There is one theme for the podcast this week – the FX market’s ongoing challenges in the current volatile environment. Joining Colin Lambert, managing editor of Profit & Loss is Rob Loft, founder and CEO of performance consultants Harvey Loft, to talk through the issues, starting with a perspective of how markets have handled the extraordinary and, in modern times at least, unprecedented, events.

Firms’ business continuity plans and technology preparedness comes under the microscope, especially as Lambert asks the question, ‘how long can the industry work like this?” and Loft talks through some of the strategies that can be deployed. With so many people working from home, Loft also raises the issues of controls, not in conduct or behavioural terms, but rather in getting the right technology solutions and the right information to the right places quickly enough to be effective, while Lambert first talks up, and then down, the chances of a surge in mobile trading.

Finally our podcasters get to the big question: Should markets be closed or slowed down? While accepting that it is only a suggestion from a few sources, Lambert observes the fact that the subject is even being discussed highlights the challenging nature of our times. Loft has a firm view on the question (spoiler alert – the answer is ‘no’), as well as a few suggestions on how such a thing can be avoided. He also, to Lambert’s astonishment, highlights one way in which all the onerous regulation imposed on markets over the past decade has actually helped them cope with the current crisis.