Is forex market controlled by someone? - page 45
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Fed "Accidentally" Released Dovish Confidential Market-Moving Forecasts, Blames "Glitch"
Accidentally my ...
Nothing To See Here: German Regulator Decides Deutsche Bank CEO Didn't Know About LIBOR After All
A little over a week ago in "Deutsche Bank Stunner: An Inside Look At Former CEO’s Role In Liborgate," we presented lengthy passages from a report sent to the bank by BaFin, Germany's financial "watchdog".
The document contains voluminous evidence which suggests that not only did Anshu Jain (who stepped down last month), know full well that his traders and submitters were likely involved in manipulating LIBOR fixes, but it was in fact Jain who "reorganized the seating order in the trading division in London in the year 2005, which resulted in traders and submitters sitting together, to achieve an open communication between both functions, especially also with regard to the LIBOR."
The report goes on to describe the relationship between Jain and Christian Bittar, the bank’s rate rigger par excellence, who the former CEO described as one of "the best people we’ve got."
As bad as all of this is, the particularly egregious - according to BaFin anyway - part of the review revolves around statements Jain made to The Bundesbank. In short, BaFin suggested that Jain may have lied about when he first discovered that LIBOR was being manipulated. In fact, according to what Jain told the central bank, Zero Hedge knew about LIBOR rigging two years before he did even though he himself made the seating chart which placed traders next to submitters!
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Oh yeah ... the poor CEO was getting payed 50 million Euros a tear for not knowing about the rigging ... they should pay me too then
Currency market is an OTC market and there is no centralized regulatory body to manage the transactions like stock exchanges in stock markets. To a certain extent, It is controlled by big players like banks but that doesn’t last long. The colossal size of the market with trade of about US $5 trillion every day makes it a great place to invest and it is difficult to corner the forex market even for big players. Currency is controlled by central bank of respective countries but there is no overall regulatory body as such.
You don't need to control the whole market - as they have proven, it was enough to control the LIBOR. And with access to level 2 data (easy when you have a real ECN access - what do you think why some brokers bought HFT companies in the last year or two) false orders can cause a price change of any symbol - if controlled by HFTs
That is what the majority do not understand. It is the same as with currency. Controlling rates and information controls the currency. No need to control forex at all
In Latest Market-Rigging Scandal, ITG Busted For Frontrunning Clients In Its Dark Pool
Last year, first in the aftermath of NYAG's lawsuit against Barclays followed promptly by Michael Lewis' "Flash Boys" (which over a year later is still a better seller than "GS Elevator's" attempt to be this generation's Tucker Max) exposing High Frequency Trading for being nothing more than a sophisticated gimmick enabling market rigging and bulk order frontrunning while pretending to "provide liquidity", the revulsion against HFTs hit a fever pitch that forced Virtu to postpone its IPO.
Several months later, because the market kept going higher, people quickly forgot why they were angry at a bunch of vacuum tubes, and Virtu not only re-IPOed (adding another year without a single trading day loss to its roster) but it was taken public by that "humanitarian" protagonist of Flash Boys, Goldman Sachs itself (which was so aghast at the scourge that is HFT it almost, almost, ended its own dark pool and HFT ambitions... before it decided to double down on HFT).
However, since the market is once again on the verge of a terminal liquidity seizure with its associated side-effects (see China for details), the authorities needed to remind the "market" just who the scapegoat will be when the next crash finally does come. Which is why earlier today in an unexpected "preliminary second quarter guidance" release, ITG, owner of the Posit dark pool, was just busted with a $22.6 million potential SEC settlement for what appears to have been blatant frontrunning of company clients in its own prop trading pod.
From the release:
This would not be the first time a dark pool was busted for admitting it abused fragmented markets to frontrun clients. As Bloomberg reminds us, last year, the agency fined Liquidnet Holdings Inc. $2 million for not living up to client secrecy standards. In 2011, Pipeline Trading Systems LLC agreed to pay $1 million, in part because it had a proprietary trading unit that was secretly trading against client orders. Then there was of course NY AG Schneiderman's lawsuit against Barclays alleging the UK bank which has been busted for manipulating pretty much everything under the sun at least once falsely claimed that it closely monitored and shut off certain types of traders.
