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Hong Kong: Citibank aims to tap increasingly active forex margin traders in Asia with a trading platform it launched in Hong Kong yesterday and plans to extend it to Singapore and Japan in the next few months.
Foreign exchange margin trading is growing globally by more than 25 per cent a year, with daily turnover estimated at about $100 billion and the Asia-Pacific region accounting for 40 per cent of trade, says Citibank.
Its platform, which was launched in the US in March, is aimed at money managers, hedge funds and individual traders.
"We're focusing towards the high end of this market," Alex Knight, Citi's Asia manager of forex margin trading, told a news conference. "We're not trying to create traders but aim to capture active traders of currencies or active traders looking to div-ersify into currencies."
The platform provides spot trading for more than 140 currency pairs from 23 underlying currencies and is leveraged at 50 times, enabling a trader who puts down $10,000 for example to take a $500,000 position. Citi said there is no commission charge. Users in Hong Kong will be able to open Hong Kong dollar denominated accounts.
Hong Kong is the world's sixth-largest centre for the world's foreign exchange market, which now generates daily trade of $3.2 trillion, seven times that of a decade ago, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
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