In this episode Nathan Vurgest, Director of Trading at Record Financial Group, talks in-depth about how data is changing and shaping FX trading desks. He outlines the challenges facing buy-side firms as they try to access and make sense of all the trade data which they generate internally, explains how traders are evolving to provide more value beyond just FX execution and highlights that this broadening role introduces new complexities around effectively measuring best execution.

As is something of a tradition on the 360T podcast now, Colin Lambert, Co-Founder of The Full FX, joins as a guest to review the accuracy of his 2023 predictions and make a series of new ones for the year ahead. Lambert receives some gentle criticism for making "obvious" predictions last year, which perhaps prompted him to be more daring this year as his 2024 predictions encompass cybersecurity threats, why the shift to T+1 settlement might only be the tip of the iceberg, flash crashes in the...

This episode features two experts, Tobias Rank from Eurex and David Holcome from 360T, taking a deep dive into why more FX market participants are turning towards Exchange for Physical (EFP) products, and how the listed FX marketplace is likely to evolve in the future. The pair also tackle questions about how regulations are changing the economics of OTC trading, whether there is really a demand to support more listed FX trading and the shortcomings of OTC FX clearing. Additional resources...

FX is a highly liquid market, with many different currencies to trade that are constantly moving against one another, so why don’t investors typically think about this asset class when building out their portfolios? In this episode Van Luu, Global Head of Solutions Strategy, Fixed Income and FX at Russell Investments, addresses this question and explains the important role that currency strategies can play in helping investors to diversify a multi-asset portfolio. In particular, he talks...

The FX Global Code of Conduct has been a major and ongoing industry initiative since 2015, but it's been well documented that buy-side adoption of the Code has lagged behind other segments of the marketplace.  In this episode Dagmara Fijalkowski, head of global fixed income and currencies at RBC GAM, talks about why buy-side adoption of the Code has been slow thus far, what possible steps could be taken to accelerate it and how the Code has brought tangible benefits to both RBC GAM...

While the consequences of geopolitical events are felt in the currency markets first, in the long-term it is fundamentals that continue to drive this asset class, says Adrian Lee, the President and CIO of Adrian Lee & Partners, in this episode. He discusses emerging trends across both, as well as identifying the fault lines in the global economy where we might see the next big risk factors emerge from. Lee also discusses how and why investor attitudes towards currency management are...

How is artificial intelligence (AI) likely to change the way that financial products, including FX, are traded? This is the key question addressed by Saeed Amen, co-founder of Turnleaf Analytics, in the wake of the recent hype around this technology sparked by new tools such as ChatGTP. Amen outlines some of his own experiments with AI chatbots, discusses the importance of having access to high quality data in order to train AI models and helps to parse through some of the terminology and...

Colin Lambert, Co-Founder of the Full FX, joins 360T to review his 2022 predictions and is surprised to find that while he achieved mixed scores on the forecasts he claimed were “certain” to happen, his “wildcard” ones fared much better. Perhaps this is a sign of what an unpredictable year it was? Looking ahead, Lambert picks out the key themes which he thinks will define the FX industry in 2023 and once again makes a series of predictions for the year ahead. And finally, completely undaunted...

In our latest podcast episode Ivan Asensio from Silicon Valley Bank discusses two recent papers, which he co-authored looking at the impact of FX on firms looking to raise equity and those preparing for an IPO. The results of both, he argues, help to make the case that FX should be viewed as a strategic rather than operational concern within organisations. Asensio also talks about how the marketplace has shifted to “a new paradigm” where controlling costs has replaced growth as the primary...

We are in a period of economic uncertainty with rising inflation, divergent central bank policies, supply chain constraints and geopolitical turmoil fueled by a land war in Europe. Against this backdrop how should investors be positioning themselves and what should we expect in the currency markets? These are amongst the questions that Pedro Jobim from Brazilian hedge fund Legacy Capital addresses in our latest episode. Jobim also provides his economic outlook for Brazil ahead of what is...

The Investment Association (IA), which represents UK-based investment firms managing £9.4 trillion of assets globally, recently published a briefing paper calling for reform on FX sub-custodian timestamping. In this episode Hugo Gordon from the IA explains why this issue, which might initially seem to be something of a niche concern, can have significant ramifications for investment managers and outlines steps which can be taken by both buy-side and sell-side firms to help resolve...

