Something to read

Sector Rotation

Unsurprisingly, the business cycle influences the rotation of stock market sectors and industry groups. Certain sectors perform better than others during specific phases of the business cycle. Knowing the stage of the business cycle can help investors position themselves in the right sectors and avoid the wrong sectors.

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The graph above shows the economic cycle in green, the stock market cycle in red and the best performing sectors at the top. The green economic cycle corresponds to the business cycle shown above. The centerline marks the contraction/expansion threshold for the economy. Notice how the red market cycle leads the business cycle. The market turns up and crosses the centerline before the economic cycle turns. Similarly, the market turns down and crosses below the centerline ahead of the economic cycle.

Cyclicals, which is the same as the consumer discretionary sector, are the first to turn up in anticipation of a bottom in the economy. Technology stocks are not far behind. These two groups are the big leaders at the beginning of a bull run in the stock market.

The top of the market cycle is marked by relative strength in materials and energy. These sectors benefit from a rise in commodity prices and a rise in demand from an expanding economy. The tipping point for the market comes when leadership shifts from energy to consumer staples. This is a sign that commodity prices are starting to hurt the economy.

The market peak and downturn are followed by a contraction in the economy. At this stage, the Fed starts to lower interest rates and the yield curve steepens. Falling interest rates benefit debt-laden utilities and business at banks. The steepening yield curve also improves profitability at banks and encourages lending. Low interest rates and easy money eventually lead to a market bottom and the cycle repeats itself.

The two sector PerfCharts below show relative performance for the nine sector SPDRs near the 2007 peak and after the 2003 bottom. The S&P 500 peaked from July to October 2007 and broke down in the fourth quarter of that year. In the summer of 2007, the energy and materials sectors were leading the market and showing relative strength. Also notice at the consumer discretionary was lagging the S&P 500. This section action matches what is expected at a market top.

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The S&P 500 bottomed in March 2003 and began a powerful bull run that lasted until the peak in the summer of 2007. The consumer discretionary and technology sectors led the first move off the March 2003 low. These two showed relative strength that affirmed the importance of the 2003 bottom.

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Conclusion

Intermarket Analysis is a valuable tool for long-term or medium-term analysis. While these intermarket relationships generally work over longer periods of time, they are subject to draw-downs or periods when the relationships do not work. Big events such as the Euro crisis or the US Financial crisis can throw certain relationships out of whack for a few months. Furthermore, the tools shown in this article should be used in conjunction with other technical analysis techniques. The XLY/XLP ratio chart and the Industrial Metals/Bond Ratio chart could be part of a basket of broad market indicators designed to assess the overall strength or weakness of the stock market. One indicator or one relationship should not be used on its own to make a sweeping assessment of market conditions.

Intermarket Analysis article & illustrations courtesy of Stockcharts.com

Intermarket-Trading-Strategies

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Intermarket Trading Strategies explains how markets interact and influence each other and how intermarket analysis can be used to forecast future equity and index price movements by introducing custom indicators and intermarket trading systems.

Single market technical analysis indicators were designed in the 80s for national markets, and are no longer sufficient for analyzing the global market dynamics. This book reveals how you can combine intermarket with classic technical techniques to develop profitable hybrid systems or improve on existing ones.

Divided into two parts, part one begins with a discussion of the basic principles of Intermarket analysis and the benefits of portfolio diversification by including uncorrelated assets such as commodities and foreign currencies. It goes on to explain the concept of correlation and the basic assumptions used before demonstrating the linear regression method used for predicting one security based on its correlation with related markets. A variety of custom intermarket indicators are presented and explanations are given as to how each one can be used within the framework of a trading system, including eight new custom Intermarket indicators published for the first time in this book.

