The opening price behavior: Foreign exchange futures market versus equity market

Daily opening, noon, and closing prices of Deutschemark and Japanese yen futures are examined for the efficiency of the foreign exchange futures (FXF) market. Variance ratio and multiple variance ratio tests, are employed. The prices are found to be serially uncorrelated. This random walk behavior sheds light on the differences between the FXF and commodity or equity markets. The conclusions suggest that the FXF market is a 24-hour global market, reflecting a disparity with equity markets where round-the-clock trading is advocated since the high volatility during market opening would be eliminated, leading to potential cost reductions for traders as spreads are lowered.