AUTOREFRESH 
What are currency fixings and how do they work?
Part of an occasional series of tutorials..
Fixing: A pre-set time of day when bids and offers are aggregated and cleared at a published price. Popular fixings are the Tokyo fixing at 00:50 GMT, “ECB fix” at 12:15 GMT and the London fixing at 16:00 GMT. Most of the volume at fixings is generated by asset managers. They have a fiduciary responsibility to get their clients the best possible execution and the thinking is the fixing price is the most transparent of the day. The benchmark price is published by the WM Company who observes the price action from 16:00 until 16:01 and sets the rate at their discretion.
What does that mean for the rest of us?
Traders can get an edge by learning which way the market is leaning at the fixings, the most important of which is the fixing at 4 pm London time each afternoon. Typically, we at ForexLive speak with our banking contacts a few minutes before the fixing to try and learn of any order imbalances.
If banks have lots of buy orders and not many sell orders, it is in their interest to push the market up in advance of the fixing, to fill the client orders at a higher price. When there are more sellers than buyers, the opposite often takes place. Having this information as the fix approaches can be quite advantageous.
Cheers for this Jamie. Very informative.
Jamie thanks for all you do on this site.I have this question – sorry if it is stupid :
“If banks have lots of buy orders and not many sell orders, it is in their interest to push the market up in advance of the fixing, to fill the client orders at a higher price.”
is this correct? I mean ,if the bank push up market ,is not acting against client interest?
whose got the drogans decoder ring???
Silviu, I believe this would be perceived as ‘front running’ which while not illegal in FX is not morally right either. Jamie, am I on the right track here?
A “tutorial” TAG would be mighty handy, speaking of the cloud
G’morning Sean!
Morning Zac
Hi Silviu. I’m afraid it’s naive to think that banks always work in their clients interests. Traders especially will do what they can to make some money and if this means upsetting a client, to be honest the trader doesn’t care.
Great stuff. I really like the “tutorial” reference. Always awesome to get insight into the real market. Plenty of technical analysis knowledge that can be easily obtained. Very few places with real insight like this of things that go on behind the scenes daily in the interbank market. Thank you Jamie and Sean.
Hi Sean ,thank you for your answer,….and those clients don’t have something to say,just have to accept this? I found this situation odd,clients could loose some good amounts of money
I dunno about that, Sean … my bank writes to me at least twice a week
Hi Silviu. When was the last time a bank worked for you? even a Ro Bank?
Are you talking about those blank checks with a 4% fee, Blackday?
Just tell them that you’ve changed your name to Gerry Davies
LOL
Are there any more tutorials like these?
All in good time, Raheem. All in good time…