Part two uses the concepts presented in part one to develop intermarket trading systems to trade popular markets like US and European stock Index futures, FOREX and Commodities. Techniques for developing a trading system and evaluating the test results are presented along with suggested methods of avoiding curve fitting and the illusion of excellence created by optimization. Stop-loss and other money management techniques are also discussed. Finally a brief introduction to neural network systems explains the basic principles of this alternative approach for designing trading systems.

A total of twenty nine conventional and five neural network trading systems, appropriate for long and short term and even day trading, are provided to trade Gold, the S&P ETF (SPY), S&P e-mini futures, DAX and FTSE futures, Gold and Oil stocks, Commodities, Sector and International ETF, the Yen and the Euro. Finally a dynamic asset allocation timing strategy which would systematically keep the portfolio moving into the strongest asset classes or sectors, enhancing the return characteristics while decreasing the overall volatility, is also included. The metastock code for all systems is provided in order to test and paper trade the system on more recent data before you move from the computer to the trading desk.

Bollinger Bands By John A.Bollinger

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Over the past two decades, thousands of veteran traders have come to view Bollinger Bands as the most representative**and reliable**tool for assessing expected price action. Now, in the long-anticipated Bollinger on Bollinger Bands, John Bollinger himself explains how to use this extraordinary technique to effectively compare price and indicator movements.

Traders can look to this techniques-oriented book for hundreds of valuable insights, including:

- Analysis of the primary indicators derived from Bollinger Bands**%b and BandWidth
- How traders can use Bollinger Bands to work with**instead of against**commonly encountered trading patterns
- Strategic use of Bollinger Bands in short-, mid-, and long-term trading programs
- Three trading systems based on Bollinger Bands

By understanding how to incorporate Bollinger's techniques into their own investment strategy, investors will greatly increase their ability to ignore often-costly emotions and arrive at rational decisions supported by both the facts and the underlying market environment. Bollinger on Bollinger Bands provides:

The first authoritative examination of this revolutionary technical analysis tool
Three simple systems for implementing Bollinger Bands
Innovative methods for clarifying patterns**and analyzing time frames and moving averages

The key to effective investment analysis is to**as much as possible**eliminate emotion and approach each trade on its technical and fundamental merits alone. Since their introduction, few analytical techniques have helped investors do this better or more consistently than Bollinger Bands. Bollinger on Bollinger Bands provides tips, guidelines, and rules for incorporating the bands into virtually any investment strategy. It is a watershed book, written by the only man truly qualified to claim a comprehensive knowledge of the topic**John Bollinger himself.

Creating an Expert Advisor, which Trades on a Number of Instruments

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The technical side of implementing the program code in order for a single Expert Advisor, launched on a single chart, to be able to trade with different financial assets at the same time. In general, this was not a problems even in MQL4. But only with the advent of the MetaTrader 5 client terminal, traders finally got the opportunity to perform a full analysis of the work of such automates, using strategy testers.

So now multi-currency automates will become more popular than ever, and we can forecast a surge of interest in the construction of such trading systems. But the main problem of implementation of such robots is in the fact that their dimensions in the program code expand, at best, in an arithmetic progression, and this is not easy to embrace for a typical programmer.

In this article we will write a simple multi-currency Expert Advisor, in which the structure flaws are, if not absent, then at least minimized.

For many people, forex trading is a new way of making money. Some think that it is too hard to make money there. Others think that it is a full scam. There is also a group of people who think that trading is a peace of cake so they put their hard earned money on a trade and lose everything.

Actually, successful trading is a completely different kind of a process. It is not hard to make money by trading. Moreover, it is not a scam. Novice traders should understand that no one in the entire world don’t know what will happen next on the financial markets. Thereby, it is wrong to put all the money on a single trade. The result of this action would be the same as betting on Red or Black on the roulette wheel.

Look at trading as a process very similar to investing. The potential profits that could be made by trading and investing are pretty much the same. They are measured in percentage of the initial capital that a trader is capable to make during a year. Traders are short-term investors. The main difference lies in the increased number of trades that short-term traders open in relation to investors.

