Hotspot, a CBOE Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBOE) company and a platform for institutional foreign exchange (FX) trading globally, has announced it has aligned its activities across its global business with the principles of the FX Global Code (“the Code”), issuing a Statement of Commitment today.
Following a comprehensive internal review, Hotspot’s business practices, procedures, compliance framework and disclosure standards have been augmented to fully reflect the Code’s principles, as published in May 2017. The platform has also conducted a series of customer meetings to clarify how Hotspot’s adherence will impact them and their business.
These efforts, which started over a year ago and developed as the Code’s drafting progressed, will remain a focus for Hotspot as commitment to the Code is expected to increase across the FX community and as its usage starts to further guide industry behavior.
A number of CBOE Holdings and Hotspot associates played an active role in the Code’s development and continue those efforts in a variety of industry groups. These include the Market Participants Group, the Financial Markets Lawyers Group, and the Foreign Exchange Professionals Association, of which the platform is a founding member.
Bryan Harkins, Head of U.S. Equities and Global FX at CBOE, said:
We believe that the Code will foster a more robust, open, liquid, and transparent FX market, and as a result, that the industry will increasingly demand adherence to the Code from counterparties and trading venues. For these reasons, our early commitment to the Code’s principles was a very straightforward decision, and we anticipate other market participants will follow our lead in short order.
Adherence to the Code is a natural progression for Hotspot. The platform was the first globally to announce Market Maker Standards for liquidity providers, particularly as they relate to the privilege of providing non-firm liquidity. These rules, first published in May 2015 and updated regularly since, are enforced to ensure fairness and transparency among users. In addition, Hotspot publishes and continuously updates its Operating Procedures, setting the standard in disclosure.
Hotspot maintains a number of volume metrics on its website in an effort to increase transparency, including intraday, firm and currency-pair volumes, as well as daily, monthly and quarterly figures.
Hotspot has enjoyed a strong 2017. In the first half of the year, the platform traded average daily notional value of $28.4 billion in spot FX, up 5.4 percent from full-year 2016. Further, Hotspot’s spot FX market share in the same six-month period rose to 12.9 percent, up 1.3 percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2016.