BFF5260 Money Market Dealing Foreign Exchange Summary Report Semester 1 2015 Name of Bank: CIMB Group Day of Class: Thursday Date: 23 April 2015 Individual student contribution to this trading report Name of student Number of Hours Total Percentage contribution Li Chen 36 1/3 Chenyang Jiang 36 1/3 Danlin Wang 36 1/3 Total Hours 108 1
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BFF5260 Money Market Dealing
Foreign Exchange Summary Report
Semester 1 2015
Name of Bank: CIMB Group
Day of Class: Thursday
Date: 23 April 2015
Individual student contribution to this trading report
Name of student
Number of Hours Total Percentage contribution
Li Chen 36 1/3
Chenyang Jiang 36 1/3
Danlin Wang 36 1/3
Total Hours 108 1
HONOUR STATEMENT
“I affirm that I have neither provided nor received any assistance during the completion of this assessment task other than that approved by the Chief Examiner”.
…………………………………………………….
Executive summary
The report focuses on the overall financial performance, summary of economic scenario, entire
adjusting strategies, effects and influences of changing foreign exchange market price, wrong
actions, the numerical performance of each role and what we have learned from the trading
sessions.
This report measures the financial performance by demonstrating the budget and actual
performance based on several financial indicators. The comparison to the market is also given in
addition to that in this part. The overall performance of CIMB Group is assessed as the average
level of market in terms of profitability. Then, pre-trading strategies and contingency strategies are
established according to the analysis of the economic scenario and expectation of the market. In
addition, the strategies we used and didn’t use during the two trading sessions are discussed.
Meanwhile, the contribution of each strategy to our total profit is calculated to show the usefulness
of the strategies. Moreover, the market price movement indicates the market is fundamentally
inefficient. The performance of each role is also measured; suggesting that each member
performed well whilst further improvement is still needed since we also made several mistakes
during the trading sessions.
Highlights
Researching the economic scenario before each trading is useful to set a proper opening price
when the market opens.
In the first trading session, most profit came from trailing the market and finding arbitrage
opportunities and corporate tenders. When the market was contractive, contingency strategy
helped us outperform in this situation.
In the second trading session, most profit came from corporate tenders and contingency
strategy in contractive market.
Paying attention to the market news and trailed the market before changing our bank’s quoting
price in order not to be hit by our counterparties.
Market Average Buy RateMarket Average Sell RateCIMB GROUP Buy RateCIMB GROUP Sell Rate
Figure 8: Price movement of CIMB group
The overall price trend of our bank was consistent with the market price movement
except the abnormal period, suggesting that we stuck to our trading strategies of
following the market.
5.2 Market price movement in trading session 2
2/04/2
015 10:01:00
2/04/2
015 10:08:00
2/04/2
015 10:15:00
2/04/2
015 10:27:00
2/04/2
015 10:34:00
2/04/2
015 10:46:00
2/04/2
015 10:53:00
2/04/2
015 11:00:00
2/04/2
015 11:07:00
2/04/2
015 11:31:00
2/04/2
015 11:38:00
2/04/2
015 11:45:00
2/04/2
015 11:52:00
2/04/2
015 11:59:000.848
0.84850.849
0.84950.85
0.85050.851
Adjusted Market price movement
Market Average Buy RateMarket Average Sell Rate
Figure 9: Adjusted market price movement in trading session 2
After deducting the outliers and abnormal data, the market price movement
demonstrates a stable tendency during the trading session with slight fluctuations. The
market turned out to be fundamentally inefficient since it didn’t respond to the market
news correctly. Meanwhile, there were several banks mispriced their quotes which
dragged the market to abnormal situation. However, we cannot take advantage of
these banks according to the code of ethics. By the end of the trading session, the
bidding and asking prices tended to move towards a certain level since banks were
squaring their position.
Compared to the market, the price movement of our bank is shown as below:
2/04/2
015 10:01:00
2/04/2
015 10:08:00
2/04/2
015 10:15:00
2/04/2
015 10:27:00
2/04/2
015 10:34:00
2/04/2
015 10:46:00
2/04/2
015 10:53:00
2/04/2
015 11:00:00
2/04/2
015 11:07:00
2/04/2
015 11:31:00
2/04/2
015 11:38:00
2/04/2
015 11:45:00
2/04/2
015 11:52:00
2/04/2
015 11:59:000.848
0.8485
0.849
0.8495
0.85
0.8505
0.851
Price movement of CIMB Group
Market Average Buy RateMarket Average Sell RateCIMB GROUP Buy RateCIMB GROUP Sell Rate
Figure 10: Price movement of CIMB Group
From this figure it can be seen that the price fluctuation of our bank is more severe
than the market. The reason is that we adopted a strategy of buying higher than the
market and selling lower than the market. In addition, we controlled our each
transaction amount for risk management, which explains the waves in our price
movement curves.
To conclude the market in the two trading sessions, we can say the market was
fundamentally inefficient since it didn’t respond to the market events correctly. As a
result, the market became considerably constrictive and the profit margin was very
small. Especially in the second session, people had been more sophisticated in trading
tricks, so corporate tenders became the major source of profit for many banks.
Meanwhile, mispricing happened during both of sessions, some of which might
provide arbitrage opportunities for other banks. Nevertheless, banks should take care
of the code of ethics when grabbing these opportunities.
6 What you did wrong and remedial action EACH WEEK
6.1 Practice trading
No. Wrong Actions Reason Remedial Actions Effects
11
The dealer accepted traction of 15M buying.
Not clear about the trading policy that 5 million is not accepted due to its complexity
First, the dealer tried to sell the 15M to other banks but ignored it was wrong and cannot be accepted by them as well. Second, all three individuals remembered the rule and why it cannot be accepted.
Well done. We all keep the rule in mind to trade and rejected other ones who want to buy or sell 5M to us.
2
22
The dealer refused to buy 100M.
