A

Beware of false foreign exchange trading scams

There are two main ways for domestic investors to participate in foreign exchange speculation: real trading and false trading.

firm trading refers to the way investors buy and sell foreign exchange at the bank counter. The premise of firm trading is that investors must have the spot of this foreign exchange in their hands. If investors want to buy dollars and sell euros, they must have the spot of euros and buy and sell at the bank exchange rate. Because there is no leverage in bank counter trading, and the fluctuation of foreign exchange price is small, it is not attractive to speculators. In fact, the bank counter market is only a "retail market", and the foreign exchange trading is usually the demand for trade or the demand for banknotes for individual investors to travel abroad.

for institutional investors such as banks, securities firms, funds and insurance institutions, foreign exchange transactions can be conducted through the inter-bank foreign exchange market. The inter-bank market is a market that individual investors cannot participate in. Institutional investors conduct foreign exchange transactions with other institutions through centralized bidding and dual-currency inquiry (market makers) through trading centers in the inter-bank market. The interbank market supports spot RMB against nine foreign currencies (US dollars, euros, Japanese yen, Hong Kong dollars, British pounds, ringgit, Russian rouble, Australian dollars and Canadian dollars), forward RMB against seven foreign currencies (US dollars, euros, Japanese yen, Hong Kong dollars, British pounds, Australian dollars and Canadian dollars), and RMB against five foreign currencies (US dollars, euros, Japanese yen, Hong Kong dollars and British pounds) And spot, forward and swap transactions of nine groups of foreign currency pairs (Euro/USD, AUD/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CAD, USD/CHF, USD/HKD, EUR/JPY and USD/SGD).

False trading, that is, foreign exchange margin trading, refers to leveraged trading conducted by investors at foreign exchange dealers through the margin system, which is somewhat similar to foreign exchange futures. Many foreign exchange dealers in the world have provided Chinese investors with ways to open accounts and trade, and some have also provided Chinese websites and Chinese customer service. However, before domestic investors conduct foreign exchange margin trading through global foreign exchange dealers, they must know their legal compliance in detail, and pay special attention to identifying some counterfeit or fraudulent platforms to avoid being deceived.

Tips

Shanghai police reveal the whole process of fraud on false foreign exchange trading platforms

In recent years, relying on the empowerment of smart public security, Shanghai police have strengthened network inspections and stepped up their efforts to actively discover and crack down on telecommunication network fraud crimes such as investment and wealth management. At the end of April 22, the police found in their work that some criminals lured investors to invest in the so-called "Jingshi International" foreign exchange trading platform through the webcast room. After preliminary verification, the platform not only has no relevant qualification certificate, but also has only been online for more than one month, and it is only promoted internally in the webcast room. There are various indications that this platform is very likely to be suspected of fraud.

Pudong Branch of Shanghai Public Security Bureau immediately set up a task force to conduct in-depth investigation under the guidance of the Municipal Bureau's Network Security Corps. After tracking and careful investigation, the task force quickly grasped the organizational structure, fraud methods and activity area of this telecommunication network fraud criminal gang. The gang has a clear division of labor and strict organization. According to the fraud process, it is divided into different gangs, such as operation, technology, lecturer and agent. The technical gang uses overseas servers to build a false foreign exchange investment and live broadcast platform, and the agent gang lures investors into giving live lectures by the lecturer gang. The lecturer gang helps investors make small profits through the so-called "accurate prediction" to deepen their trust. After investors make large investments, criminal gangs cheat money by modifying data to create the illusion that their investments are damaged, and then quickly close the platform after making profits.

On May 5th, the police of the task force rushed to Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Jinan and other places to carry out further tracking and investigation. With the help of the local police, after visiting and arranging, the task force successfully locked the dens of criminal gangs and collected and fixed relevant criminal evidence. During the period, the police found that the criminal gang was about to be "closed down". In order to avoid the suspect from transferring funds and escaping the blow, the task force made a decisive decision and immediately launched a centralized arrest operation on the evening of May 11th. The main suspect of the criminal gang, Peng Mou, platform management customer service Luo Mou, live room customer service Zou Mourong, subordinate agent company boss Liu Mouli, live room lecturer Zhang Mou and live room technical maintenance Yang Mou, were arrested at 15 points in Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

After arriving at the case, the suspect explained the whole fraud process of "building a platform-setting up a trap-tampering with data-closing the order-making money laundering profits".

