For many firms, all eyes are on the Russian ruble as it has caught the attention of both retail and institutional FX firms, exchanges and traders over recent months, largely due to international demand for ruble liquidity.
Today, Alpari, a company with substantial experience in the Russian market, has taken a step contrary to many of its peers by issuing a brief announcement today concerning trading with three currency pairs, the first being EUR/RUB (Euro/Ruble). Starting from today, clients of the broker will be unable to open new positions with this particular pair, as well as two others, EUR/ILS (Euro/Shekel) and GBP/TRY (British Pound/Turkish Lira) three pairs, as all trading with these instruments is shifting to “Close only” mode.
This particular move comes only a matter of days subsequent to Alpari’s introduction of ruble dominated pairs on its binary options platform.
The reasons for the change were not made clear in the statement, with the puzzle being sufficiently complex if we consider that these instruments were added only recently to the list of offers, it was in June this year that the broker introduced EUR/RUB and EUR/ILS trading on the MT4 platform, however a call to Alpari’s technical support by LeapRate established that this suspension has no connection to volatility or demand.
Alpari explained to LeapRate that it had experienced technical problems with the quotes on these pairs on Thursday, and is now in the process of rectifying matters.
Given the recent volatility of the ruble, it is not clear why the broker would ditch an instrument obviously popular amid traders.
The full announcement from Alpari can be read here.