Because it was the first time we traded FX, the dealer was hesitated to make decision and he thought there were risks to sell them at lower prices than our buying price that could lead to losses.
First, the dealer and risk manager discussed to adjust our trading strategies more aggressive to accept relatively large amount. Second, just acceptance big amount is not enough, we have to keep the initiative to buy or sell.
Not so good as expected. It was hard to trade at a large amount due to the consideration of market risk in terms of quoting changes.
33
The position keeper typed the wrong transaction information.
The position keeper was not familiar with the recording system in the first time. Therefore, the mistakes exist when the recording data of trading counterparties did not match. Sometimes, the dealer gave wrong information to the position keeper as
When the dealer was busy to answer phone calls and quoted prices, the risk manager can help and communicate with position keeper to record accurately.
Well done. The risk manager can help both the dealer and position keeper when record transactions and adjust strategies.
dealer answered too many calls.
Table 3: Wrong operations in the practice session
6.2 First trading
No. Wrong Actions Reason Remedial Actions Effects
44
4
The dealer became emotional during the trading time.
When it was busy to answer phone calls, the dealer cannot focus on looking through price changes of other banks and she needed the risk manager to fully concentrate on the market changes. However, the risk manager did not concern changes carefully and consistently.
First, communicating with the risk manager in advance about how to cooperate with each other. Second, to find out what I did wrong and why I cannot focus on two different things although it is not compulsory normally. Third, calm down. Fourth, using ears to listen phone calls and using eyes to see market changes. It is little hard to concentrate at the same time.
Keep calm is a good way to obtain more information. Ears and eyes are good friends to coordinate in order to complete one thing.
55
When the risk manager was trying to decrease our bid price, the dealer rejected to trade with other banks.
Answering the calls when we changed our quoting prices. The dealer told them we had already changed our bid price but we were asked to sell at former price. Therefore, we rejected to deal with them.
When we changed our prices, we should answer calls a little latter to give them some time to react. Explaining well to other banks about changes of our prices.
It is useful to wait for a moment to answer phone calls without conflicts.
6
The dealer did not change the 0.849 bid price to a lower level 0.8488 as soon as
Our reaction of market prices was not good as we expected. The dealer cannot
Strength the cooperation between the dealer and the risk manager. When dealer
Well done, communication and cooperation are good ways to solve
6 possible to crab arbitrage changes when answering phone calls.
answer phones and change prices at the same time. The risk manager did not react quickly as well.
answer calls, risk manager should focus on the market price changes and released news all the time.
problems.
77
The reaction of dealer and risk manager should be enhanced to quote and look for arbitrage opportunities.
We are not so familiar with the strategies when we changed our quoting prices. We need time to consider the possible profit and loss.
To keep the principle ‘buy low and sell high’ in mind. Consider clearly about the how to change prices and make strategies.
Effective. Each dealer remembered that we need to do more practice to have quick and accurate reactions.
Table 4: Wrong operations in the first session
No. Wrong Actions Reason Remedial Actions Effects
11
8
The dealer and the risk manager discussed to sell a large part of the tender of corporate 500,000,000 but make a mistake to sell an undesirable amount 50,000,000.
The dealer and risk manager were not sensitive about numbers. They did not react that it is an extremely big amount but we just take a little amount to sell.
First, to be careful when looking through the corporate’s tenders.Second, when there are tenders, the dealer and risk manager should discuss about the amount to buy or sell.
It should be effective to cope with this kind of situation.
9
9
The dealer intended to type an ask price of 0.8500 but has a technological mistake to type 0.8490.
Thought a wrong way to quote but altered the price immediately without trading at this price and explained well to other banks.
Before we change prices, we need to think whether the price should be increased or reduced.
One quoting mistake would let us check and think about our trading strategies. If we take the wrong direction, we may suffer losses.
1
10
The position keep recorded a wrong bank name and the bank called her to change but unfortunately it did not work since she misunderstand that the counterparty bank
(Barclays) is the broker.
First, the dealer told the position keeper some wrong information about the bank. Second, the position keeper is not clear about which bank tended to trade with us and misunderstood it was the broker. Third,
The dealer should clearly ask names of other banks and explicitly tell the keeper about our trading information. Moreover, the risk manager can help the other two coordinate all transaction conflicts.
Finally well done. When it is very busy to answer calls, Our risk manager did very well to monitor all the transactions and help check inappropriate recordings.
their abbreviations are very similar, thus the keeper did not realize the mistake.
Table 5: Wrong operations in the second session
6.3 Second trading
It is accurate that more mistakes we made more things that we could learn. What we did wrong could finally help us to improve. Additionally, reviewing mistakes is also very useful and helpful to learn, to experience and to harvest.
7 Overall performance measures of each role
The performance of our dealer, risk manager and position keeper are numerically described as below:
Role Responsibility Indicators
Target Performance
Measure
Actual Performance
Measure
Dealer
Quickly answering phones from other banks.
Immediately Almost Immediately, while several times dealers hesitated for a while to answer.
Clearly trade with other banks and ask their bank name, whether to buy or sell, trading amount, and transaction number.
About 1 minute Almost completed in 1 minute but sometimes dealers needed more 20 seconds.
Dialling phones to buy and sell AUD when there is arbitrage profits that can be obtained.
Immediately Immediately, and Match well.
Communicating with the position keeper about details of trading information including bank name, trading quantity,
About 30 seconds About 20-25
seconds.
reference number in time.
Closely watching the price changes of other banks.
During the whole trading process
During the whole
trading process.
Discussing trading strategies with the risk manager according to the various market and policy changes.
Each time 20-30 seconds and during the whole trading process
30-40 seconds
and during the
whole trading
process.
Change quoting prices 30-40 seconds each time
20-30 seconds each time
Grabbing arbitrage opportunities.
Immediately each time
Immediately.
Position keeper
Communicating with dealer and recording transactions.
Around 30 seconds
Around 30
seconds to record
each transaction.
