It hasn’t been a dull week: the USD 2% or so stronger against the EUR, JPY and GBP; EUR/CHF now comfortably below 1.43. But it has been a week where the trend was, at the very least, amicable. The only real counter-trend recommendations we’ve noticed were for CAD.

There was a time when trading was a headache. Not anymore!

Our inboxes have been filled to the brim over the last few weeks with guff from every ‘expert’ around, all wanting to give their informed opinion on the state of sterling.

"One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try to predict the stock market”

If the banks are found guilty of misleading the Milanese regarding the true cost and risk-profile of the instruments, there could be more than 40 similar cases to follow.

It has been a matter of market conjecture for some time but we can now say that Richard Longmore has left Barclays Capital where he was head of European institutional FX sales. We are told, but were unable to confirm, that he is destined for Nomura. Longmore joined Barclays in August 2006 from Merrill Lynch, where he was a managing director and head of EMEA FX sales.

The ‘father’ of Morgan Stanley’s Matrix has gone to UBS where he is now co-head of FICC e-commerce and is overseeing its new cross-product trading platform, UBS Trader Plus.

Luis Costa has joined Citi’s emerging markets strategy team as a director covering CEEMEA.

Lloyds TSB has appointed Lucian Lauerman (ex FX product manager at Saxo Bank) as director of e-product management, reporting to Jon Healey, head of e-product management.

Silvia Antonioli and Trevor Carr

Icap announced on Thursday that it has received final regulatory approval to complete the acquisition of the remaining 61.78% of stock in Swedish post-risk services company TriOptima on March 24.

In 2009 Google reported net income in excess of $6.5 billion and assets in excess of $40 billion. It is likely to be a serious contender in any arena in which it chooses to compete.

The FSA released its final notice about the Alexis Stenfors mis-marking case on Tuesday.

Which is the better barometer of market activity, beta 1 portfolio or an established index?

JPMorgan launched an iPhone app this week for MorganDirect, its FX and rates platform.

JPMorgan announced Wednesday the extension of MorganDirect AlgoX, its algorithmic order execution tool, to the Bloomberg platform.

Hotspot volumes for February were the highest on record. They reached average daily volumes of $34.7 billion, an increase of more than 12% over January ($30.8 billion) and a 105% increase over February 2009, which had average volumes of $16.9 billion.

ICE Futures reported a record for daily volume in its USD index futures of 77,811 contracts on Friday, March 12, with notional value of $6.2 billion. The previous daily volume record of 74,562 contracts was established on December 9, 2009. Year to date, average daily volume in the futures is 27,050 contracts, up more than 320% from a year ago.

David Stalker has left Credit Suisse for RBC. RBC has declined to comment.

Ernesto Mercandante has left Goldman Sachs. It is believed he will join JPMorgan to run FX sales for southern and central eastern Europe, as well as the Middle East and Africa.

Major shareholders in Saxo Bank have nominated three new board members to be elected at the annual general meeting on April 6.

We reported them back in December, and now the Nick Strain rumours turn out to be true (RBS no longer feels the strain). Morgan Stanley announced on Monday that Strain joins their Asian office in Hong Kong this week as managing director in fixed income and head of institutional sales in FXEM.

New ground was made to the downside in EUR/CHF as predicted by some of our featured analysts last week. The move was further compounded at close of business Thursday by a speech by Jean-Pierre Danthine, a new member of the SNB’s board The most ear-catching line in the speech was that: “...households and firms should prepare themselves for a return, sometime in the future, to a world of higher interest rates, with exchange rates being guided by market forces.” That doesn’t mean that the SNB is no longer going to intervene if the CHF appreciates too sharply. But it does bring the 1.4000 target, detailed last week, into sharp focus.

Alain Delelis has left his post as global head of spot FX at Credit Suisse.

Dan O’Sullivan is joining Société Générale as co-head of global FX trading in London. There has been no confirmation from the French bank, however. O’Sullivan was previously head of FX trading at Unicredit, which he left in April last year. Before that he was at HSBC New York.

Steve Pearson has resigned from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he was head of G10 currency strategy. Sources say he will be joining hedge fund Element Capital Management in New York to set up its macro-economic and strategy research function.

I was never much of a trend-follower (frequently to my cost), so I like to point out brave contrarian calls when I see them. Failing that, I’ll settle for an outrageously ambitious prediction about a trade for which there is already some consensus.

Standard Chartered Bank has teamed with officials from the People’s Bank of China, China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange for a series of roadshows to promote renminbi trade settlement in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. This is the first time that officials from government and regulatory bodies in China have partnered with an international bank on a roadshow.

Forex Capital Markets announced this week the launch of “a beta version of its mobile trading platform.” The software is available for iPhone, BlackBerry and phones running Windows Mobile.