With some fanfare, Thomson Reuters launched yuan trading on its FX matching platform on Monday after the relaxation of Chinese currency rules in July.
In a statement last Friday, Reuters said 1,200 banks subscribed to Matching and “the existing Matching community, which are also registered Hong Kong Monetary Authority authorised institutions, will be able to access and trade dollar/yuan, euro/yuan and yuan/yen pairs.”
It seemed a bit hard to believe that of the 1,200 banks, all of them were already authorised; we predicted that yuan trading this week might be slow, what with all that pesky registration with HKMA.
According to a Thomson Reuters spokesman: “This is very early days and with most authorised institutions being domiciled in Hong Kong, we expect the majority of market makers to be the large local banks and International banks who operate in Hong Kong.”
The most liquid pair is currently spot USD/CNY, although as liquidity and interest grows in these newly listed pairs, we expect volumes to increase in the other crosses listed, EUR/CNY and JPY/CNY.”
EBS launched yuan trading on Monday as well although they did not blow their trumpet until Wednesday. Perhaps they heard Reuters making a lot of noise and thought they should too.