Moscow Exchange to expand FX offering

In order to expand FX trading opportunities for market participants and boost liquidity, Moscow Exchange will introduce new instruments and services on its FX Market on 22 April 2019:

• Matching at the weighted average USD/RUB FX rate correlating to the Bank of Russia’s official rate;
• A pilot USD/RUB order book;
• New instruments for the Japanese Yen/Russian Ruble (JPY/RUB) currency pair;
• New currency pairs, US Dollar/Chinese Yuan (USD/CNY) and US Dollar/Turkish Lira (USD/TRY) will be added to the global OTC liquidity access project.        

Matching at the weighted average USD/RUB FX rate set by MOEX at 11:30 am MSK as the official Bank of Russia rate will be made available to provide banks, brokers, their clients and companies involved in cross-border trade new opportunities to execute currency exchange transactions and sell foreign currency that they have earned.

To stimulate on-exchange FX liquidity, advance the matching techniques and evaluate their impact on market liquidity, the experimental USD/RUB order book will be launched. The minimum lot size will be USD 1 million. The simulated random delay of 2-5 ms will be applied at order entry to eliminate arbitrage between technical access of different trading members. ‘Cancel’ transactions will not be delayed.  

JPY/RUB trading will be enhanced with instruments with deferred settlement (T+1) and an overnight TODTOM swap that will supplement currently available instruments with same day settlement.   

MOEX’s initiative to facilitate access to global OTC liquidity for FX Market participants will be expanded to include two new currency pairs, USD/CNY with settlement on T+2 and USD/TRY with settlement on T+1, along with already available EUR/USD and GBP/USD. OTC service connectivity has also been improved to provide a connection via the globally used FIX protocol applied on all MOEX’s markets.      

The Exchange implemented the facility to allow access to global FX liquidity in December 2018. Clients were given the opportunity to execute OTC FX trades at quotes of the world’s largest banks (liquidity providers), by using MOEX’s infrastructure and FX Market interfaces. NCC acting as the central counterparty provides clearing and ensures that every trade is settled.

Currently, MOEX FX Market offers trading in the US Dollar, Euro, Chinese Yuan, Hong Kong Dollar, Japanese Yen, British Pound, Swiss Franc, Turkish Lira, Belorussian Ruble and Kazakhstan Tenge. In March 2019, FX ADTV was USD 21 billion.