The Electronic Trading Systems and Bid-Ask Spreads in the Foreign Exchange Market

This paper examines the impact of electronic trading systems on the bid-ask spreads in the foreign exchange market. The paper finds: First, both the Reuters system and EBS reduce spreads significantly; Second, the EBS is more influential than the Reuters system for the currency pair DEM/USD; Third, big dealers tend to quote relatively wider spreads to compensate for their loss of information advantage in the more transparent new systems; Fourth, dealers are more sensitive to volatility in the new systems; Fifth, geographical difference in market liquidity is reduced through the new systems, and finally, the effects occur immediately and persist in the long term. Thus, both proposed positive and negative impacts of the electronic systems are found to be true in this paper, but our findings also suggest that positive effects dominate and the electronic systems overall increase FX market liquidity