Foreign-exchange brokers suspended transactions or raised the cost of trading the ruble as record price swings crimped liquidity.
FXCM Inc., the third-largest currency broker for retail clients, will stop offering the ruble versus the dollar and begin closing its customers' trades. Alpari UK Ltd. stopped clients from taking new positions, while Saxo Bank A/S and Gain Capital Holdings Inc.'s Forex.com said they planned to demand a higher deposit from clients to deal in the currency.
"Most Western banks have stopped pricing USD/RUB," Jaclyn Klein, a spokeswoman for New York-based FXCM, said in an emailed statement. "FXCM can no longer offer this instrument to our clients and will begin closing any existing client trades in USD/RUB" from midday New York time, she wrote.
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While the Bank for International Settlements estimates that retail trading only accounts for 3.5 percent of the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market, the moves highlight the disruptive nature of price swings in the ruble. The currency plunged as much as 20 percent against the dollar today, its biggest drop since at least 2003, after an increase in interest rates by the Bank of Russia failed to halt a selloff.
The ruble tumbled to 80.10 per dollar, a record low, before trading 6.1 percent weaker at 68.381 at 5:04 p.m. London time.
–With assistance from Eshe Nelson in London.
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