Trading is hard to call a business. It is more like investing. The amount of efforts put into trading won’t make a trader richer. What is more important is the amount of money a trader can put into trade to make more money. It is all about profits in percentages. Average traders can double the trading account once in a year. Rarely someone manages to make more than that. Thereby, if a trader has 10.000$ in the initial capital then his goal would be to make another 10.000$. Moreover, he should not even think of making 100.000$. It would only be possible if trading is done with inappropriate money management and a very high risk of losing everything. For example, a trader can make 100.000$ with risk 1:10 to lose all of his 10.000$. However, by trading the right way, without a risk of being burned, it is impossible to make 1000% during a year.

Of course, a trading strategy is also important. If a backtest of a strategy shows less than 100% in a year then it is necessary to keep looking for a better trading system. In fact, there are a plenty of different edges to choose from. Each strategy has its pros and cons and traders should choose which of them to use in their trading. It is very similar to choosing individual stocks into investors’ portfolio. Once a strategy is chosen, it is very important to follow it without any changes to it for a substantial amount of time. That is where trading becomes a boring process but eventually it brings very good profits.

Most excitements traders should feel while researching the market and not while trading it. Trading is just executing signals that have a positive chance of winning. The accuracy of these signals’ execution together with a proper money management is the key for successful trading.

Traders should avoid emotions while trading and keep trading even when strategy shows drawdowns. It is very important to stick to the chosen strategies. Every strategy has its good days and bad days. If a trader decides to change the strategy in a middle of a drawdown then most likely his new strategy won’t work while the old one could get out of scrapes.

To make money by trading forex it is essential to have a plan. First of all, traders should realize how much they can make and what drawdowns could happen to them while they trade. It is necessary to understand before beginning to trade on the forex market so that to avoid stressful situations together with complete frustration. Secondly, it is necessary to choose strategies. It can be just one or several strategies. In a case with multiple strategies, all of them should be traded separately in order to not get tangled with them. Finally, traders should have proper money management. Every trade can easily be lost. Thereby, traders should put 1% or even less of their trading capital into each trade. Higher risks are unacceptable and should be avoided.

In the end, forex trading isn’t that complicated. It is people who complicate it more than it really is. Actually, simple trading strategies perform very well and often even better than complex ones.

There is no need to be a trading guru to make money on forex. Trading is just following the rules that worked in past. That is why, everyone can benefit from trading forex. However, it is not a getting rich quick scheme.

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Charles Henry Dow & Edward Jones

The history of the index began in the XIX century. It was implemented in 1896. At that time there were only few instruments for analysis and description of the processes that took place at the stock market. Therefore, a question concerning the elaboration of these instruments became more and more urgent.

The evaluation method of market trends proposed by Dow and Jones became the real innovation and significantly simplified the life of most businessmen. Firstly, index took into account 11 large US companies (9 of them were railroad companies). It was calculated as simple average of their stocks value. Despite the fact that more than 100 years have passed and accounting method has undergone significant changes, the Dow Jones index remains an important benchmark for global investors even now. Today it includes over 30 leading American companies.

Charles Dow (1851 –1902) and Edward Jones (1856–1920) were friends and companions. Both of them were gifted as journalists and businessmen. Together they worked in the sphere of financial news. In 1882 Dow and Jones started their own business in New York. Their office was located in the basement of the confectioner’s shop where they began publishing the small financial news bulletin under the title Customer’s Afternoon Letter. This bulletin became popular very soon; the number of printed copies was increasing; investors appreciated the benefits of the given information, though at that time this information could be defined as insider.

In 1889 the partners published the comprehensive edition of The Wall Street Journal created for financial and commercial circles. It was focused on providing the breaking and reliable news. The Wall Street Journal is that very edition which has been publishing the Dow Jones index since 1896. The edition is still considered as confident and today the number of printed copies exceeds 2 million. For a long time the newspaper did not have a real counterpart. The contemporary counterpart of the WSJ is famous Financial Times of London.

