The Trading Floor with David Axtell

Luigi Rondanini speaks frankly: the podcast, the books, the effort. FX Cash Products selling well. FX Derivatives out September. Book 3 with David Axtell in progress. Fiction, Market Myths, Commodities series. Thank you and goodbye. FX Cash Products book, FX Derivatives Products, cross-currency swaps book, Luigi Rondanini, David Axtell, Rondanini Publishing, FX professional series, learn rondanini...

Season One finale. David Axtell on the future of FX: AI, T+1 settlement, renminbi internationalisation. Book 2 (FX Options, sole-authored by Luigi) and Book 3 (Cross-Currency Swaps, David returns) both in progress. Ep 20. future of FX, FX markets future, electronic FX trading, AI market making, algorithmic FX, T+1 settlement, FX settlement reform, CLS settlement, distributed ledger FX, CBDC FX, re...

NDFs carry risks standard forwards don't. David Axtell covers delta exposure, EM VaR, stress testing peg breaks, fixing manipulation, CSA structures, operational controls, and governance frameworks. March 2020 included. Part V. Ep 19. NDF risk management, NDF delta, NDF VaR, emerging market VaR, fixing risk, fixing manipulation, NDF stress test, currency peg break, CNY devaluation risk, INR ri...

Not all NDF liquidity is equal. David Axtell breaks down the three-tier market structure, how dealers skew quotes to manage inventory, when electronic beats voice, and why information leakage can cost more than the spread. Part V. Ep 18. NDF liquidity, NDF execution, NDF market microstructure, NDF dealer, electronic FX trading, voice FX execution, multi-dealer platform, Bloomberg FXGo, Refinitiv F...

Capital controls block physical currency delivery. David Axtell explains how non-deliverable forwards solve that problem — settlement mechanics, fixing sources, NDF basis, and why $250B+ trades daily in markets you cannot physically touch. Part V. Ep 17. non-deliverable forward, NDF, NDF settlement, NDF fixing, CFETS fixing, RBI reference rate, Bank of Korea rate, USD CNY NDF, USD INR NDF, NDF bas...

Every payment, every currency, every day. David Axtell covers the treasurer's daily toolkit: FX swaps, repo, money markets, LCR, NSFR, intraday management, and stress testing. The practical reality of keeping operations funded. Part IV finale. Ep 16. liquidity management, LCR, NSFR, Basel III liquidity, high quality liquid assets, HQLA, intraday liquidity, daily cash position, multi-currency m...

Dollar swap lines. Reserve management. Intervention mechanics. David Axtell explains how central banks operate in FX markets, why verbal jawboning moves rates 1–2%, and how the Fed deployed $450B+ in swap lines during March 2020. Part IV. Ep 15. RELATED RESOURCES: Book: FX Cash Products — available now through all major bookstores and rondanini.com Education platform: learn.rondanini.com — 145+ pr...

$13 trillion of non-US bank assets funded via FX swaps. David Axtell explains synthetic dollar borrowing, why the cross-currency basis never disappears, Japanese megabank strategy, and the quarter-end effects every treasurer must plan around. Part IV. Ep 14. RELATED RESOURCES: Book: FX Cash Products — available now through all major bookstores and rondanini.com Education platform: learn.rondanini....

$3.8 trillion a day. More than spot. More than forwards. Yet most practitioners can't explain them clearly. David Axtell breaks down FX swap structure, swap points, short-dated variants, and why the cross-currency basis never disappears. Part IV. Ep 13. KEYWORDS: FX swaps, foreign exchange swaps, swap points, cross-currency basis, FX swap structure, near leg far leg, overnight swap, tom next s...

Your hedging programme works perfectly. The economics are flawless. Then five million dollars appears as a loss in your quarterly earnings — and nobody told the CFO. Episode 12 tackles the topic most treasury professionals avoid: hedge accounting. The accounting frameworks that determine whether your derivative gains and losses end up in the right place on your financial statements. David Axtell e...

Knowing what a forward contract is won't help you if you don't know how to use it inside an organisation. Episode 11 moves from theory to practice. David Axtell walks through how corporate hedging programmes actually work — the policies, the ratios, the instruments, and the mistakes that cost real money when treasurers get it wrong. He starts with the three types of FX exposure every inter...

