Commercial And Investment Banks
The Main Players In Forex (the big trader)
There are hundreds of banks participating in the Forex network. Whether big or small scale, banks participate in the currency markets not only to offset their own foreign exchange risks and that of their clients, but also to increase wealth of their stock holders. Each bank, although differently organized, has a dealing desk responsible for order execution, market making and risk management. The role of the foreign exchange dealing desk can also be to make profits trading currency directly through hedging, arbitrage or a different array of strategies.
Accounting for the majority of the transacted volume, there are around 25 major banks such as Deutsche bank, UBS, and others such as Royal bank of Scotland, HSBC, Barclays, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, and still others such as ABN Amro, Morgan Stanley, and so on, which are actively trading in the Forex market.
Among these major banks, huge amounts of funds are being traded in an instant. While it is standard to trade in 5 to10 million Dollar parcels, quite often 100 to 500 million Dollar parcels get quoted. Deals are transacted by telephone with brokers or via an electronic dealing terminal connection to their counter party.
Many times banks also position themselves in the currency markets guided by a particularly view of the market prices. What probably distinguishes them from the non-banking participants is their unique access to the buying and selling interests of their clients. This "insider" information can provide them with insight to the likely buying and selling pressures on the exchange rates at any given time. But while this is an advantage, it is only of relative value: no single bank is bigger than the market - not even the major global brand name banks can claim to be able to dominate the market. In fact, like all other players, banks are vulnerable to market moves and they are also subject to market volatility.
Similar to your margin account with a broker, the banks have established debtor-creditor agreements between themselves, which make the buying and selling of currencies possible. To offset the risks of holding currency positions taken as a result of customer transactions, the banks enter into reciprocal agreements to quote each other throughout the day on preset amounts.
Direct dealing agreements can include that a certain maximum spread will be upheld, except under extreme conditions, for example. It can further include that the rate would be supplied in a reasonable amount of time.
For instance, when a costumer wants to sell 100 million Euro, the procedure is as follows: the bank's sales desk receives the costumer's call and inquires the dealing desk at which exchange rate they are able to sell to the costumer. The costumer can now accept or deny the offered rate.
As a market maker, the bank has to handle the order in the interbank market and assume the risk for that position as long as there is no counterpart for that order.
Let's assume that the customer accepts the bank's buy price then the Dollars are immediately credited to the customer. The bank has now an open short position over 100 million Euro and has to find either another costumer order to match with this order, or a counter party in the interbank market. To do such transactions, most banks are nourished by electronic currency networks in order to offer the most reliable price for each transaction.
The interbank market can therefore be understood in terms of a network, consisting of banks and financial institutions which, connected through their dealing desks, negotiate exchange rates. These rates are not just indicative, they are the actual dealing prices. To understand the uniformity of prices, we have to imagine prices being instantaneously collected from crossed prices of hundreds of institutions across an aggregated network. page 1 , central bank
The Main Players In Forex (the big trader)There are hundreds of banks participating in the Forex network. Whether big or small scale, banks participate in the currency markets not only to offset their own foreign exchange risks and that of their clients, but also to increase wealth of their stock holders. Each bank, although differently organized, has a dealing desk responsible for order execution, market making and risk management. The role of the foreign exchange dealing desk can also be to make profits trading currency directly through hedging, arbitrage or a different array of strategies.
Accounting for the majority of the transacted volume, there are around 25 major banks such as Deutsche bank, UBS, and others such as Royal bank of Scotland, HSBC, Barclays, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, and still others such as ABN Amro, Morgan Stanley, and so on, which are actively trading in the Forex market.
Among these major banks, huge amounts of funds are being traded in an instant. While it is standard to trade in 5 to10 million Dollar parcels, quite often 100 to 500 million Dollar parcels get quoted. Deals are transacted by telephone with brokers or via an electronic dealing terminal connection to their counter party.
Many times banks also position themselves in the currency markets guided by a particularly view of the market prices. What probably distinguishes them from the non-banking participants is their unique access to the buying and selling interests of their clients. This "insider" information can provide them with insight to the likely buying and selling pressures on the exchange rates at any given time. But while this is an advantage, it is only of relative value: no single bank is bigger than the market - not even the major global brand name banks can claim to be able to dominate the market. In fact, like all other players, banks are vulnerable to market moves and they are also subject to market volatility.
Similar to your margin account with a broker, the banks have established debtor-creditor agreements between themselves, which make the buying and selling of currencies possible. To offset the risks of holding currency positions taken as a result of customer transactions, the banks enter into reciprocal agreements to quote each other throughout the day on preset amounts.
Direct dealing agreements can include that a certain maximum spread will be upheld, except under extreme conditions, for example. It can further include that the rate would be supplied in a reasonable amount of time.
For instance, when a costumer wants to sell 100 million Euro, the procedure is as follows: the bank's sales desk receives the costumer's call and inquires the dealing desk at which exchange rate they are able to sell to the costumer. The costumer can now accept or deny the offered rate.
As a market maker, the bank has to handle the order in the interbank market and assume the risk for that position as long as there is no counterpart for that order.
Let's assume that the customer accepts the bank's buy price then the Dollars are immediately credited to the customer. The bank has now an open short position over 100 million Euro and has to find either another costumer order to match with this order, or a counter party in the interbank market. To do such transactions, most banks are nourished by electronic currency networks in order to offer the most reliable price for each transaction.
The interbank market can therefore be understood in terms of a network, consisting of banks and financial institutions which, connected through their dealing desks, negotiate exchange rates. These rates are not just indicative, they are the actual dealing prices. To understand the uniformity of prices, we have to imagine prices being instantaneously collected from crossed prices of hundreds of institutions across an aggregated network. page 1 , central bank