Checking accepted transactions in time.
10-20 seconds 10-20 seconds.
Match well.
Recording accurately. About 20 seconds About 20 seconds.
Discovering trading mismatches with our counterparties. If there exists mistakes, the keeper needs to dial the counterparty bank as soon as possible.
Within 1 minute Almost within 1
minute.
Sometimes
exceed 2 or more
minutes.
Keeping in touch with the risk manager to ensure correct buying and selling quantity.
Within 30
seconds
Within 30
seconds. Match
well.
Risk manager
Tracking the quantity traded and the net position. Identifying arbitrage opportunities.
About 20 seconds About 20 seconds
each time. Match
well.
Discussing contingency strategies with dealer.
Around 20-30
seconds
Around 30-40
seconds each
time.
Continuously noticing all the market announcements and observing the market fluctuation.
About 30 seconds About 30 seconds
after news
announcement.
Continuously checking price changes and immediately giving suggestions to the dealer.
During the whole
trading process
During the whole
trading process
Table 6: Overall performance measures of each role
The performance of each role is numerically measured to summarize our trading process. We can see that measurements of target are always equal of less than them of actual situations. In sum, we almost did well and possess a medium level performance. Although there were some inappropriate actions and mistakes we made, each role has taken their responsibilities and tried their best to finish trading.
8 What you learned from EACH trading session
No. Key points What we have learned
1. Risks The first thing we learned is to understand two important risks that are market risk and operational risk. The market risk is about changes of monetary policies, inflation rate, interest rate, and foreign exchange rate. These indicators would affect the depreciation or appreciation of AUD. In addition, the operational risk is related to trading actions of the dealer, risk manager and position keeper. If the dealer receipts some large volume transactions, we have to bear the risk that the volume is difficult to be balanced and we may suffer losses when the market prices change unexpectedly. However, our trading amount is always small that we lose the initiative and become passive to compete with other banks. If the dealer quotes to an opposite direction, the risk that we have to accept some transactions resulting in our losses and more seriously the losses would be expanded if we do not take actions to prevent.
2. Preparation Preparation is extremely important for each bank before the market becomes active. The dealer has to be very clear about the trading principles, quoting strategies, cooperation with our risk manager, and how to balance our trading position. Moreover, the risk manager also has to understand the trading process
and cooperation with both our dealer and position keeper. The position keeper has relatively mild burden but the recording accuracy is related to our ultimate results of trading. Therefore, each position has to keep calm and prepare well before trading starts.
3. Reaction Our reaction is required to be strengthened in the later trading sessions. It is essential to react all market price changes and other banks’ quoting prices to adjust our strategies. One ways to enhance is to learn and to understand and the other way is to practice until we could react bid/ask prices, short/long positions and adjusting strategies quickly and accurately.
4. Quoting Initially, we are so nervous to make very attractive bid and ask prices, thus we all stand in the middle to observe others’ actions. When we tend to attract other banks to sell, we could increase a little of bid price. While our ask price is attractive when we decrease a bit. Therefore, we could gain the spread of the bid and ask price. We also have to consider the effects after we change our quoting prices in terms of other banks’ reaction to reply and their expected trading intention and amount.
5. Strategy Our strategies could be more aggressive. As we can see that conventional strategy cannot help us gain large amount of profit but can be easy balanced and reduce operational risks. Hence, different types of strategies possess advantages and disadvantages. Once choosing one type, what we need to do is to find a suitable way to adopt and crab arbitrage opportunities.
6. Job allocation
Job allocation is vital to complete our trading successfully. Each role has to cooperate well to cope with all abnormal situations. An important thing is that risk manager has the responsibilities to monitor and analyze the entire market when there are economic events releasing. Moreover, the manager also has to help our dealer noticing price changes and position keeper checking inappropriate recordings.
7. Gap between expectation and reality
There are always undesired results that we cannot change by ourselves. It is about the future trend of price changes after news releasing, the tight market spread to arbitrage and conventional of aggressive strategies. Our intention to expand trading amount is always affected by quoting prices of other banks and our initial is always weakened by our fear to loss. Therefore, what we need to improve is to diverge our mind to figure out solutions when dealing with all transactions and abnormal situations. Finally, we remember that our ultimate goal is to obtain profits by complying with the code of conduct.
Table 7: What we have learned
Our desire to improve does not stop when just finish the foreign exchange trading sessions. Learning and possessing good attitudes are more important things to continue our next part of trading.
Appendix 1
……Chenyang Jiang……Team Member responsible for the Report
a. Financial Performance.
Financial performance indicators include two aspects: Return and risk.
In terms of return, we adopt the formula profit / (volume/2) to measure our profitability. This formula tells how much profit we earn for per dollar of trade. We set our profit budget at least 0.25% since the USD case rate is 0.25%. This formula is used since our original position is zero for both AUD and USD which means we cannot use return on investment to measure our profitability.
From our perspective of risk, we decide to measure risks by controlling the maximum transaction quantity and extreme long/short position. Specific data of the performance indicators is shown as follow:
Indicators Budget Reality
Return Rate of return 0.25% 0.095%
Dollar profit (USD)
2.5M 104,000
Risk
Maximum transaction
amount (AUD)50M 30M
Extreme long/short
position (AUD)100M 80M
Total Turnover (USD)
1Billion 220M
Table 1. Financial Performance Indicators in Budget and Reality
As it can be seen from the Table 1, there is a large distance between our
budget and the reality. The major reason causing the variance is that we operated our trading too conservatively. For instance, we set the maximum transaction amount target as 50M, but we only achieve 30M. Our average transaction amount is even 118M, which is less risky but diminishes our profit obviously. In addition, our actual extreme position is lower than the target as well. In fact, we tried to keep our position as small as possible to minimise risk exposure. As a result, we lost several opportunities to expand our profit.
b. According to the economic scenario, we expect that the AUD will depreciate.
