This week the biggest macro-economic story affecting currency trading was the run-up to the presidential elections in France. The industry saw a new player get into the online Trading Platform business, and we also heard some more detail about what happened to Gallant Capital.
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French elections
On Monday we reported that as the French presidential election draws closer, brokers are taking measures to curb risks for clients and themselves, such as lowering leverage.
Some brokers even tried to take advantage of the event to launch new products. Swissquote released a set of investor tools that aim to anticipate the impact of the elections on the financial markets, including an AI-powered Social Media Opinion Index.
Later in the week we offered some analysis on how election volatility is expected to impact indices more than FX pairs.
Traders Platforms
On Tuesday Finance Magnates exclusively reported that Traders Education, a multi-lingual trading education portal and marketing technologies provider, is branching out into a new field - platforms.
For this purpose the company is forming Traders Group, which consists of three entities: Traders Education, Traders Marketing and Traders Platforms.
Gallant Capital
On Wednesday we received some information about what led Gallant Capital to file for bankruptcy protection in the US. The decision resulted from an inability to withdraw funds from one of its counterparties in order to meet Liquidity demands.
Soon after, the CEO of GCM Prime disassociated his firm from Gallant Capital Markets. The letter to the clients of GCM Prime outlines that “certain misinformation and conjecture about our firm has emerged”.
Saxo UK
On Thursday we exclusively reported that the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has ordered Saxo Capital Markets UK Limited (SCML) to pay out compensation exceeding £150,000 in the latest lawsuit stemming from the SNB’s exchange-rate turmoil.
The client claimed that Saxo wrongfully deducted funds from his account after the price revisions, which didn’t reflect market rates. He was asking to declare that Saxo shouldn’t have retroactively repriced the trades.
Deutsche hunting stops?
On Friday we reported on the alleged illicit practices used by Deutsche Bank’s currency trading desk. Traders appear to have been disclosing sensitive information to other market participants about the positions of clients of the bank.
This information could then be used by the banks to hunt down stop loss orders and manipulate FX rates, particularly around the London fixing, when the currency market is typically very active.