First of all, technical gangs will set up fake investment platforms and webcast rooms by using overseas servers in advance. After the subordinate agents buy or rent a number of WeChat accounts, they will ask their employees to update their friends circle information regularly, so as to disguise themselves as lecturers, lecturer assistants and other investors to increase their credibility, and then use these WeChat to form multiple crime groups. Then, a special person will purchase accurate shareholder information through various channels, so that the seller can directly pull these shareholders' WeChat into the crime group by inviting friends to join the group. After the victim joins the group, the agent will send stock-related investment knowledge through WeChat pretending to be a lecturer and assistant, so that the victim can think that this is an investment exchange group, and interact with the lecturer WeChat through WeChat pretending to be an investor, and give psychological hints to the victim by talking about stocks, explaining the market situation and praising the lecturer's level, so as to raise the authority of the lecturer. In fact, in these WeChat groups used for committing crimes, except for the victims, other group members are all disguised by criminal suspects. Subsequently, the group will launch the lecturer's webcast room in due course, and invite the victims to join in various names such as studying and attending classes. At this point, the preparatory work for fraud has been completed.

the next step is the team of lecturers. They will design a six-week plan in advance, define the weekly tasks and requirements, and constantly "brainwash" the victims and lure investment. In the early stage, this group of lecturers without formal qualifications will explain the relevant contents of stocks, and there are also people pretending to be customers in the live broadcast room to speak and flatter the lecturer team. In the mid-term, the lecturer introduced foreign exchange knowledge such as A5 index, and cooperated with the "trust" in the live broadcast room with the rhetoric that the domestic stock situation was not good and foreign exchange investment made money quickly, and gradually lured the victims to open an account and deposit money on the "Jingshi International" foreign exchange trading platform. In the later period, the lecturer constantly stimulated the victim to add money and generate transactions with false news such as doubling the market price. As everyone knows, only the victim and his own money are real in the whole live broadcast room, and everything else is fake. The money that the victim transferred to the platform through the payment link provided by the platform eventually entered the account of the main suspect Peng.

The "Jingshi International" foreign exchange trading platform looks formal on the surface, and the data in it is exactly the same as the real market, but it is actually just a virtual disk, and the data can be modified by the suspects at will. Once the victim has invested a large amount of money in the platform, the suspect will choose to modify the data in the middle of the night or early morning to create the illusion of investment damage and defraud the money. In these few short minutes, the victim could not detect the abnormality of the platform data in time, thinking that his investment failure led to losses. During the period, once a victim has doubts about the data of the live broadcast room, lecturer and platform, the lecturer or the customer service of the live broadcast room will explain and communicate, but if the other party still doesn't believe it, the manager will directly kick the other party out of the live broadcast room and pull it into the blacklist, and continue to switch to the next victim.

At present, 22 suspects in this case have been arrested by the procuratorate according to law, and the rest of the suspects have been taken criminal compulsory measures according to law, and the case is under further investigation.

B

Forecast and analysis of exchange rate changes

The importance of forecast and analysis of exchange rate changes is obvious. If it can be accurately predicted, it will be great, because it means that it is not difficult to make money. On the one hand, it is difficult to predict exchange rate changes, because there are many factors affecting exchange rate changes; On the other hand, among many influencing factors, there are social and political factors besides market factors, and the latter is more elusive than market factors. Even in countries that implement a free monetary policy, when the exchange rate changes greatly, especially when the domestic economy is troubled, the government will exert indirect or direct influence on the foreign exchange market through a series of economic policies, such as monetary policy and fiscal policy. Will the government act under the circumstances of exchange rate changes? When is the action? How strong will the action be? What is the actual impact? For forecasting analysts, it is difficult to accurately grasp.

for long-term investors, the most important thing to pay attention to when analyzing the trend of foreign exchange is the supply and demand of money. The most fundamental reason for the price increase of a currency is the increase in demand for this currency, regardless of whether this demand is based on speculation, hedging or simple currency exchange. Whether it is the data of economic growth rate, interest rate or trade, the price of money is ultimately influenced by the supply and demand of money. When supply is less than demand, the currency will appreciate; When the supply exceeds the demand, the currency will depreciate. However, how to predict supply and demand is not as simple as many people think. Among the many factors that affect supply and demand, the most important ones are capital demand, trade demand and speculative demand.

capital demand refers to foreign direct investment, such as foreign companies investing in domestic manufacturing, real estate or acquiring domestic enterprises, which require foreign companies to sell other countries' currencies and buy their own currencies. This capital demand will cause fluctuations in the foreign exchange market.

for fundamental analysis, capital demand is very important. The change of a country's financial market or economic policy will lead to the change of direct demand, which will affect the change of currency value. If local policies encourage foreign investment, it will promote direct demand. For example, after China joined the World Trade Organization, the laws on foreign investment began to relax, and cheap labor and attractive consumer market attracted the influx of global funds. In the foreign exchange market, the influx of funds into China will lead to the appreciation of RMB.