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In fact, there are some other Dow Jones indices (transportation index, utility index, composite index, etc.) that characterize the different economic fields. But only the industrial index is considered as the most popular serving as a barometer of the stock market. This index is fundamental for institutional and private investors. And this is quite reasonable, as the 100-year practice confirmed that this function is accomplished properly. The index comprises the mature and reliable companies with 1/5 of the market value of all American stocks.

Dow Jones index was appreciated not only as an impartial indicator of the US stock exchange market, but also as one of the country’s economy in general.


Dow theory


Charles Dow is often considered as the founder of the technical analysis. Jointly with his companion he implemented the famous Dow Jones industrial average, created one of the leading world financial information agencies and began the publishing of the comprehensive financial data. Moreover, he wrote several articles concerning the financial market.

The suggestions described in these publications were later summarized. Today they are known as Dow theory. This theory became fundamental for the modern technical analysis. Though Dow described the processes occurring at the securities market, his theory is applicable to the other financial markets.

Charles Dow paid a lot of attention to the well-known principles as directed character of the price changes, cyclical character of the market processes, the interrelation between the trading volume and exchange rates etc. The theory is based on 6 tenets

1. The market has three types of movements

Dow confirms that trends can be subdivided into primary (long-term) trends, secondary (intermediate) trends and minor (short-term) trends. Each type of trend is in turn an upward or downward. The upward trend means that each high and low is higher than the previous one. In the downward trend each high and low is located lower than the previous one.

The primary trend may last from less than a year to several years. The secondary trend serves as a correction and usually lasts for over 3 months. The minor trend is defined as lasting for less than three weeks reflecting the short-term market fluctuations.

2. Market trend has three phases

Phases of the long-term trend are: an accumulation phase, a public participation phase, and a distribution phase.

During the first phase provident investors with significant capital make trade operations that appear to be against the general opinion of the market. The second phase begins when active and technically oriented traders take part. These traders are intended to follow the market trends. The phase is accompanied by the strengthening of the trend and price changes. Then begins the third phase: the public is fully involved in the market resulting in agiotage. Thanks to the experienced investors begins the new accumulation phase.

3. The stock market averages must confirm each other

According to Dow, the industrial and transportation averages must confirm the current trend and provide signals of its reversal with slight divergence in time.

4. The market discounts everything

Everyone knows the expression “the price accounts everything”. Charles Dow supposed that the market responds very quickly to any information. Any factor that can affect the demand or supply is immediately reflected in dynamics of price and averages.

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5. Trends are confirmed by volume

The increase of the trading volume takes place when the prices are moving within the main trend. Otherwise the price changes do not reflect the real market opinion.

6. Trends exist until definitive signals prove that they have ended

A trend will be changed in any case, but if the signals of price changes are not clear, this fact can be considered as a signal of temporary corrective movement, but not as a sign of a trend reversal.

Thus, it is evident that some part of these assumptions is applicable to the Forex market. The ideas of Charles Dow are relevant even now despite more than 100-years history and the fact that the modern analytical tools emerged.

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Dow Jones Industrial Average (1900 - Present Monthly) - chart courtesy of stockcharts.com


The Dow Jones Industrial Average, also called the Industrial Average, the Dow Jones, the Dow Jones Industrial, the Dow 30, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index, and one of several indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow. It was founded on May 26, 1896, and is now owned by Dow Jones Indexes, which has its majority owned by the CME Group. The average is named after Dow and one of his business associates, statistician Edward Jones. It is an index that shows how 30 large publicly owned companies based in the United States have traded during a standard trading session in the stock market. It is the second oldest U.S. market index after the Dow Jones Transportation Average, which was also created by Dow.