In this episode Eoin Fahy from KBI Global Investors provides a buy-side perspective on ESG investing, arguing that applying these principles to investment decisions actually helps rather than hinders the overall performance of portfolios. He also explains how the considerations around ESG investing have grown substantially more sophisticated in recent years as its popularity has exploded and ponders how these principles will ultimately be applied to the FX market.

ESG: What Isn’t Being Talked About ESG has, to put it mildly, been a hot topic within financial services in recent years, but in our latest podcast episode Duncan Higgins from Sustainable Trading argues that while much of the focus has been on products or processes that are ESG-friendly there are myriad of ways that operational processes could also be improved on this front. He goes on to talk about the need to define ESG best practices for the industry, why change needs to be driven from...

Joining the podcast once again Colin Lambert ruminates on some of the most surprising developments in the FX industry during 2021 and picks out what he believes to be the most consequential news story of the past year. Looking ahead, he argues that the FX Swaps will continue to propel the overall marketplace towards growth in the upcoming BIS survey and makes a series of predictions — including some wildcards — about what to expect in 2022. 

FX automation has been a key theme amongst buy-side firms recently and, as Christian Schoeppe from SchoeppeFX International Consulting explains in our latest podcast, this trend has only been accelerated by the pandemic. He also outlines the existing barriers preventing these firms from automating more of their FX workflows and trading activity, talks about how these barriers can be overcome and provides practical guidelines on how to quantify the benefits of this technology. 

Whereas Episode 31 of our podcast series focused largely on the evolution of FX algo designs, here John Quayle from NatWest Markets discusses the evolution of how buy-side firms (and indeed which buy-side firms) are using these products to improve their FX execution capabilities.  He discusses using algos to trade emerging market (EM) currencies, why corporate treasurers might be thinking about these products differently from real money or hedge fund clients, how to effectively benchmark the...

What are the key factors likely to move currency markets between now and the end of the year and, perhaps more importantly, what risks aren’t currently being priced into the market? These are amongst the questions addressed by Axel Merk from Merk Investments in our latest episode. Merk also discusses the FX liquidity trends, how diverging interest rates could help certain trading strategies and what recent events in China mean for global financial markets. 

In this episode Asif Razaq from BNP Paribas talks about why the pandemic has driven an uptick in the number of firms using execution algos for their FX trades and traces the evolution of these tools from basic, rules-based strategies to sophisticated and interactive ones which effectively enable human traders to augment their own skills. Razaq also delivers his view on what will come next in the FX algo space, arguing that we are likely to begin seeing these tools deployed across a broader...

Stuart Simmons, Director and Head of Currency at QIC, argues in the latest episode that not only is the London 4pm Fix not a good time to trade FX on behalf of investors, but that in fact it might be the very worst time to do so.  Expanding on this, he claims that order flow imbalance lead to herd behaviour amongst investment managers trading at the Fix that in turn causes market impact which negatively impacts execution outcomes. On top of this, Simmons makes the case that the interests of...

In March 2021 Millennium Global Investments published a report analysing whether emerging market (EM) currencies were priced as cheap or expensive relative to the global environment. The authors of that report, Claire Dissaux and Elisa Baku — who respectively hold the titles of Global Head of Economics and Strategy and Economist at the currency management specialist — both join the podcast to discuss its findings, and what they mean for investors. They also talk about why currency performance...

With the Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) due to start impacting a number of buy-side firms starting this September, Van Luu, Global head of Currency at Russell Investments, discusses the preparations that his firm has been making to ensure compliance, both on their own behalf and on behalf of their clients. He then goes on to analyse how investors should be thinking about currency hedging in the Covid era, analysing the various pros and cons associated with different approaches to hedging FX...

New regulatory requirements have been a huge driver of change within financial markets over the past decade, and FX has certainly not been exempt from this trend. Even now, Allan Guild, the director of Hilltop Walk Consulting, sees the direction of...

The over-arching theme of this episode is the “tech-celeration” that has occurred in the FX industry over the past year as firms have been forced to adapt to new ways of operating. Paul Matherne, Head of FX EMEA at BNY Mellon, sees evidence of this...

The discussion opens with Colin Lambert, the co-founder of the The Full FX news website, joking that he has been predicting structural changes within the FX Swaps space for a long time but that the scene might finally be set for these to actually...