GFI announced the launch this week of its Fenics Trader FX options platform. The announcement follows a soft launch over the last six months involving 20 GFI Clients. The company claims that volumes have reached 120 trades per month.

Retail FX trading in the US has gone mainstream with the announcement of a new show on CNBC to be aired at 5.30pm (ET). Called Money in motion currency trading, the live broadcast starts February 25; the programme will also be shown on CNBC Europe, Middle East and Africa and CNBC Australia. The show will be co-sponsored by US retail FX platform FXCM and Gain Capital's Forex.com.

China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, or Safe, has announced that onshore CNY option trading will be allowed from April 1.

A falling dollar, rising commodity prices, and inflation in Asia threaten the standard of living in the West and especially in the USA, and undermine the reserve currency system.

CLS released its monthly settlement data this week for January 2011 and included data for its aggregation service CLSAS.

That the market is feeling the gravitational pull of a few big names has been one of our favourite topics for at least six years. But perhaps we are wrong. The very biggest banks have so far failed to become supernovas: the market share of the top five, according to Euromoney’s FX survey, was stable at just over 60% between 2007 and 2009 and dimmed to 54.6% in the 2010 survey. Perhaps last year’s result was a kink in the fabric of the FX space.

RBS seem to be hiring only the very best of late. After the recruitment of Tim Carrington as global head of FX last August, sources now say that the bank has hired Steve Kemp to run its North American FX operations.

On Thursday London was replete with regulatory discussion as it hosted AFME’s sixth annual ‘Market Liquidity’ conference and also the ACI UK Square Mile Debate on the theme of regulation within currency markets.

Parker FX Index data for December shows that December was a profitable month for the majority of FX funds. The Index showed a 0.45% return for December with 35 out of the 62 firms that reported giving positive results. There was, however, a wide range in fortunes: the best performer returned a stunning 9.80% on the month whereas another fund has the unenviable task of explaining an 8.23% loss to its investors. On a risk-adjusted (un-leveraged) basis the index was up 0.18% on the month.

This week Forex Capital Markets (FXCM) and Gain Capital, two major US retail platforms, showed that the battle for market share, even though the actual number of price-providers continues to consolidate, is as competitive as ever.

CLS released data to coincide with that published this week by London’s JSC and the bodies in New York, Singapore, Sydney and Toronto.

Figures released this week by FX committees in the major centres showed that average daily FX volumes now firmly exceed pre-crisis levels.

New categories of participants, electronic trading and the use of algorithms have had profound effects on liquidity and pricing in the FX market, which now offer a real opportunity to manage macro events.

Concerted intervention curbs appreciation; Interest rate differentials counteracted by IOF

James Fauset, managing director in FX sales at Goldman Sachs, has left the company. Informed sources say that Fauset will be joining Brevan Howard to work directly for Alan Howard. Both Goldman and Brevan Howard declined to comment.

Simon Head, head of FX and fixed income at recruitment company CorrelateSearch, shared with theweeklyFiX some of the findings of his survey of hiring patterns during 2010.

One of the most fundamental questions that this year’s Euromoney survey will answer is the extent to which market share is falling into the hands of a few banks.

In a meeting with Will Patrick, associate director of FX products at the CME, I heard of the current boom in block trades in currency futures.

In the FX market, both 2008 and 2009 are generally reckoned to have been bad years to have a good year. Was 2010 any better?

State Street Global Markets’ Investor Confidence Index for January 2011 shows global investor confidence fell 3.3 points to 100.9 from December’s revised reading of 104.2. Declines are reported across all regions.

Some wag sent theWeeklyFiX a photograph of Rod Smith at Citi Sydney remarking of his resemblance to British ‘actor’ and reality show winner Christopher Biggins. However, with January’s Euromoney magazine lying on the desk there was a far better pairing in the offing. Outgoing HSBC CEO Mike Geoghegan has never been seen in the same room as Smith. Or Biggins come to that.

"I want you to call all your clients and ask them to vote"

Barclays Capital's head of FX bank sales, Asia Pacific, Ivan Ferraroni has left the bank. There are plenty of unsubstantiated rumours flying around about the reason for his sudden departure, which allegedly involved an incident with another banker, but we were unable to confirm these with either Barclays or the other firm or Ferraroni himself.

Foreign exchange debate: Banks and buyside face up to market pressures

Foreign exchange traders are getting used to huge volatility in their two core markets – the euro and the dollar. But they’re still battling regulators to prevent what they consider would be a damaging move to trading on exchanges.

Non-financial corporates are concerned by the new OTC derivatives regulation on both sides of the Atlantic.

US bank revenues compared for Q4 and full-year 2010

Just six months after recruiting Kit Juckes and Benoit Anne as respectively heads of FX strategy and EM strategy Société Générale Cross Asset Research has further strengthened its FX and emerging markets strategy teams.

Alpari is undergoing a certain amount of change at the moment as a business closes, another opens and it takes a whole new approach to marketing in the US.

JPMorgan has launched treasury, money market and FX operations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.