Generally, the Australian financial market has been bearish in the past few weeks. As a result, the demand of AUD will fall since foreign investment will reduce, implying a depreciation in AUD. The specific reasons will be demonstrated as follow:
1. A fall in business confidence level suggests investors’ willingness to invest in Australia will fall, so the demand of AUD falls accordingly.
2. The growth of consumers’ confidence suggests the economy will recover, so the AUD shall appreciate.
3. Unemployment increased 1.25% while the job creation is in a high level.
4. Australia is highly reliant on the commodity export. On one hand, the decrease in commodity price could stimulate exports since the price is cheaper, which might push the AUD going up. On the other hand, if we assume the exports remain the same or even lower, which is the scenario in this case, the demand of AUD will reduce and AUD will depreciate as a result.
5. Worldwide terrorist activities deliver information that Australia is no longer seen as a safe heaven. Some investors might lose confidence in the circumstance and reduce investment in Australia. This will lower the demand of AUD.
6. The concern of international analysts is able to undermine investors’ confidence with no doubt. Consequently, the AUD will depreciate.
c. The overall strategy we developed is buying at lower price and selling at higher price. Due to the expectation of depreciation in AUD, we decided to short AUD at the beginning and long AUD when the price falls. However, considering this is the first trading session, chaos might happen and the price trend could go without following the fundamental expectations, we decided operate more conservatively by observing the market reactions first. If the market reacts to news effectively, then we will follow our fundamental analysis. Otherwise we will try to take arbitrage opportunities from mispriced
quotes.
Given the expected events schedule, we construct our pre-trading strategies accordingly:
1. Balance of payments due; expected surplus of $5 Billion
The surplus of BOP implies that the capital inflow is higher than capital outflow. That suggests the demand of AUD is higher than the supply of AUD, hence AUD shall appreciate. Therefore, we should long AUD after the event.
2. Central bank’s quarterly Statement of Monetary Policy due; expected to reflect concerns that economy is overheating.
Concerns of economy overheating will force CBA to adopt tight monetary policy, such as increasing the interest rate. High interest rate will attract international capital to invest in Australian financial market, pushing the AUD going up. Therefore, we should long AUD after the event.
3. Consumer credit figures due. Expected to show continued growth.
The growth of consumer credit figures show increased confidence towards future economy, which will lead to AUD appreciation. Therefore, we should long AUD after the event.
The 3% of inflation stays in the acceptable level. However, the inflation rate of US is unaware, the change in exchange rate is unknown. We should wait and see the movement of the market.
d. Although we had established our trading strategies to cover as many as market possibilities, the reality is still quite different from the expectation.
Overall, we kept the strategy of buying at lower price and selling at higher price. However, the fundamental analysis seems to be not significantly related to our actual trading strategy, because the market did not move effectively after the events released. In fact, we started as price taker and set our quotes in a medium level to ensure we will not lose money immediately. Then we found mispriced quotes and tried to grab them, because of which we made our first profit.
As the trades proceeding, some banks began to dial us. Since our price was the middle level of the market, we could make profit as long as others took our price. On one hand, due to our conservatism of our strategy, the average transaction amount of our bank is relatively low, because of which we lost several opportunities to expand our profit. On the other hand, we did not suffer any lose during the trading session.
e.
19/03/2015 10:01:00 19/03/2015 11:07:000.8300
0.8500
0.8700
0.8900
0.9100
0.9300
0.9500
0.9700
0.9900
1.0100
1.0300
1.0500
Market Average Buy RateMarket Average Sell Rate
Market FX rate movement
Graph 1. Original Market FX Movement
From this graph, it can be observed clearly that the market movement is extremely abnormal. The sell rate of AUD even reached up to 1.05. By analysing the original data, we find that the reason is some banks mispriced their quotes, which pulled the sell rate to an abnormal level. Obviously, the extremely abnormal data should be deducted in order to find the real movement of the market. After deducting the extremely abnormal data, we get the graph as follow:
19/03/2015 10:01:0019/03/2015 11:04:000.8420
0.8430
0.8440
0.8450
0.8460
0.8470
0.8480
0.8490
0.8500
0.8510
0.8520
0.8530
Market Average Buy RateMarket Average Sell Rate
Market FX rate movement
Graph 2. Addressed Original Market FX Movement
At 10:01:53, news is released regarding the USD cash rate. Federal Reserve announces the cash rate increased to 0.5%, which shall fundamentally lead to AUD depreciation. Then, BHP state it wanted to buy AUD 100M at 0.8494. This announcement could be able to give us a hint to set our quotes higher than 0.8494. However, the sell rate rises sharply while the buy rate remains in the same level without significant news being released. It is very likely that this movement is caused by mispricing.
At 10:15:00, the price falls dramatically and the sell price is even lower than the buy price. The reasonable explanation is that the actual BOP surplus is lower than the expectation, causing the depreciation of AUD. Meanwhile, there are still some banks might misprice their price since the abnormal quotes. After that the price quotes return to the normal level.
From 10:24:43, there are three continuous news released which have negative impact on AUD. After that the market price goes down slightly as response to the news. But the following appreciation of AUD is unexplainable except mispricing. Then the market price stays in a relatively stable level since no vital information is released. ‘
Overall, the market is not sufficiently efficient since the changes in price are always delayed and mispricing happens frequently. The major reason is that people are not familiar enough with the trading system and the foreign exchange quoting mechanism.
f. What you did wrong and remedial action.
Wrong Actions Reason Remedial Actions
1 Agreed to buy 15M
Forget the principle of 10M interval
Try to sell 15M to another bank
2 Refuse to buy 100M at 0.8488
Conservative strategy
Try to expand our transaction amount afterwards
3 Record the wrong information in position keeping
Not familiar enough with the trading system
Alter the wrong records
4 The reaction to arbitrage opportunities is too slow
Not familiar enough with the trading system
Try to be more concentrative
Table 2. Wrong and Remedial action
g. Depth and quality of operational performance measures of each role.