Why does a three-month EUR/USD forward trade at 1.0825 when spot is 1.0850? The answer isn't a forecast. It's mathematics. Episode 10 takes on the pricing engine behind every forward contract in the FX market. David Axtell walks through Covered Interest Rate Parity — the no-arbitrage relationship linking currency markets with money markets — and explains why forward rates are determined by...

You know what exchange rate you're getting today. But what about the payment due in ninety days? Episode 9 opens Part Three of The Trading Floor — forward contracts. The instruments that let corporations, investors, and institutions lock in a future exchange rate today. David Axtell explains them the way he'd explain them to a new colleague on the desk: from the ground up, with no shortcut...

You execute a trade. Both sides agree on the price. The deal is done. But is it really? In Episode 8, David Axtell explains what happens after the handshake — and why the gap between agreeing a trade and actually settling it has been one of the most dangerous moments in financial markets for over fifty years. It starts with Bankhaus Herstatt. June 26, 1974. A small German bank that collapsed mid-s...

In this special episode of The Trading Floor, Luigi Pascal Rondanini walks through the Python toolkit that accompanies FX Cash Products — the first volume in the Foreign Exchange Markets Professional Series. This is not a beginner Python tutorial. It is a practitioner's guide to a professional-grade analytics package built to price, value, and test real FX cash products with the correct convention...

You see the spread. You think that's what the trade costs. It's not even close. In Episode 7, David Axtell breaks down the real cost of executing in FX markets — and explains why the visible bid-offer spread is just the tip of the iceberg. For institutional-size orders, implicit costs from market impact, timing risk, and opportunity cost typically run two to five times higher than the spread itsel...

Episode 6 explores the evolution of FX execution from voice-based relationship trading to sophisticated electronic and algorithmic methods. David Axtell draws on 35 years of experience to explain when each execution channel makes sense and how to choose strategically. The episode covers voice trading's continued relevance for large trades (£50M+), complex structures, and stressed markets where ele...

Luigi Rondanini takes over the mic to reveal Season One's roadmap: 18 episodes covering spot, forwards, swaps, and NDFs. Behind-the-scenes challenges of producing across 8 time zones, plus a teaser about a Riyadh story David doesn't know yet. Next Episode Preview Episode 6: Transaction Costs - David Axtell returns to explain how to measure what you're really paying when executing FX tr...

Episode 5 begins Part II: Spot FX with comprehensive coverage of how spot transactions actually work from trade agreement to final settlement. David Axtell draws on decades running treasury operations to explain the mechanics that underpin seven and a half trillion dollars of daily FX trading. The episode explains why spot settlement takes two business days (T+2) rather than being immediate, cover...

Episode 4 completes Part I: Foundations by teaching listeners how to read and understand foreign exchange quotations. David Axtell breaks down the fundamental mechanics of FX quotes, explaining base versus quote currencies, pip calculations, bid-offer spreads, big figure conventions, and common mistakes that even experienced professionals make. Base and Quote Currencies (4 minutes) Pips and Pipett...

Foreign exchange is the largest financial market in the world—but who's actually in it? In Episode 3, David Axtell breaks down the five key player groups: banks and dealers who provide liquidity and take proprietary positions, corporates hedging commercial exposures, asset managers building currency allocations, central banks conducting monetary policy and market interventions, and hedge funds...

Why doesn't foreign exchange trade on an exchange like stocks? Why does it operate 24 hours? And why is the US dollar at the centre of everything? In this episode, David Axtell explains the fundamental architecture of the world's largest financial market—$7.5 trillion in daily turnover—and what that structure means for anyone operating in FX. From OTC markets to liquidity patterns to the dominance...

David Axtell introduces The Trading Floor —why this podcast exists, and why now. From NatWest in the 1980s to building nostro networks across 120 currencies at Crown Agents Bank, David shares the highlights of a 35-year career across London, Riyadh, Dubai, Doha, and beyond. He introduces co-author Luigi Rondanini, the young trader he hired in Saudi Arabia in 1995 who went on to systematise institu...