The Industrial portion of the name is largely historical, as many of the modern 30 components have little or nothing to do with traditional heavy industry. The average is price-weighted, and to compensate for the effects of stock splits and other adjustments, it is currently a scaled average. The value of the Dow is not the actual average of the prices of its component stocks, but rather the sum of the component prices divided by a divisor, which changes whenever one of the component stocks has a stock split or stock dividend, so as to generate a consistent value for the index.

Along with the NASDAQ Composite, the S&P 500 Index, and the Russell 2000 Index, the Dow is among the most closely watched U.S. benchmark indices tracking targeted stock market activity. Equivalent indices, such as the FT 30, have largely become redundant in favour of more representative and neutral indicies, such as the S&P 100. Although Dow compiled the index to gauge the performance of the industrial sector within the American economy, the index's performance continues to be influenced by not only corporate and economic reports, but also by domestic and foreign political events such as war and terrorism, as well as by natural disasters that could potentially lead to economic harm. Components of the Dow trade on both the NASDAQ OMX and the NYSE Euronext, two of the largest stock market companies. Derivatives of the Dow trade on the Chicago Board Options Exchange and through the CME Group, the world's largest futures exchange company, which owns 90% of the indexing business founded by Dow Jones, including the Industrial Average.

More

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A futures exchange or futures market is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts; that is, a contract to buy specific quantities of a commodity or financial instrument at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future. These types of contracts fall into the category of derivatives. Such instruments are priced according to the movement of the underlying asset (stock, physical commodity, index, etc.). The aforementioned category is named "derivatives" because the value of these instruments is derived from another asset class.

Definition

Futures markets "provide partial income risk insurance to producers whose output is risky, but very effective insurance to commodity stockholders at remarkably low cost. Speculators absorb some of the risk but hedging appears to drive most commodity markets. The equilibrium futures price can be either below or above the (rationally) expected future price (backwardation or contango). The various effects futures markets can have on market and income stability are discussed. Rollover hedges can extend insurance from short-horizon contracts over longer periods."

History Of Futures Exchange

One of the earliest written records of futures trading is in Aristotle's Politics. He tells the story of Thales, a poor philosopher from Miletus who developed a "financial device, which involves a principle of universal application". Thales used his skill in forecasting and predicted that the olive harvest would be exceptionally good the next autumn. Confident in his prediction, he made agreements with local olive-press owners to deposit his money with them to guarantee him exclusive use of their olive presses when the harvest was ready. Thales successfully negotiated low prices because the harvest was in the future and no one knew whether the harvest would be plentiful or pathetic and because the olive-press owners were willing to hedge against the possibility of a poor yield. When the harvest-time came, and a sharp increase in demand for the use of the olive presses outstripped supply, he sold his future use contracts of the olive presses at a rate of his choosing, and made a large quantity of money. It should be noted, however, that this is a very loose example of futures trading and, in fact, more closely resembles an option contract, given that Thales was not obliged to use the olive presses if the yield was poor.

The first modern organized futures exchange began in 1710 at the Dojima Rice Exchange in Osaka, Japan.

The United States followed in the early 19th century. Chicago has the largest future exchange in the world, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Chicago is located at the base of the Great Lakes, close to the farmlands and cattle country of the Midwest, making it a natural center for transportation, distribution, and trading of agricultural produce. Gluts and shortages of these products caused chaotic fluctuations in price, and this led to the development of a market enabling grain merchants, processors, and agriculture companies to trade in "to arrive" or "cash forward" contracts to insulate them from the risk of adverse price change and enable them to hedge. In March 2008 the Chicago Mercantile Exchange announced its acquisition of NYMEX Holdings, Inc., the parent company of the New York Mercantile Exchange and Commodity Exchange. CME's acquisition of NYMEX was completed in August 2008.

For most exchanges, forward contracts were standard at the time. However, most forward contracts were not honored by both the buyer and the seller. For instance, if the buyer of a corn forward contract made an agreement to buy corn, and at the time of delivery the price of corn differed dramatically from the original contract price, either the buyer or the seller would back out. Additionally, the forward contracts market was very illiquid and an exchange was needed that would bring together a market to find potential buyers and sellers of a commodity instead of making people bear the burden of finding a buyer or seller.