Role Responsibility Performance
Dealer Quickly and clearly answer and dial phones when banks tend to trade and we tend to buy.
About 1 minute
Communicate with the position keeper about details of trading information including bank name, trading quantity, trading number in time and ensure accurate recordings.
About 20 seconds
Discuss and change trading strategy with the risk manager to decide what role they are and whether they need to buy or sell.
During the whole trading process
Closely notice the price changes of price makers. If there are arbitrage opportunities, follow them and capture them.
Immediately and almost at any time
Position keeper
Communicate with the dealer and record trading details.
Around 20 seconds, but little transactions are time-consuming to record and more than 2 minutes are used.
Check transactions are accepted in time and recorded accurately.
10-20 seconds
Discover trading mismatches with their counterparties. If there are mistakes, the keeper needs to dial the trading bank as soon as possible.
Within 1 minute
Keep in touch with the risk manager to ensure buying and selling quantity.
Within 30 seconds
Risk manager
Know the quantity traded and their net position. Take chances to arbitrage and estimate their risks.
During the whole trading process
Discuss strategies with the dealer. Around 30 seconds each time
Continuously notice all the news and analyse their affects.
30 seconds after news announcement
Continuously check price changes and immediately give suggestions to the dealer.
During the whole trading process
Table 3. Operational Performance Measures of Each Role
h. What you learned from the trading session.
The first thing we have learned is that there are always discrepancies between expectation and reality. It is difficult to stick to our pre-established strategies during the real trading. One reason is our strategies do not take every possibility into account. More importantly, we failed to adjust our strategies swiftly to respond the market movement. For instance, we should be more aggressive when realising we were able to take advantage of the inefficiency and chaos of market.
In terms of job descriptions of each role, the risk manager should be more concentrative in monitoring the market movement and giving the rational expectation of the price movement based on the news released. The position keeper should be more careful in recording the transactions and notify the dealer and risk manager about the mismatched transactions in time. The dealer should concentrate on discovering desired quotes in the market and place reasonable quotes that comply with our strategy. Moreover, the dealer should be unambiguous in expressing the trading details when dealing with other banks in case mismatched transaction happens.
In summary, we have learned a lot in this trading session and been better prepared for the next session.
Appendix 2
……… Danlin Wang …Team Member responsible for the Report
a. Financial Performance.
Financial performance indicators focus on two aspects: Return and risk.
In terms of the return rate, we use the formula profit / (volume/2) to calculate our profitability. Since our first budget was aiming to high, we change our target of profit to a more practical and reliable level, which is 0.1%. Although the US Federal Funds Rate is 0.25%, it is a little higher rate for us to achieve according to the market limitations and small spread between market buying rates and selling rates.
Regarding the risk estimation, we monitored our maximum transaction amount and extreme long/short position. The larger transaction amount could increase the operation risk but it is also a key point to get more profitability. Additionally, the extreme long/short position represents the top amount that would remind us to deal in an adverse direction.
Indicators Budget Reality
Return Rate of return 0.25% 0.1% 0.095%
Dollar profit (USD)
2.5M 0.8M 0.038M
Risk
Maximum transaction amount (AUD)
50M 50M 30M
Extreme long/short position (AUD)
100M 100M 80M
Total Turnover (USD)
1Billion 800M 520M
Table 1. Financial Performance Indicators in Budget and Reality
It can be discovered that there is also a big difference between the budget and
reality. We reset a new budget with lower profitability but the real dealing is not good as we expected. Our strategy was conservative in order to reduce risks last time and we tend to expand our transaction amount. However, it is not so easy to reach a higher level like 80-100 million each transaction.
b. Summary of the economic scenario and your bank’s view on the foreign exchange price prior to the trading session
Based on the economic scenario, the Australian financial market would experience a falling trend since it has already been bearish a few weeks ago. In addition, the demand of AUD would decrease due to the gradually reducing foreign investment. Therefore, AUD would depreciate in the future.
1. The falling business confidence level represents decreasing average of trading and probability percentage. At the same time, the demand of AUD investment would decline as well.
2. Reducing retail expenditure leads to higher confidence, thus the Australian financial market will recover and AUD will appreciate correspondingly.
3. Although the job creation is at a high level, the unemployment rate has increased 1.25% which is affected by the recession of economy.
4. Since the Australian economy is largely depending on the commodity exports, the reducing commodity price would increase its demand, which could help AUD’s appreciation. However, if the quantity of exports is not large to stimulate the entire economy, there will be little effects on AUD’s fluctuation.
5. Worldwide terrorist activity would result in some bad influences and serious results. The world economy would go down and Australia would no longer safe paradise to invest. As a result, the value of AUD will depreciate.
6. High-priced property would weaken the investors’ willingness and confidence to invest. Hence, demand of AUD would decline with the depreciation of AUD.
c. Strategies developed for the trading session, including contingency strategies prior to the trading session..
The overall dealing strategy has remained to buy at lower price and to sell at higher price. It is the most important principle to trade through banks. Based on the economy scenarios, AUD will depreciate. Hence, we need to short first at a higher price and then long at a lower price. However, during the whole
trading process, the market reaction is slow that the buying and selling spread is very small to get profit.
We first analyse these news and then set different pre-trading strategies to face these situations to crab arbitrage opportunities.
Balance of payments due and AUD dollars have an expected surplus of $5 Billion. The great surplus of BOP represents that the capital inflow is larger than the capital outflow in Australia. It indicates that the demand of AUD has increased in terms of international trading and business. This will lead to the appreciation of AUD and we need to long AUD to react (9.25am).
Central bank quarterly statement of monetary policy due and the economy is expected to be slow. Thus, the demand of AUD would be reducing and the AUD would depreciate. Then what we need to do is to short our AUD (9.35am).
