Apex Clearing and Custody as it Ought to Be
Each futures exchange has its own clearing corporation. Members of these exchanges must clear their trades through the clearing corporation at the end of each trading session and deposit a sum of money based on the clearing corporation’s margin requirements to cover their debit balance. The clearing corporations help to keep markets operating in a timely and orderly manner. This, in turn, gives more entities confidence in entering futures trades to hedge their various exposures. HKICL provides interbank clearing and settlement services to all banks in Hong Kong and operates a central clearing and settlement system for public and private debt securities on behalf of the HKMA. Sometimes entities appear to target Hong Kong investors whilst not having been licensed to carry out regulated activities in Hong Kong. They often adopt names similar to legitimate financial institutions to confuse investors. Alternatively, such unlicensed entities may provide financial investment trading platfo...