In 1848 the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was formed. Trading was originally in forward contracts; the first contract (on corn) was written on March 13, 1851. In 1865 standardized futures contracts were introduced.

The Chicago Produce Exchange was established in 1874, renamed the Chicago Butter and Egg Board in 1898 and then reorganised into the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) in 1919. Following the end of the postwar international gold standard, in 1972 the CME formed a division called the International Monetary Market (IMM) to offer futures contracts in foreign currencies: British pound, Canadian dollar, German mark, Japanese yen, Mexican peso, and Swiss franc.

In 1881 a regional market was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in 1883 introduced futures for the first time. Trading continuously since then, today the Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGEX) is the only exchange for hard red spring wheat futures and options.

The 1970s saw the development of the financial futures contracts, which allowed trading in the future value of interest rates. These (in particular the 90‑day Eurodollar contract introduced in 1981) had an enormous impact on the development of the interest rate swap market.

Today, the futures markets have far outgrown their agricultural origins. With the addition of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) the trading and hedging of financial products using futures dwarfs the traditional commodity markets, and plays a major role in the global financial system, trading over $1.5 trillion per day in 2005.[citation needed]

The recent history of these exchanges (Aug 2006) finds the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading more than 70% of its Futures contracts on its "Globex" trading platform and this trend is rising daily. It counts for over $45.5 billion of nominal trade (over 1 million contracts) every single day in "electronic trading" as opposed to open outcry trading of futures, options and derivatives.

In June 2001 IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) acquired the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), now ICE Futures, which operated Europe’s leading open-outcry energy futures exchange. Since 2003 ICE has partnered with the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) to host its electronic marketplace. In April 2005 the entire ICE portfolio of energy futures became fully electronic.

In 2006 the New York Stock Exchange teamed up with the Amsterdam-Brussels-Lisbon-Paris Exchanges "Euronext" electronic exchange to form the first transcontinental futures and options exchange. These two developments as well as the sharp growth of internet futures trading platforms developed by a number of trading companies clearly points to a race to total internet trading of futures and options in the coming years.

In terms of trading volume, the National Stock Exchange of India in Mumbai is the largest stock futures trading exchange in the world, followed by JSE Limited in Sandton, Gauteng, South Africa.

Nature Of Contracts

Exchange-traded contracts are standardized by the exchanges where they trade. The contract details what asset is to be bought or sold, and how, when, where and in what quantity it is to be delivered. The terms also specify the currency in which the contract will trade, minimum tick value, and the last trading day and expiry or delivery month. Standardized commodity futures contracts may also contain provisions for adjusting the contracted price based on deviations from the "standard" commodity, for example, a contract might specify delivery of heavier USDA Number 1 oats at par value but permit delivery of Number 2 oats for a certain seller's penalty per bushel.

Before the market opens on the first day of trading a new futures contract, there is a specification but no actual contracts exist. Futures contracts are not issued like other securities, but are "created" whenever Open interest increases; that is, when one party first buys (goes long) a contract from another party (who goes short). Contracts are also "destroyed" in the opposite manner whenever Open interest decreases because traders resell to reduce their long positions or rebuy to reduce their short positions.

Speculators on futures price fluctuations who do not intend to make or take ultimate delivery must take care to "zero their positions" prior to the contract's expiry. After expiry, each contract will be settled, either by physical delivery (typically for commodity underlyings) or by a cash settlement (typically for financial underlyings). The contracts ultimately are not between the original buyer and the original seller, but between the holders at expiry and the exchange. Because a contract may pass through many hands after it is created by its initial purchase and sale, or even be liquidated, settling parties do not know with whom they have ultimately traded.