Consumer credit figures due and the economy would go down. The consumer credit figures indicate the benchmark of interest rates. If the economy slows down, we can see that the interest rate would witness a downside trend. Therefore, foreign investors would decrease investment in AUD. The value of AUD would depreciate accordingly and we should short AUD (10.55am).
Reduction in Australian cash rate by 0.5% would slightly decrease the demand of AUD. Therefore, we need to short the AUD after the event (11.20am). In addition, at the same time, the inflation rate reduced to 2.5%. There may be slight fluctuations but not big changes so that we can first observe the market tendency.
CPI provides the information that the Australian annual inflation rate equals 3%. It is a normal rate but the US inflation rate and changes of interest rates are unknown. Hence, we were waiting for the movement of the market (11.55am).
d. Strategies actually used during the trading session
The fundamental strategy is to buy at lower price and sell at higher price.
At the beginning, we play as a price taker and wait other banks’ quoting. Based on their quoting, we choose to maintain in the middle level. However, this conservative action makes us sinking into a passive situation and can only be affected by other active banks. In addition, we can hardly averse our situation in a short time.
Quoting price is critical to occupy a favorable position to trade. When there are arbitrage opportunities and other banks’ selling prices are almost at a same level, we increase just several pips based on their quoting but not
change our selling price. Therefore, there are banks tending to sell us their AUD dollars. It does work but the amount is not large. Then we decreased our selling price to a normal middle price and at the same time we reduced our buying price as well to attract buyers of AUD but the price would be a little higher than our increasing selling price. Hence, we could get the profit of the spread.
However, we did not suffer any lose in the whole trading process. Our selling prices are always a little higher than our buying prices. Although the selling and buying amount is not large, we understand the principles of FX trading. We tend to increase risk tolerance and return expectation in the next trading session.
e. Analysis of how and why the foreign exchange market price changed
FX market price should change with the releasing news. At 9.25am, there was a downward trend of sell rate but it did not match the releasing event that the AUD would appreciate. The market may have a time lag or mismatch to reflect the effects of the surplus of BOP. However, the buy rate retained as the same level compared with the former performance.
At 11.12am, the market witnessed an excessive reaction of the news that the economy would go down. During this period, there were no arbitrage opportunities because of the market mispricing. Therefore, this trend misleads the selling price far away from the normal level.
When the abnormal data was deducted, the selling price trend recovered to the normal level. The continuous events have slight impacts on both the sell and buy price fluctuation. Overall, the market is not efficient enough to reflect and indicate all the influences of events. Price takers and makers may sometimes misunderstood and mismatch their quoting that result in some mispricing satiations.
f. What you did wrong and remedial action.
Wrong Actions Reason Remedial Actions
1 Have emotional reactions to others.
When the counterparty bank confused about their buying price and selling price
Clearly talk to them about their prices and raise their attention to understand the principles of quoting and trading.
2 Reject other bands’ requests twice.
We changed our prices at the same time answered the phone. The other rejection is that we closed our quoting and there are also a bank wanted to take our price.
Tell them to pay attention to the market changes. When we tend to change prices, we should be as quick as possible to prevent some misunderstanding of our situation.
3 Not change quoting in time.
We need to change our quoting to get larger arbitrage spread but our quoting plan delayed because of answering phones.
To ask the risk manager for help to change our prices when the dealer is busy to answer phones.
4 The reaction to arbitrage opportunities is too slow.
Not react quickly with the requests of our customers and their buying and selling rate.
Prepare in advance to remember and understand the buying and selling of price takers and price makers. Tend to be more concentrative but actually always passive trade.
g. Depth and quality of operational performance measures of each role.
Role Responsibility Performance
Dealer Quickly and clearly answer and dial phones when banks tend to trade and we tend to buy.
About 1 minute
Communicate with the position keeper about details of trading information including bank name, trading quantity, trading number in time and ensure accurate recordings.
About 25 seconds
Discuss and change trading strategy with the risk manager to decide what role they are and whether they need to buy or sell.
During the whole trading process
Closely notice the price changes of price makers. If there are arbitrage opportunities, follow them and capture them.
Immediately and almost at any time
Position keeper
Communicate with the dealer and record trading details.
Around 30 seconds, but little transactions are time-consuming to record and more than 2 minutes are used.
Check transactions are accepted in time and recorded accurately.
10-20 seconds
Discover trading mismatches with their counterparties. If there are mistakes, the keeper needs to dial the trading bank as soon as possible.
Within 1 minute
Keep in touch with the risk manager to ensure buying and selling quantity.
Within 30 seconds
Risk manager
Know the quantity traded and their net position. Take chances to arbitrage and estimate their risks.
During the whole trading process
Discuss strategies with the dealer. Around 30 seconds each time
Continuously notice all the news and analyse their affects.
30 seconds after news announcement
Continuously check price changes and immediately give suggestions to the dealer.
During the whole trading process
h. What you learned from the trading session.
First, the dealer must prepare well and understand the principles deeply.
To clearly consider what role s/he is and what rate s/he needs to take. If there is an appreciation, what can s/he does to react and whether s/he needs to buy or sell.
To understand there are gaps between reality and expectation. The market trend may exceed your expectations and sometime may experience an adverse direction.
Our strategy is too conventional to deal and the trading amount was always not large as we imagine. We need to be more aggressive next time to take advantages of price spreads.
We need to quickly adjust and quote at appreciate time. When the news is releasing, we have to think about their influences and results to re-establish and alter our strategies.
A good job distribution is required to allocate our tasks. The risk manager needs to observe the market trend and monitor the abnormal situations continuously. In addition, the position keeper has to keep our transactions accurately and quickly. Communications among each other are necessary to help us trade successfully.
In summary, we learned so much again in the second trading process. We know what we did not well and how we can improve. We will prepare better to crab arbitrage chances and get profit in the third FX trading session.
