《外汇交易实战图表与交易心理 》 作 者：(新加坡)许强 (美国)Gary Weiss

Once again, it should be understood that the role of making a market in foreign exchange hasn ’ t necessarily changed over the years, meaning that even now, it is usually necessary for a market maker to quote prices regardless of the way they feel about a market at any given point in time. However, aside from having wider spreads to work with, one of the historical advantages of this role was also the idea of creating reciprocal liquidity amongst other dealers. But this is less of an issue now, due to the fact that individuals’ at a centralized dealing desk no longer do much of the market making activity, but rather this function is performed by a mechanical model, housed in a server on a rack in the banks IT area. What this means is that individual relationships that were previously formed between mutually opposing dealers, no longer matter the way they once did because price liquidity is generated without human interactioa Fur ther, the implication of this trend is even more profound in the context of trading intelligence, which is, of course, the supposed reason for now being a market maker in the first placa

What has generally evolved in the latest iteration of electronic market making is that market intelligence is actually gleaned through the use of sophisticated shadow data mining software. These applications have mathematical algorithms that track price, direction, and amount of trading activity executed on a particular price feed, with the goal of course, once again, of extracting directional trading patterns. Although a seemingly obvious next step in the evolution of electronic markets, this particular trend has also had some unintended consequences.

Firstly, it has reduced the amount of true market makers that will supply prices, because they physically can*t compete on the level of IT expenditure necessary to keep pace. And, secondly, it has actually made spreads in the market tighter (not withstanding some of the recent price compression concerns with regard to market making profits in general).

The broad conclusion then with regard to market making as a practice in general is that for the buy side customer, this is an operation that is best left where it is. Not only is it not worthy of envy, but also it is mostly misunderstood. Very few groups, in today*s environment can actually claim to be profitable from this exercise. And, in fact, given some of the issues that have been discussed, it almost seems like most of the advantages in today* s foreign exchange market actually belong to the buy side customer as opposed to the institutional market maker.

名词解释

Market Maker:做市商制度，是不同于竞价交易方式的 一种证券交易制度,一般为柜台交易市场所采用。做市商是 指在证券市场上，由具备一定实力和信誉的证券经营法人作 为特许交易商、不断地向公众投资者报出某些特定证券的买 卖价格，双向报价并在该价位上接受公众投资者的买卖要 求，以其自有资金和证券与投资者进行证券交易的券商。

Pip:最小的价格跳动单位，也叫做tick或point。

Bid Offer Spread:买卖价差。

Institutional Market Maker:机构做市商。

Economic data Does it really matter to a trader

Throughout the years the idea of a standard relationship between current indicators, in economic terms, and the price movements for foreign exchange has been an interesting and sometimes fragile association. In particular, the idea that any singular chronic issue with the United States, for example, can become the setting mode for currency prices is at best a dubious proposition. Take for instance the current environment of what has been referred to as the twin deficits. These of course being trade and current account (to say nothing of long term cumulative budget deficits) . The question here is, do they matter in the short term, or for that matter even at all? And, if they do matter, is there any empirical evidence to support the cause and effect characteristics of these events? To put this in perspective, its interesting to note that as far as trade deficits are concerned, the US has run these, in increasingly large numbers, for at least the past twenty to thirty years. During this period there have been periods of both weak and strong dollar valuations, and of course, significant upwards movement for asset values in general (in particular, but not uniquely in equities) .Recall, that in the early 1980's interest rates in the US stood at high double digit levels, and trade deficits existed at that time in record amounts. But this did not foretell the movement of dollar values, particularly within the next 10 years.

In (fact the history of trade deficits in particular, is worth understanding from a somewhat longer term perspective. For example, as early as in the 1950's there were concerns, particularly with the exports from Japan to the US of certain textiles and raw materials that warranted the imposition of tariffs. This was an explicit acknowledgement of the problems associated with a growing trade deficit between the US and Japan. Within the early 1960’s certain raw material export restrictions were removed, by the Kennedy administration, and once again the trade deficits were viewed as being a problematic and expanding issue. However, the most interesting period to view this phenomenon and the currency related dynamic is in fact the period from the late 1970’ s to the early to mid 1980，s.