Compare this with other securities, in which there is a primary market when an issuer issues the security, and a secondary market where the security is later traded independently of the issuer. Legally, the security represents an obligation of the issuer rather than the buyer and seller; even if the issuer buys back some securities, they still exist. Only if they are legally cancelled can they disappear.

Standardization

The contracts traded on futures exchanges are always standardized. In principle, the parameters to define a contract are endless. To make sure liquidity is high, there is only a limited number of standardized contracts.

Clearing and Settlement

Most large derivatives exchanges operate their own clearing houses, allowing them to take revenues from post-trade processing as well as trading itself. By netting off the different positions traded, a smaller amount of capital is required as security to cover the trades. Of the big derivatives venues Chicago Mercantile Exchange, ICE and Eurex all clear trades themselves. There is sometimes a division of responsibility between provision of trading facility, and that of clearing and settlement of those trades. Derivative exchanges like the CBOE and LIFFE take responsibility for providing the trading environments, settlement of the resulting trades are usually handled by clearing houses that serve as central counterparties to trades done in the respective exchanges. The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) and LCH.Clearnet (London Clearing House) respectively are the clearing corporations for CBOE and LIFFE, although LIFFE and parent NYSE Euronext has long stated its desire to develop its own clearing service.

Central Counterparty

Derivative contracts are leveraged positions whose value is volatile. They are usually more volatile than their underlying asset. This can lead to credit risk, in particular counterparty risk, those situations where one party to a trade loses a big sum of money and is unable to honor its settlement obligation. In a safe trading environment, the parties to a trade need to be assured that their counterparty will honor the trade, no matter how the market has moved. This requirement can lead to messy arrangements like credit assessment, setting of trading limits and so on for each counterparty, and take away most of the advantages of a centralised trading facility. To prevent this, a clearing house interposes themselves as counterparties to every trade and extend guarantee that the trade will be settled as originally intended. This action is called novation. As a result, trading firms take no risk on the actual counterparty to the trade, but on the clearing corporation. The clearing corporation is able to take on this risk by adopting an efficient margining process.

Margin and Mark-to-Market

A margin is collateral that the holder of a financial instrument has to deposit to cover some or all of the credit risk of their counterparty, in this case the central counterparty clearing houses. Clearing houses charge two types of margins: the Initial Margin and the Mark-To-Market margin (also referred to as Variation Margin).

The Initial Margin is the sum of money (or collateral) to be deposited by a firm to the clearing corporation to cover possible future loss in the positions (the set of positions held is also called the portfolio) held by a firm. Several popular methods are used to compute initial margins. They include the CME-owned SPAN (a grid simulation method used by the CME and about 70 other exchanges), STANS (a Monte Carlo simulation based methodology used by the OCC), TIMS (earlier used by the OCC, and still being used by a few other exchanges).

The Mark-to-Market Margin (MTM margin) on the other hand is the margin collected to offset losses (if any) that have already been incurred on the positions held by a firm. This is computed as the difference between the cost of the position held and the current market value of that position. If the resulting amount is a loss, the amount is collected from the firm; else, the amount may be returned to the firm (the case with most clearing houses) or kept in reserve depending on local practice. In either case, the positions are 'marked-to-market' by setting their new cost to the market value used in computing this difference. The positions held by the clients of the exchange are marked-to-market daily and the MTM difference computation for the next day would use the new cost figure in its calculation.

Clients hold a margin account with the exchange, and every day the swings in the value of their positions is added to or deducted from their margin account. If the margin account gets too low, they have to replenish it. In this way it is highly unlikely that the client will not be able to fulfill his obligations arising from the contracts. As the clearing house is the counterparty to all their trades, they only have to have one margin account. This is in contrast with OTC derivatives, where issues such as margin accounts have to be negotiated with all counterparties.

