Derivs - FX

36 South, the London-based volatility trading firm that relocated from New Zealand four months ago, has hired Maya Abou Zeid as head of sales for the U.K. and EMEA—the eighth member of its team.

Nomura has reportedly hired Trevor Rosmarin from Merrill Lynch as its head of hedge fund fx derivatives sales.

Goldman Sachs and Bank of America each issued structured notes this week designed for investors bearish on the U.S. dollar’s prospects over the next two years. Each note is linked to the performance of a basket of currencies against the dollar and offers some principal protection.

Hedge funds lost hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars today on three-month and one-month double-no-touch options purchased during the summer months.

The options market has over the last week broken higher in euro/sterling spot, suggesting that bulls have successfully traded the pair over the last two months.

Credit Suisse has reportedly hired River Chien from RBC Capital Markets to cover fx and interest rate derivatives sales to corporates and institutional investors in Taiwan.

Bryan Morales, a v.p. in corporate fx sales at Barclays Capital, joined Credit Suisse in New York recently.

An unidentified firm reportedly executed a Bermuda double no touch option on the euro/U.S. dollar in recent weeks. It’s a trade not seen for some time, according to market watchers in London, who were scratching their heads about the rationale for reviving the option.

James Cooper, a G10 fx options trader formerly with Bank of America in New York, recently joined TD Securities and is in the process of transferring to Toronto with the firm.

Hedge funds and some corporates have been selling one-week volatility on U.S. dollar currency pairs and buying calls of the same tenor, expecting that vol will fall following the release of U.S. non-farm payroll data this Friday.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are holding meetings today and tomorrow to get feedback on their plan to divvy up regulation of the financial markets, including over-the-counter derivatives.

The EU Commission’s derivatives group is still waiting on responses from some of the “bigger, important investment banks,” on proposals to standardize the over-the-counter derivatives market, Sebastijan Hrovatin, secretary to the group in Brussels, told Derivatives Week today.