Unique insights regarding how the FX market today is developing.

This episode begins with Michael Angjeli, Treasury Manager, FX, at Wise, discussing how the goals and objectives of FX trading and risk management within treasury organisations shape and dictate execution decisions in the marketplace. He then explains how Wise has adapted its hedging strategies in response to market volatility, adopting a more dynamic approach to adjusting hedge ratios, particularly for emerging market currencies. Angjeli also highlights the proactive steps Wise has taken to leverage technology and robust analytics to achieve cost reductions, efficiency gains, consistent pricing, and minimised operational risk in FX trading.

In this episode of the 360T podcast, Allan Guild, Director at Hilltop Walk Consulting, shares insights from his role chairing the recent TradeTech FX USA conference. These include how rising geopolitical uncertainty has heightened the focus on FX as an asset class, the ever-changing liquidity landscape and the growing importance of data-driven decision-making on the buy side. Guild also discusses the increasing role of automation and the evolution of FX algo trading, the challenges of integrating new technology into existing infrastructures, and the competitive pressures driving buy-side firms to accept change.

Once again, Colin Lambert, Co-Founder of The Full FX, joins the podcast to make a series of predictions for the year ahead. But first we review and, for the first time ever, score his predictions from 2024 – has Lambert been looking into a crystal ball or a snow globe? Looking ahead to 2025, Lambert predicts that volatility will drive trading volumes up significantly across the industry, that regulators in the UK and Europe will get serious about enforcing rules for trading platforms and that the latest wave of non-bank market makers to enter the FX will find it a challenging marketplace. He also makes the case that FX options trading activity will continue shifting towards electronic trading platforms, sees currency CTAs heading for a banner year and suspects that debates around pre-hedging will rumble on with no real conclusion in sight. And, of course, Lambert picks out his infamous Trade of the Year!

Our 50th episode features Mark Mulholland from Fidelity International discussing his recent deep-dive analysis on FX trade rejections, and their impact on execution quality and outcomes. Despite the topic of last look grabbing industry headlines in recent years, Mulholland explains that other often overlooked issues — such as static data — proved to be a bigger driver of reject rates for his firm and highlights the challenges posed by a lack of data standarisation across the FX industry. He also outlines how his analysis has helped Fidelity International realise a significant drop in the number of FX trade reject rates and points to an opportunity for sell-side firms to provide better pricing to clients and, ultimately, improve market efficiency.

Marc Chandler, Chief Market Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex, breaks down some of the key themes and trends currently impacting the FX market. He discusses the fallout of the recent unwinding of the yen carry trade on corporations, explains why currency markets don’t always follow a pattern of cause-and-effect and argues that the US dollar will remain at the centre of financial markets – but not necessarily for the reasons that many people assume. Chandler also looks ahead to a potential rate cut by the US Federal Reserve Bank and a divisive presidential election, making the case that the dollar is set for a cyclical downturn.

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 FX market, a good year for discretionary trading, cryptocurrency adoptions and more! And although Lambert concedes he is in danger of becoming a reverse indicator with his infamous Trade of the Year, he nevertheless makes his pick for 2024.

This episode features two experts, Tobias Rank from Eurex and David Holcombe 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 potential shortcomings of OTC FX clearing.

Additional resources about EFPs:

FX EFPs – the best of two worlds
FX EFP tutorial – mechanics and use cases

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 about how a currency strategy which leverages three factors — Carry, Value and Trend — can offer low (or even negative) correlation to traditional assets, providing a boost to multi-asset portfolios while generating little or no additional risk.