Regulators

Each exchange is normally regulated by a national governmental (or semi-governmental) regulatory agency:

In Australia, this role is performed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
In the Chinese mainland, by the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
In Hong Kong, by the Securities and Futures Commission.
In India, by the Securities and Exchange Board of India and Forward Markets Commission (FMC)
In Japan, by the Financial Services Agency.
In Pakistan, by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan.
In Singapore by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
In the UK, futures exchanges are regulated by the Financial Services Authority.
In the USA, by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
In Malaysia, by the Securities Commission Malaysia.
In Spain, by the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV).
In Brazil, by the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM).
In South Africa, by the Financial Services Board (South Africa).
In Mauritius, by the Financial Services Commission (FSC)

Untangling the Libor and Forex Scandals

Regulators in the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and elsewhere are investigating potential manipulation of the market for foreign currency, sometimes called FX or foreign exchange. It is natural to compare these reports to the manipulation of Libor, the London Interbank Offered Rate.

After all, both Libor and the leading FX benchmarks are massively influenced by the actions of a few international banks. Investigations into both have exhumed embarrassing online chat sessions: FX traders met in chat rooms called The Bandit's Club and The Cartel, while Libor traders promised bottles of Bollinger Champaign. And both markets are massively important: there are $5 trillion in FX trades daily, while Libor gets about halfway there ($2.5 trillion) with one product alone.

The historical evolution of foreign exchange markets can be compartmentalized into 3 distinct phases namely the gold exchange period, followed by the Bretton Woods Agreement, to its current setting.

The Gold exchange period

The gold exchange standard ruled over international economic system between 1876 and World War I. This was a fairly stable system wherein currencies were supported by the price of gold.

But the gold exchange standard had a weakness of evolving on an all or nothing pattern. For example, when a country’s economy strengthened, that country may import a great deal until its gold reserves may not be sufficient to support its currency.

Consequently this could lead to lesser money supply, escalation of interest rates and perhaps recession. In such a scenario, the rock bottom commodity prices would be a stimulus for other countries to engage in frenzied buying activity until normalization of the economy with decline in interest rates occurred. This worked fine until World War I caused blockage of trade inflows and movement of gold and along with that ended the all or nothing pattern typical of the gold standard.

Bretton Woods Agreement

The Bretton Woods Agreement was cobbled in 1944 to regulate international forex markets as it existed then. The essence of this agreement was to ensure international monetary steadiness and curb speculation in international currencies. As per this agreement, the value of national currencies was fixed against the dollar with the dollar rate set at 35USD per ounce of gold.

Participating countries were required to maintain the value of their currency within a narrow band against the dollar and an equivalent rate of gold.

Consequently the dollar became a sort of reference currency, inasmuch as it signaled a shift in global economic dominance from Europe to the U.S.
Conditions were also imposed on countries prohibiting them from devaluing their currencies in excess of 10%. However post-war construction during the 1950s with intense volume of international trade coupled with massive movement of capital put to naught the foreign exchange rates arrived at in the Bretton Woods Agreement.

With effect from 1971 the US dollar was no longer exchangeable into gold signaling the demise of the Bretton Woods Agreement. Furthermore by 1973, the major industrialized nations' currencies were floated more freely across nations, coinciding with currency prices being quoted daily, together with increase in volume, speed and price volatility of forex deals.

Post Bretton Woods Agreement also saw the emergence of several new financial instruments and trade liberalization. Furthermore with the advent of computers and technology in the 1980s the market reaches for cross-border forex trading gained momentum extending through Asian, European and American time zones.

Gradually foreign exchange transactions increased intensively to all the facets we see today in forex markets worldwide.

Emergence of Eurodollar

Another major factor that speeded up Forex trading was the emergence of the Eurodollar (US Dollars deposited in banks outside U.S) market.

Since 1980s London is reckoned as the key center in the Eurodollar market where U.K based banks lend dollars as an alternative to pounds, and its geographical proximity to both Asian and American markets has allowed the Eurodollar market to flourish as well.