Along with Conversion Pros, Forex Magnates is hosting the IFXEXPO in Macau, Asia’s largest B2B Forex event. The conference features two days of presentations and panel discussion in addition to the large group of exhibitors. Events for day one included panel discussions on Mobile Trading, Liquidity , South East Asia’s FX & CFD market, and the Chinese trading market. Presentations from leading industry firms were given about the binary options and forex Payments industry, Google Adwords, and 2013 global and South East Asia economic trends.
Moderating the Mobile Trading Panel was Forex Magnates' Adil Siddiqui. Overall, panelists stressed the importance of providing mobile solutions for clients as customer behavior and interests are demonstratring an increasingly mobile based lifestyle. With regard to Asia, panelists singled out China as a region that was specifically seeing huge growth in mobile trading. Speaking in the panel, Vinod Muthukrishnan from Market Simplified stated “Mobile isn't the future, it’s already here. We already have a partner client who is planning a mobile only brokerage with zero physical presence.” In terms of volumes, he added “Most fx brokerages are now clocking between 10-20% of their volumes on mobile, and the more speculative the asset class, the higher the percentage of mobile traders. Our mobile trading volumes averaged across the globe grew more than 50% last year with Asia as a huge growth engine”
Liquidity Panel (left to right) - Shane Braunstein Gain Capital, Alex Knight Citi, Harpal Sandhu Integral, Darren Jer MarketFactory, Stephen Lynch Nomura, Rob Fleschler HotSpot
At the Liquidity Panel, which was moderated by Mitch Eaglstein of Boston Technologies, panelists discussed the current state of the sector. Topics discussed were A vs B-Book, importance of relationships to source quality liquidity, ‘last look’ policies, and rejections rates. In regards to the A/B Book, Harpal Sandhu, CEO of Integral stated “brokers have been shifting from B Book to A book.” When it came to relationships, Stephen Lynch from Nomura answered a question of “If technology can entertain many liquidity providers, why can't you use 100 LPs?” which Lynch answered, “Liquidity is based on relationships. At Nomura we are correlation traders, any flow that comes to us is correlated against other trade flow to manage the risk.” He added that they base their pricing on relationships which are “are based on credit, pricing, technology, and volumes.”
The event concludes tomorrow with another load of events.