Still, the $22 million proposed settlement would be a record for a private Wall Street trading platform, surpassing the $14.4 million that UBS Group AG agreed to pay in January. More importantly, as Bloomberg also observes, the latest lawsuit "shows the steps authorities are taking against alternative trading systems such as dark pools."
In other words, everyone now knows HFTs are fair game for rigging and manipulation, and with the banks having already been bled dry by over a quarter trillion in litigation charges, it is now the HFTs' turn to pay their kickbacks to the government for allowing them to frontrun sheep for 7 years since the advent of Reg NMS.
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Head Trader Of World's 4th Largest Hedge Fund Caught In HFT Frontrunning Scandal
Head Trader Of World's 4th Largest Hedge Fund Caught In HFT Frontrunning Scandal
Why am I not surprised?
Spectre Of FX Scandal Returns To Haunt HSBC
The spectre of the foreign exchange-rigging scandal will return to haunt HSBC on Monday when it sets aside hundreds of millions of pounds more to cover future settlements with regulators.
Sky News has learnt that Europe’s largest bank will disclose in its interim results that it is adding a substantial sum to the $550m (£352m) provision it has already allocated to resolve a number of investigations on both sides of the Atlantic.
Insiders said on Sunday that HSBC would announce an overall charge of well over $1bn (£640m) to cover conduct issues including the FX probes, but said that it would not provide a breakdown of the numbers.
The latest provisions will come nearly nine months after HSBC was among six banks to pay fines to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the US’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over the FX scandal.
HSBC’s bill last November came to more than £390m, but investigations by the Department of Justice and European authorities are continuing, and are expected to result in further hefty fines.
Stuart Gulliver, the bank’s chief executive, is likely to face questions on Monday about the potential timing and scale of further settlements on FX-rigging, as well as the progress of an FCA probe into allegations that HSBC’s Swiss private bank helped wealthy clients to illegally avoid taxes.
In HSBC’s annual report this year, Mr Gulliver said it had been “badly let down by a few individuals whose actions do not reflect the vast majority of employees who uphold the values and standards expected of the bank”, adding that the issue was “rightly in the hands of the Serious Fraud Office”.
The continuing cost of past misconduct has weighed on the half-year results of other major UK banks, including Lloyds Banking Group, which last week added £1.4bn to its bill for mis-selling payment protection insurance.
Earlier this month, George Osborne effectively sacked the FCA’s chief executive, Martin Wheatley, saying that he wanted a “new settlement” for the UK banking industry.
However, many City observers are sceptical about regulators adopting a more relaxed stance towards the biggest banks while legacy charges for mis-selling and rate-rigging continue to filter through.
For Mr Gulliver, the half-year results will provide an early opportunity to demonstrate that HSBC is delivering on the pledges he made at a strategy update last month.
It may confirm the sale of its Brazilian operations to Bradesco for a price in the region of $4bn (£2.6bn), part of a move expected to pave the way for a reduction in its workforce by 50,000 within three years.
Analysts expect HSBC to report a 1% increase in pre-tax profits to $12.5bn (£8bn), while revenues are forecast to rise modestly to $31.3bn (£20bn).
People close to HSBC said it was unlikely to provide a material update on the review of its headquarters, which could lead to it quitting the UK after nearly a quarter of a century.
Last week, Sky News revealed that the bank was facing a dilemma about a potential move to Hong Kong, because of the implications for its membership of the FTSE-100 share index.
Under FTSE Group rules, companies which are listed on an overseas stock market in the same country as they are domiciled are not eligible for inclusion in its equity indices.
HSBC said in April that it would undertake the domicile review amid growing concern about the impact of tax and regulatory changes on its operations.
George Osborne announced in his Budget this month that the Bank Levy, which has hit HSBC punitively since it was introduced four years ago, would be restructured.
While HSBC's bill from the Levy will reduce over time, the impact on its overall tax burden remains unclear because of a new Corporation Tax surcharge that the Chancellor has also decided to implement.
A spokesman for the bank declined to comment on Sunday.
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