trade flow is the basis of international transactions, and trade demand will also affect the trend of foreign exchange. If a country is a net importer, the amount it buys from other countries' products and services is higher than that from other countries, which leads to a trade deficit (in a certain period, the total value of a country's export trade is less than the total value of its import trade, that is, the trade deficit, also known as the "trade deficit"). In order to buy products and services from other countries, importers must sell their own currencies and buy other countries' currencies, resulting in the devaluation of their own currencies and the appreciation of other countries' currencies. At the same time, a country may formulate economic policies to make its currency stronger or weaker in order to balance trade demand and domestic consumption demand, thus affecting its currency quantity.

Speculative demand refers to the inflow or outflow of capital in domestic financial markets (such as stock market and fixed income market). A rising financial market is an opportunity that investors around the world can't miss. Therefore, a country's financial market, especially the stock market, is increasingly related to the country's currency. When the stock market rises, in order to seize the opportunity to invest in the country's stock market, investors usually buy the country's currency, causing the currency to appreciate; On the contrary, if the country's stock market does not perform well, capital will flee the country and invest in other countries with better market performance, causing the country's currency to depreciate.

For example, at the end of the 2th century, the American stock market was very prosperous because of the guidance of Internet stocks, and investors all over the world wanted to enter the American stock market to get high returns. Therefore, indirect demand leads the dollar to rise all the way. However, the bursting of the Internet bubble and the occurrence of terrorist attacks have caused investors to flee dollar assets, leading to the decline of the dollar.

Speculators who are keen on short-term trading are generally reluctant to make fundamental analysis and prediction. They rely more on some technical indicators in technical analysis methods, and some trade only by their own intuition or experience.

Tips

The exchange rate leader depends on the US dollar index, and the rise and fall of the US dollar index depends on the interest rate

The US dollar index is an indicator that comprehensively reflects the exchange rate changes of the US dollar in the international foreign exchange market. Although the index only includes six foreign exchange varieties, because these six varieties are the mainstream currencies in the world, the rise and fall of the US dollar index has sufficient index significance. The rise (fall) of the US dollar index not only means that the US dollar is rising (falling) against mainstream currencies, but you will also see that it is basically rising (falling) against non-mainstream currencies, although it is not excluded that the exchange rate of the US dollar against individual foreign exchange is falling (rising). The reason for this is that the US dollar occupies the most important position in the global capital market.

The trend of the US dollar index is of course influenced by many factors. For example, the US dollar index is closely related to the trend of the US stock market. The stock market is in a bull market, and global funds flow to the United States, so the exchange rate of the US dollar will rise. Another example is the important economic data of the United States, such as labor force report (salary level, unemployment rate and average hourly income), consumer price index (CPI), producer price index (PPI), gross domestic product (GDP), international trade level, industrial production, housing starts, housing permits and consumer confidence. There is also a negative correlation between the US dollar index and the price of gold, that is, when the US dollar index falls, gold is rising, while when gold falls, the US dollar index is rising. However, from the historical experience, the number one factor affecting the US dollar index still has to pay attention to the US market interest rate.

Under normal circumstances, when the interest rate of the US dollar falls, especially when it is much lower than that of other countries, it will lead to the outflow of US dollar capital. At this time, the low-interest US dollar is equivalent to the engine that releases the US dollar flood to the world, which will lead to the decline of the US dollar index, and the entry of cheap US dollars into other countries will also cause a temporary landscape phenomenon. However, when the interest rate in the United States gradually rises, it will attract a large amount of US dollar capital to return. The gradual rise of interest rate is equivalent to drawing US dollars from the world with a water pump, which leads to the snapping up of US dollars in the international market, which makes the US dollar index gradually rise, and at the same time causes the embarrassment of capital shortage in other countries, and even leads to a financial crisis. When asset prices fall sharply, US dollar capital will come back to harvest cheap assets.

Figure 1 is a monthly comparison chart of the yield of 1-year US Treasury bonds and the US dollar index from 198 to 22. In the first half of the 198s, there were a large number of trade deficits and huge fiscal deficits in the United States, but the US dollar index soared all the way. The reason was that the United States implemented a high interest rate policy, which prompted a large amount of capital to flow into the United States from Japan and Western Europe. After that, the market interest rate fell all the way, and the attractiveness of the US dollar gradually lost. With the gradual outflow of the US dollar, the US dollar index also fell sharply.

Figure 11-year bond yield and US dollar index