Traders Said to Rig Currency Rates to Profit Off Clients
Nothing new : just watch the last hour before closing on some brokers at Friday - in the last minute or two there is always a birgger then expected move in those few minutes. The only difference is that they found a way to do that every day
your are right techmac 
so now we have the FX fix,
the Gold fix has been around for many yrs, the FED usually buys the stock market in the afternoons if it falls to low
and we can assume they have a fix for all the other instruments that we shall find out about in the coming yrs
not much of a free and fair market
FBI Investigates Banks After Whistleblower Exposes Traders Front-Running GSEs
Wall Street traders may be manipulating a key derivatives market and front running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hurting the US-owned mortgage giants in the process, according to an FBI intelligence bulletin reviewed by Reuters.
Using what Federal Bureau of Investigation agents described as "unsophisticated tradecraft," such as hand signals and special telephone ring tones, some traders are conspiring to rig rates on large orders submitted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or front running them in the interest rate swaps market, the document says.
The FBI said in the bulletin that the information came from a former high-level employee at a U.S. bank and an employee at a Canadian Bank, plus interviews with other bank workers conducted in 2012 and 2013. The former high-level employee at the U.S. bank estimated the front running had resulted in profits of $50 million to $100 million for the bank, the FBI said.
The bulletin did not name any of the traders or banks suspected of the activity, or indicate whether it may extend beyond the two banks.
Front running occurs when someone with advance knowledge of another market participant's plan to make a sizable transaction puts an order in first, often profiting from a market move that can occur once the big trade has gone through.
The FBI bulletin is the latest indication that officials are concerned that traders are manipulating financial markets. U.S. and European authorities have fined 10 banks around $6 billion for allegedly manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, and other interest rate benchmarks, and authorities are actively investigating comparable behavior in the foreign exchange market.
PHONES PROGRAMMED
Current and former employees at the U.S. bank said that swap traders at the bank programmed their phones with different ring tones to identify when certain customers were calling, alerting traders that a large order was about to be placed, the FBI said.
According to the bulletin, one employee at the U.S. bank and the Canadian bank employee reported that senior bankers at the two banks "planned and encouraged this behavior because it led to higher revenue for their respective parent banks."
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Traders at some of the world’s biggest banks manipulated benchmark foreign-exchange rates used to set the value of trillions of dollars of investments, according to five dealers with knowledge of the practice.
Employees have been front-running client orders and rigging WM/Reuters rates by pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when the benchmarks are set, said the current and former traders, who requested anonymity because the practice is controversial. Dealers colluded with counterparts to boost chances of moving the rates, said two of the people, who worked in the industry for a total of more than 20 years.
The behavior occurred daily in the spot foreign-exchange market and has been going on for at least a decade, affecting the value of funds and derivatives, the two traders said. The Financial Conduct Authority, Britain’s markets supervisor, is considering opening a probe into potential manipulation of the rates, according to a person briefed on the matter.
“The FX market is like the Wild West,” said James McGeehan, who spent 12 years at banks before co-founding Framingham, Massachusetts-based FX Transparency LLC, which advises companies on foreign-exchange trading, in 2009. “It’s buyer beware.”
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