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The foreign-exchange market
外汇市场
Fixed rates
固定汇率
The money-spinners await their fate
货币投机者只能等待赚钱的时机
A CITY worker looking for a quiet place to nap nowadays could do worse than head for his bank's foreign-exchange (FX) trading floor. Once noisy with activity as gesticulating dealers moved around billions of dollars, euros and yen, it is more likely now to be an oasis of calm. Bankers are plain bored. “The FX market has been exceptionally quiet,” moaned currency analysts at Citigroup recently. “In fact, it's been so quiet that there was almost no point in writing this report.”
如果一个市政工人想找个安静的地方打个盹儿，那他还不如去银行的外汇交易大厅。这里曾经很嘈杂，交易员们在这里做大笔的美元、欧元和日元的外汇交易；但是现在这里却像一片寂静的绿洲。银行家们简直是闲得无聊。“外汇市场安静得离谱！”花旗集团的一个货币分析师最近哀叹道：“实际上，外汇市场如此萧条，做这份报告几乎没有意义！”
The summertime torpor disguises existential angst. Regulators across the world are probing the role of banks in currency trading, apparently convinced it is the latest financial market to have been fiddled. Around 30 bank staff, including many trading-floor bosses, have been suspended or fired. Hefty fines seem inevitable. Worse, reforms may tear the heart out of the FX market as it is presently constituted. Banks, which make money by offering to buy or sell currencies from or to their clients, could go from being central actors to bit players. The future of a business which used to reap annual revenues of 20 billion is at stake.
夏季迟钝症掩盖了潜在的危机。全球的监管机构都在调查银行在货币交易中扮演的角色，显然他们认为这是又一个存在商业违规行为的金融市场。将近30名银行职员已经被停职或解雇了，其中包括许多交易大厅的老板。巨额罚款看来是不可避免的！更糟糕的是，改革可能会将外汇市场现在的核心业务分离出去。银行之前是通过向客户买卖外汇盈利的，但是改革之后它在外汇交易中可能将会由主角变为小角色。这个年收益200亿美元的差事儿已经岌岌可危。
Not that such bounty is attainable these days anyway, given the placid state of the market. Currency-trading volumes have slumped. That is largely because the world's big central banks have replaced yo-yo-ing interest rates—which in turn determine the levels of their currency—with a uniform near-zero level since the financial crisis. The upshot is that floating exchange rates have seldom been so stable: volatility has plunged to its lowest level in two decades.
在如今这样冷淡的市场环境下，要想获得如此可观的收益是很困难的。货币交易量已经大幅下滑，这主要是因为金融危机之后，全世界的各大央行开始推出统一的接近于零的低利率政策，而放弃了之前随市场波动的浮动利率政策—利率反过来又影响着汇率水平。结果是浮动的汇率出现了罕见的稳定状态：其波动率已经将至了20年来的最低水平。
As a result, once-keen users of banks' FX services have learned to do without them. Multinationals that might once have tried to hedge their foreign-currency exposures now opt to live with the risk, assuming that exchange-rate movements will remain within a limited range. Financial firms, which make up over 90% of trading volumes, have also pared back. Hedge funds that wager on currencies have shrunk or left the market in recent years. And banks, whose traders sometimes also bet on market moves, are no longer keen to do so. Appetite for risk is non-existent: “This is not a time to try something clever in FX,” says a trading boss in London.
这样一来，那些曾经喜欢在银行交易外汇的用户已经不再热衷于此了。假设汇率只在一个小范围内浮动，那些曾经忙于对冲外汇风险的跨国公司如今也不必为此头痛了。金融机构占据了90%的外汇交易，而现在交易量也下滑了。借助外汇进行投机的对冲基金近些年来也纷纷缩小规模或撤离市场了。对于银行，一些交易商以前经常进行市场投机，现在这些投机活动也很少了。市场已经不再偏好风险了；一个伦敦的交易大亨说：“现在不是在外汇市场上投机的好时机！”
Volatility will eventually come back—British holidaygoers may have noticed the value of the pound rising and falling this week—as the world's biggest economies recover and interest rates move around more. But the tidy profits once made by banks may not. Much of the market for major currency pairs, such as dollar-euro or pound-yen, is now conducted electronically. Anyone wanting to exchange less than 100m is unlikely even to speak to a human being these days. The spreads on trades have become vanishingly thin. Even the profits to be made on making markets in more obscure emerging-market currencies, where spreads were once wider, have evaporated. High-frequency traders are moving in, too, hobbling banks.
