forex will cover price action and the combination of technical and fundamental analysis.

Participants will get a comprehensive review of a variety of investment methods and understand how to choose optimal products and trading times. They will also be given the opportunity to learn about risk management, and the principles of technical and fundamental analysis. At the end, there will be a Q&A session with industry experts.

Complimentary coffee and lunch will be provided for all attendees.

Those who wish to attend can register on the HYCM website under the Seminars tab, http://bit.ly/hycm-kuwait-seminar

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of HYCM.

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