It has been a exhilarating and rollercoaster ride for investors in the financial markets over the past few weeks, with almost everything, including equities and indices through the commodities and bond markets all under stress of experiencing significant changes. Investors are coming into terms with the possibility of a lesser stimulus from central banks around the world.
Foreign exchange markets, specifically have seen a lot of remarkable moves in recent months. The Japanese yen is perhaps the most striking. Japan’s prime minister have promulgated a programmes called “Abenomics” which will give the yen a one way ticked throughout most of the remaining months of 2013.
There is an argument whether or not the future evolution of the FX markets, which is facing so many difficulties in terms of regulations as with other financial markets. Regulators are well aware of the expected rise in FX volumes over the succeeding years. As the global economy is expanding, and the power of emerging markets increases, the part on which FX plays in the aforementioned growth will be very considerable.
Not only do investors and speculators try to gain from movements in the currency prices, but the global corporations are also hedging their contact to many different currencies that they get their income from.
With the development of electronic trading and rapid propagation of trading venues, previous approaches in trading such as traditional telephone broking business are now a thing of the past.
There is a good sign that the hedge fund industry is proliferating. Both recruiters who specialise in the said area and several brokers that provide their services are slowing getting immersed in the trend. A lot of these novel strategies involve FX markets to some degree. Even the more traditional buy-side institutions are slowly accepting the potential FX markets can offer them.
The technology involved in many of these new platforms are making so many slow paced executions in the past ultra fast and convenient. As such, unconventional strategies like high frequency trading can be supplemented to a much greater extent.
As the demands of investors increase, FX trading will have to push-on to evolve by becoming more like its exchange-traded equity, bond and commodity counterparts. It’s very likely that we will still be seeing many providers moving away from the market making model and in turn align interest with their clients.
The number of trades on FX markets can still make up a significant proportion of the entire at certain spread betting providers, there are still a few signs that this popularity is at any point waning down.