Appendix 3
……… Li Chen …Team Member responsible for the Report
a. Financial Performance
Indicators Week4Budget Week 5 Budget Reality
Return Return on Equity 0.03% 0.05% 0.056%
Dollar profit (USD)
0.8M 0.2M 0.056M
Risk
Maximum transaction amount (AUD)
50M 200M 150M
Extreme long/short position (AUD)
100M 100M 100M
Total Turnover (USD)
800M 700M 700M
Table 1. Financial Performance Indicators in Budget and Reality
Financial performance indicators mainly focus on two aspects: Risk and Return.
We have earned $56000 profit in this week's trading simulation. The ROE equals total profit divided by total equity, which equals 100 million. The profit of our bank still ranked 5th in this week although the market is very tight.
Graph1: Profit earned by each bank
Regarding the risk control, we monitored our maximum transaction amount and extreme long/short position. Although more turnovers mean more potential profit we could earn, it also includes more risk. The extreme long/short position reminds us to square the account in time. It also can be found that there is a little difference between budget and reality. The reason is that the bid-ask spread is very tight, and we cannot make much profit from other banks except dealing with corporate. Apart from that, we made a mistake to fill the tender, and this made us miss a lot of profit.
b. Summary of the economic scenario and your bank’s view on the foreign exchange price prior to the trading session.
As is shown in the economic scenario, the Australian financial market has been bearish for several weeks, and this trend will continue to affect the economy of Australian. Apart from that, with the decreasing of the foreign investment in Australia, the demand of Aussie dollar will drop. In this situation, the Aussie dollar will continue depreciating in the near future.
1. With the falling of business confidence level, the average number of investment trading will drop. It means that the demand of Aussie dollar will decrease and this results in the depreciation of the AUD.
2. Although the retail expenditure has been steadily reducing over the past 15 months, the consumers regain the confidence in the economy. As the confidence of consumers rises, the Aussie dollar will appreciate accordingly.
3. The rate of unemployment has increased by 1.25% despite of the high level of job creation. It will result in the depreciation of Aussie dollar and bearish share market.
4. Since the Australian's economy mainly depends on the export of its commodity, the decreasing commodity price leads to the high demand of Aussie dollar, theoretically, this will result in the appreciation of Aussie dollar. However, China has become the largest commodity import country from the Australia. If the demand of commodity decreases in China, which means that China wants to relieve its economic growth and does not need so much iron ore or coppers etc., then the Aussie dollar will continue depreciating despite the price of the commodity drops down.
5. Worldwide terrorist activity results in negative influences and serious situation. The global economy will drop down and Australia certainly cannot avoid the negative influences on its economy. It is no longer a safe paradise where investors can invest without any doubts. As a result, the Aussie dollar will depreciate.
6. The high-priced property market means that there exist many economic bubbles in the property. And investors do not want to invest those risky properties. Therefore, the demand of Aussie dollar declines with the depreciation of the Aussie dollar.
c. Strategies developed for the trading session, including contingency strategies prior to the trading session.
The principal trading strategy should always be kept in mind that is buying at a lower price and selling at a higher price. Only in this way can we make profit in the foreign exchange market. According to the economic scenario, we predict that the Aussie dollar will depreciate. Therefore, when the market opens we should short Aussie dollar at a higher price and then buy back at a lower price. Nevertheless, this is only a theoretical strategy and it may not be achieved when the market opens. This is because every market competitor is familiar with this basic method, and no one wants to give other competitors to make profit in such simple way. Hence, we set some contingency strategies to cope with the situation of the market contraction. First of all, we can make transaction with corporate to make profit, for example, we set an appropriate ask price according to the market condition to win the tender from the corporate (toll holdings) and then we get the initiative to reset our bid price to attract other banks to sell their Aussie dollar. Consequently, we can make profit through this strategy. Apart from that, we predict that other banks may make no sense about the market news. If this situation happens, the chance to make profit is very difficult. Thus, we still need to observe other banks bid price and ask price and change our price according to attract buyers and sellers. Although this method helps us to make little profit in the market, this is the most effective way to win in the tight market.
After setting these special strategies, we analyze the market news and anticipate the market is inefficient, so we can find some mispricing to make profit.
Balance of payments due. Expected surplus of AUD 1 billion. The surplus of BOP indicates that the total export is greater than the total import. This also indicates that overseas buyers need more Aussie dollar to pay the commodity charge, thus the demand of AUD increases with the appreciation of the Aussie dollar(10:10 a.m.). If the market is efficient, we should long AUD at this time.
Central bank’s quarterly Statement of Monetary Policy due. Expected to reflect concerns that economy is slowing. When this announcement is released, the AUD will depreciate for that the demand of AUD from investors declines (10:30 a.m.). In this point, we should short our Aussie dollar.
Consumer credit figures due. Expected to show continued slowdown. This indicates that the AUD will depreciate (11:30 a.m.). Since investors reckon that the return of investing in Australia financial market is not attractive, thus the demand of AUD drops down. In this point, we should short AUD.
Consumer Price Index figures due. Expected Annual Inflation Rate expected to be 2.50% (11:40 a.m.). The inflation rate in Australia is about 2% to 3%, and 2.5% is a proper inflation rate in the whole economy. Thus, the exchange rate of AUD may not change, and we should do nothing but observe the market movement to find some arbitrage opportunities.
d. Strategies actually used during the trading session
As is predicted by us, the market is too contracting to make profit easily when the markets open. Each bank's quoting rate is almost the same. At the first time, we pick some banks with relative lower ask price and buy some AUD. After that, the market is moving upward, all banks rise their ask price and bid price. And at that time we change the ask price at a lower level according to other banks in order to attract potential buyers. Finally we sold all AUD successfully, although the profit is not very large at the beginning phase.
In the trading session, we also make transactions with corporate such as Toll Holdings and BHP Billiton, and these transactions is a good opportunities for us to make a promising profit. However, when we fill the tender of Toll Holdings we make a mistake. We do not see the tender amount clearly, 2 billion is equals 2000 million, but we just regard that this company want to buy 200 million and we fill 50million at 0.8499. So we missed a good opportunity to enlarge out profit.
