Dollar Edges up Before US Jobs, Wages Data – Reuters

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Dollar Edges up Before US Jobs, Wages Data – Reuters
The dollar edged up against a basket of currencies on Friday as investors looked to US jobs and wages data later in the day for further clues as to when the Federal Reserve might raise interest rates.

SNB’s Foreign Currency Reserves Hold Steady Amid Cap Exit – Bloomberg
The Swiss National Bank’s holdings of foreign currency increased just 0.7% last month, with a stronger franc potentially offsetting a further accumulation of euros due to interventions.

Danish Central Bank Fiercely Defends Currency Peg – Financial Times (subscription)
Denmark’s central bank governor pledged to face down speculators testing its currency peg to the euro, saying he would do “whatever it takes” to defend it.

Ukraine’s Hryvnia Plunges After Rate Rise – Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Ukraine’s hryvnia plunged Thursday after the country’s central bank raised interest rates and moved toward a free-floating exchange rate.

FIA Offers Guidelines for Swaps Clearing – FOW Magazine (subscription)
Trade body, the Futures Industry Association, has published a set of recommendations aimed at increasing efficiency in clearing over-­the-­counter derivatives.

Computer-Driven, Automatic Trading Strategies Score Big – Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Recent market volatility caught many investors flat-footed. Among the few winners were traders who let a computer be their guide. Hedge fund managers who employ complicated, automatic-trading strategies made millions off the wild swings in currency and commodity markets in recent weeks, investors say.

 

 

Regulatory News

Fed’s Powell Calls for Tougher Clearinghouse Oversight – Reuters
Clearinghouses like those operated by CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange should be subject to stricter oversight, including coordinated stress tests, to prevent failure in the face of a financial shock, a top Federal Reserve official says.

Massad, Giancarlo Feared CFTC Split Claims Over Sef White Paper – Risk.net (subscription)
The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Timothy Massad, and one of its commissioners, Christopher Giancarlo, considered not publishing the latter’s recent 89-page white paper on swaps reform, fearing it would result in the agency’s leadership being portrayed as divided. The paper, published on January 29, calls for a radical overhaul of the CFTC’s year-old regime requiring some swaps to be traded on swap execution facilities (Sefs).

Clearinghouses Rejoice as ESMA Postpones NDF Clearing – GlobalCapital (subscription)
The European Securities and Markets Authority has scrapped clearing of non-deliverable forwards for the time being. This is bad news for LCH.Clearnet, which is the only European clearinghouse authorised to clear NDFs, but good news for other central counterparties who are still waiting to be recognised as equivalent to their European counterparts – a problem that has superceded all others in NDF discussions.

 

 

Company News

Thomson Reuters Review Finds Latency Floors’ Impact Less than Expected – Profit & Loss
Thomson Reuters says that latency floors appear to have less of an impact on trading behaviour than is widely believed and, as a result, may re-evaluate how its own will be deployed.

Why Did KCG Sell One of its ‘Crown Jewels’? – Financial News (subscription)
US stock market operator Bats Global Markets made a strategic foray into new asset classes through its acquisition of KCG Holding’s FX platform Hotspot last week, but the bigger question is why did KCG choose to sell one of its most glittering assets?

SIX to Launch Derivatives Trade Repository – FOW (subscription)
SIX said the new service will allow Swiss clients to meet reporting requirements under the Swiss Market Infrastructure Act (FMIA).

Alpari Faces Break-Up as KPMG Fails to Find Buyers – Financial Times (subscription)
The administrators of Alpari’s UK business have begun the break-up of the retail foreign exchange broker after giving up on attempts to sell the business as a whole.

 

 

Market Savvy  

Lubricating Growth
Societe Generale
Weak and falling oil prices inject much-needed fiscal stimulus to the global economy. By oiling the wheels of global and US growth, cheap energy costs should keep the Fed on track to hike by the summer. With the ECB QE issue resolved for now and additional BoJ easing still beyond the horizon, the timing of the Fed’s first hike is coming more into market focus. A bringing forward of market expectations on Fed tightening would spark another leg of the dollar rally. Commodity currencies should fare the worst in a weak commodity pricing environment.

 

 

Press Releases

BGC Provides Electronic Trading Platform for The INR NDF Market
BGC Partners says it launched BGC Trader for the Indian rupee non-deliverable forward market in November 2014. Since its launch BGC has seen strong interest in INR NDF trading across its SEF and off-SEF platforms.

 

 

Industry Events