汇率波动最终还是会恢复的--英国的度假者也许会注意到英镑在本周有所起伏--世界上最大的经济体会复苏，利率也会有更大范围的波动。但是过去银行的丰厚利润可能不复存在。主要货币组合大部分交易市场已经电子化，如美元-欧元、英镑-日元交易市场。现在，任何一个想兑换不足一亿美金外汇的交易商都不会把他的这笔交易告诉别人。交易商的利差将会逐渐缩小。即使是在无名的新兴货币市场，外汇交易的额外利润也会逐渐减少。高频交易商同时也在进军跛足的银行业。
But the big worry is what regulators are likely to say and do. Although they have yet to detail their case against banks, their investigations are focusing on whether FX traders bilked clients by fiddling widely-used daily benchmarks. There is nothing sophisticated about the alleged fraud: clients looking to buy or sell FX from bank trading desks agreed to price currency deals at the price prevailing at 4pm London time, regardless of when the order was placed. Bankers soon found they could bend that price in their favour, and they did. Worse, they appear to have colluded in order to execute the scam. The transcripts of online chat rooms they used, dubbed “the Cartel” and “the Bandits' Club”, are likely to amuse neither bank compliance officers nor regulators.
但是，金融业最担心的还是监管机构的制裁。虽然金融监管机构暂时还未对银行案件做出详细报告，但是他们正在集中调查外汇交易商是否通过篡改每日基准利率来欺骗客户。这种涉嫌欺诈的行为很简单：无论什么时候下订单，客户依靠伦敦时间下午四点时的价格向银行买卖外汇；而银行家们很快就发现他们可以通过改变那个价格使得自己更有利可图，然后他们这么做了。更可怕的是，他们似乎是勾结起来共同谋划这个阴谋。他们网上聊天的记录被称为“卡特尔”和“土匪俱乐部”，这可能是银行合规人员和监管机构都不愿意看到的。
Much of the errant behaviour happened after banks promised to clean up, having been caught tampering with LIBOR, an interest rate used to peg contracts worth trillions of dollars. Their most plausible defence is that some watchdogs knew about the way the market actually worked, including the collusion. The Bank of England, which oversees the world's biggest FX centre in London, has suspended an employee.
被调查出篡改伦敦银行同业拆借利率之后，商业银行承诺清理门户，但却做出了许多违规行为。他们看似最合理的为自己辩护的理由是：许多监管部门一直都知道市场的实际运作方式，包括银行间的相互勾结。英国央行监管着世界上最大的伦敦外汇中心，日前该银行已经有一名职员被停职。
The fines for the currency fiddle could reach 26 billion globally, according to KBW, a bank. Cheated clients might sue for compensation, too. Many complain the market is no longer fit for purpose. The more powerful among them, including giant institutional investors and asset managers, might egg on regulators who want to change the way currencies are traded. The Financial Stability Board, a committee of global supervisors, has floated the idea of a “global utility” that would match supply and demand of currencies. Whatever that means—and few know for sure—it sounds like a way of sidelining bankers. More details are expected in time for a meeting of G20 leaders in November.
根据KBW银行估计，全球范围内针对篡改货币利率的罚金可达到260亿美元。欺骗客户还可能会遭到赔偿起诉。许多人抱怨货币市场已经不再像以前那么容易控制了。包括大型机构投资者和资产管理者在内的金融从业者权利越大，就越有可能鼓动监管机构改变货币交易方式。金融稳定理事会是一个全球监督委员会，它提出了符合全球货币供求的“全球效用函数”的概念。不管这个概念具体是什么--也很少有人确切的知道--听起来这就像是一个削弱商业银行作用的措施。详情将会在十一月份的20国集团金融峰会上提出。
Banks think a “fine-tuning” of the FX market and a stern reminder to traders not to be crooked would suffice. Some are paring back their currency activities, worried about profits being squashed between fixed costs and shrinking revenues—down to 13 billion this year, thinks Morgan Stanley, a bank. Those that remain may find it a harder environment to thrive in.
商业银行认为一方面对外汇市场加以调整，另一方面郑重提醒客户防止受骗这两种措施就足以解决问题。摩根史坦利银行认为，许多银行正在削减他们的货币交易业务，因为担心由于成本固定而收入不断下降会使利润越来越少--今年已经下降到130亿美元。而那些保留货币交易业务的银行，必须在更加艰苦的市场环境中奋力求生。