Overall, the strategies which we have prepared are all being implemented in the trading session, and we predict the market correctly. Consequently, these strategies help us to make a good profit.
e. Analysis of how and why the foreign exchange market price changed
Graph 2: FX market movement
If the foreign exchange market is efficient, the price movement should always keep in step with market announcements. In fact, when the surplus of BOP news released, the bid and ask price also moved in contrary direction. After analyzing the market data, we found that the Westpac had mispricing, they set the bid price at 0.843 and ask price at 0.81! They have totally run out of the market. However, according to the code of ethics, we could not make illegal profit from the Westpac.
When the news of cutting interest rate released, the market overreact this news and the ask price dropped dramatically while the bid price did not change. There also exists mispricing when the news spread out. The ANZ bank set the ask price at 0.8102 while the bid price at 0.8489! However, according to the code of ethics, we could not make illegal profit from the ANZ.
During the period from 11:09 to 11:25, OCBC had mispricing in the FX market, they set the bid price at 0.8490 and ask price at 0.8130! This mispricing made the market average ask price slump although there was no news in this time period.
When the news of fallen of consumer credit released, the market suddenly moved into adverse direction. The exchange rate increased!
Graph 3: adjusted Foreign Exchange price movement
When the factors of mispricing have been deducted, the market average selling price tends to be stable. Although the overall tendency of the exchange rate is depreciating, there also exists some abnormal fluctuations after the market announcements. Above all, the market is not very efficient according to the market announcements. Meanwhile, some mispricing also exists in the market, but we cannot make theses illegal profit according to the code of ethics.
f. What you did wrong and remedial action.
Wrong Actions Reason Remedial Actions
1 Filling the tender of Toll Holdings with too little selling amount
Not sensitive about the number, do not make sense 2 billion equals 2000 million
Using another BHP tender to make profit to compensate the loss of profit in this tender.
2 Typing wrong ask price
Unintentionally touch the keyboard button
Change the ask price properly, and explain to those who want to make transaction with you at that time.
3 Buying the AUD high and selling it at lower price
Answering too much
calling and does not make
sense the AUD account
has 30M surplus
Let the risk manager to concentrate on the account position and tell the dealer in time.
g. Depth and quality of operational performance measures of each role.
Role Responsibility Performance
Dealer Quickly and clearly answering and dialling phones when other banks tend to trade with us and we tend to buy.
About 1 minute
Communicating with the position keeper about details of trading information including bank name, trading quantity, reference number in time
About 25 seconds
Discussing and setting different trading strategies with the risk manager according to the various market situations.
During the whole trading process
Closely watching the price changes of other banks. If there exists arbitrage opportunities, grabbing those opportunities.
Immediately and almost at any time
Position keeper
Communicating with dealer and recording transactions.
Around 30 seconds to record each transaction.
Checking accepted transactions in time and recorded accurately.
10-20 seconds
Discovering trading mismatches with our counterparties. If there exists mistakes, the keeper needs to dial the counterparty bank as soon as possible.
Within 1 minute
Keeping in touch with the risk manager to ensure correct buying and selling quantity.
Within 30 seconds
Risk manager
Tracking the quantity traded and the net position. Identifying arbitrage opportunities.
During the whole trading process
Discussing contingency strategies with dealer.
Around 30 seconds each time
Continuously noticing all the market announcements and observing the market fluctuation.
30 seconds after news announcement
Continuously checking price changes and immediately giving suggestions to the dealer.
During the whole trading process
h. What you learned from the trading session.
The dealer must set an appropriate bid and ask price during the trading in order to make profit during the tight foreign exchange market.
Each role in the bank group is equally important. The dealer, position keeper and risk manager should contribute to help the group make more profit.
Understanding the difference between reality and expectations during the trading session. The market may sometimes move to adverse direction according to the news, thus it is important to dealer and risk manager to watch and analyze the market and use a proper strategy to deal with it.
When there is little opportunity to make profit in the tight market, dealing with corporate is a good strategy to break the deadlock. If you can sell at a high price to corporate, then you can take initiatives to set an attracting bid price to attract potential sellers. In this way, you can make more profit than just making transaction with other banks.
Quickly adjusting price and changing strategy according to the various market situations are also important. If you find your price can be done arbitrage by other banks, then the risk manager should help dealer to change price when dealer is being called in order to decrease the potential loss if mispricing exists.
In conclusion, we have learned a lot of skills to make profit and find arbitrage opportunities in the foreign exchange trading session. And we hope to put these methods into practice.
Appendix 4
Foreign exchange policy
During each trading session, we try our best to find any arbitrage opportunities to
make profit under the code of conduct. Overall, we chose a conservative trading
policy. In the first trading session, we made efforts to reduce our risk exposure and
just wanted to make small profit margin from each transaction. Apart from that, we
used tenders to increase our profit. In the second trading session we changed our
policy to aggressive and we crabbed every transaction opportunity with corporate and
made profit.
Appendix 5
The job of each role is well allocated and each group member is responsible for when
s/he needs to do. The dealer’s job is all about trading with other banks by dialing and
answering phone calls. All the information including the trading bank, trading
amount, buying or selling, and reference number is required to be recorded by the
position keeper. The dealer also has to closely watch the price changes of other banks
and quote bid and ask prices.
The risk manager is a key role to dominate the operation of our whole bank. The
manager needs to monitor the entire economic and market environment and discusses
strategies with the dealer. Continuously checking price changes and immediately
giving suggestions to the dealer are also necessary for the manager.
The position keeper should communicating with dealer and recording transactions
accurately. The keeper has to discover trading mismatches with our counterparties. If
there exists mistakes, it is required to dial the counterparty bank as soon as possible.
Finally, all of the members have to comply the code of conduct.