They control billions of dollars of equity and may borrow billions more, and thus may overwhelm intervention by central banks to support almost any currency, if the economic fundamentals are in the hedge funds’ favor. Investment management firms[edit Investment management firms (who typically manage large accounts on behalf of customers such as pension funds and endowments) use the foreign exchange market bearing an international equity portfolio needs to purchase and sell several pairs of reign currencies to pay for foreign securities purchases.
Some investment management firms also have more speculative specialist currency overlay operations, which manage clients’ currency exposures with the aim of generating profits as well as limiting risk. While the number of this type of specialist firms is quite small, many have a large value of assets under management and, hence, can generate large trades. Retail foreign exchange traders[edit source I Individual Retail speculative traders constitute a growing segment of this market with the advent of retail foreign exchange platforms, both in size and importance.
Currently, they participate indirectly through brokers banks. Retail brokers, while largely controlled and regulated in the USA by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and National Futures Association have in the past been subjected to periodic Foreign exchange fraud. [64][65] To deal with the issue, in 2010 the NFG required its members that deal in the Force markets to register as such (I. E. , Force CAT instead of a CAT). Those NFG members that would traditionally be subject to minimum net capital requirements, Faces and Bibs, are subject to greater minimum net capital requirements if they deal in Force.
A number of the foreign exchange brokers operate from the I-J under Financial Services Authority regulations where foreign exchange trading using margin is part of the wider over-the-counter derivatives trading industry that includes Contract for differences and financial spread betting. There are two main types of retail FIX brokers offering the opportunity for speculative currency trading: brokers and dealers or market makers. Brokers serve as an agent of the customer in the broader FIX market, by seeking the best price in the market for a retail order and dealing on behalf of the retail customer.
They charge a commission or mark-up in addition to the price obtained in the market. Dealers or market makers, by contrast, typically act as principal in the transaction versus the retail customer, and quote a price they are willing to deal at. Non-bank foreign exchange Non-bank foreign exchange companies offer currency exchange and international payments to private individuals and companies. These are also known as foreign exchange brokers but are distinct in that they do not offer speculative trading but rather currency exchange with payments (I. E. , there is usually a physical delivery of currency to a bank account).
It is estimated that in the I-J, 14% of currency transfers/payments[66] are made via Foreign Exchange Companies. These companies’ selling point is usually that they will offer better exchange rates or cheaper payments than the customer’s bank. These companies differ from Money Transfer/Remittance Companies in that they generally change[edit source I editable] Money transfer companies/remittance companies perform high-volume low-value transfers generally by economic migrants back to their home country. In 2007, the Ate Group estimated that there were $369 billion of remittances (an increase of 8% on the previous year).
