FX Market
Turnover growth
Trading volumes on the FX Market totalled RUB 310.8 trln, up 36.0% year-on-year. Due to elevated FX rate volatility, spot trading volumes rose 32.8% year-on-year, while swap trading volumes increased 37.6% year-on-year on the back of continued demand for liquidity-management products.
In 2015 Moscow Exchange grew its share of the total FX market. The Exchange’s share of the domestic interbank market rose from 42% to 49%, while its share of USD/RUB trading increased from 50% to 58%, and of EUR/RUB trading from 64% to 68%.
The CNY/RUB currency pair continued to grow rapidly, with trading volumes tripling in monetary terms to RUB 858 bln in 2015.
At the end of 2015 there were 511 trading members of Moscow Exchange’s FX Market: 459 banks and 52 non-credit institutions holding professional securities market participant licences.
Client access
In 2015, Moscow Exchange continued to develop client services and implement projects to expand options for FX Market participants. These included Direct Market Access (DMA), Sponsored Market Access (SMA) and International Clearing Membership (ICM), and helped to foster continued growth of client transactions. In 2015, turnover of client transactions more than doubled to RUB 130 trln, while client turnover of spot transactions had reached 55% by the end of 2015.
The FX market of the Moscow Exchange registered 7.3 thousand non-resident clients from 90 countries in early 2016. The share of non-resident spot turnover increased from 27% to 37%.
High volatility of foreign exchange rates triggered higher interest of individuals in on-exchange FX trading. In 2015, the turnovers of individuals on the FX market grew six fold to RUB 22.4 trln. Share of private clients in the spot turnover reached 12,3% in December 2015 against 8.5% in January 2015.
General clearing member status
As part of the division of trading member and clearing member status, Rosselkhozbank was granted status of general clearing member in March 2015, while early in 2016 Bank of America became the first global bank to acquire this status. General clearing members are entitled to provide clearing services both to trading members and various client groups, including Russian and non-Russian legal entities and individuals making transactions on the FX Market. Non-resident participants who acquire this status may be party to FX Market trades and may clear and settle them, which opens up new business opportunities for servicing clients. This participant category is in line with global practice and reduces the overall risks of centralised settlement systems.
Eurasian economic union FX Market
2015 saw the continued development of the integrated currency market of the Eurasian Economic Union (ICM EEU). In September, the National Bank of Belarus was admitted to trading on MOEX’s FX market, and late in 2015 the first participant from Armenia, ARMBUSINESSBANK, entered the market. Previously, direct admission to currency trading on Moscow Exchange had been granted in
In 2015 the total turnover of integrated currency market participants was RUB 267 bln. The volumes of trades in the Belarusian Rouble increased 6.5 times to RUB 264 mln (BYR 69.8 bln) and in the Kazakhstan tenge - 7 times to RUB 98 mln (KZT 331 mln).
Price tick
Effective 2 February 2015 the tick size for USD/RUB, EUR/RUB and GBP/RUB spot instruments was doubled to RUB 0.0010, in response to demand from market participants. Larger tick sizes help reduce FX market volatility, improve liquidity in the on-exchange order book, and introduce uniform parameters across MOEX’s FX and Derivatives Markets.
In 2016, the FX Market will continue developing tools and client services. Plans include the launch of trading in deliverable futures of three FX pairs — USD/RUB, EUR/RUB and CNY/RUB, as well as to introduce of new currency pairs.
Two new instruments, USDRUB_FIX and EURRUB_FIX, are expected to be launched in MOEX’s fixings. Participants will indicate the price of transactions using these instruments as the difference between MOEX’s FX fixing and the final exchange rate of the closed trade.
The Exchange’s FX fixing has been recognised compliant with the IOSCO principles. This will help promote it among international investors and participants of the global financial market as well as create a new internationally recognised fixing for the USB/RUB rate to be used in exchange-traded and OTC derivatives.
Client access will continue developing and the client base will further expand as more Russian legal entities and individuals enter the market and owing to improved technologies and services when servicing clients on the FX Market. A project will be realised to treat separately positions of third-level clients serviced by different trading and clearing firms.
Moscow Exchange is planning to grow the number of non-residents who hold general clearing member status, as well as the number of clients using SMA to access the Exchange. These efforts should help to attract more international clients to the FX Market.
As part of the development of clearing services aimed at reducing members’ costs of trading the market, MOEX plans to introduce inter-product spreads, netting-off of risks of members’ positions across markets, integration of collateral, and unification of clearing procedures and the list of assets accepted as collateral.