The FX market has experienced notable periods of stress in recent years, albeit not on the scale of the Swiss National Bank’s decision to abandon its peg to the Swiss franc in 2015.
For example, during the January Yen move, the market traded more than $1 billion in USD/JPY on EBS Market in less than a minute.
However, while Euromoney has previously reported on ambivalence towards circuit breakers as a mechanism for reducing market risk, opinion seems now to have hardened against these ‘collars’. This comes despite the ambition to grab a larger share of the FX market shown by exchanges – a trading environment where circuit breakers are well established.
|
Curtis Pfeiffer, |
“It is a significant challenge for systematic circuit breakers to be employed uniformly across the FX market,” says Curtis Pfeiffer, chief business officer at Pragma Securities. “Instead, each venue and liquidity provider has to create their own circuit breaker, which creates inconsistencies and additional complexity for market participants.”
Circuit breakers have traditionally been used by exchanges, perceived as efficient marketplaces.
Arjun Jayaram, CEO and founder of Baton Systems, says: “However, the presence of circuit breakers alone would probably not be enough to convert market participants [market makers and directional traders] to switch to exchange-based trading.
