Early in November I chaired the FTF DerivOps conference in NY. The conversation in 2014 was a lot more about the market than it was at my first DerivOps in October 2008, when all we spoke about was what was wrong with the OTC derivatives market and who would the regulators do. The event this […]
Tag: OTC Derivatives
The SEF RFQ Minimum is Moving to 3. Does it matter? Nope.
On October 2 market participants requesting price quotes for an order via a SEF will have to ask a minimum of three dealers to respond rather than the current minimum of two. For those of you that followed the SEF rule writing process from the beginning, you’ll remember that the inclusion of RFQ as an acceptable trading […]
Roll Out the Welcome MAT
On Friday afternoon Javelin SEF filed the first made available-to-trade application with the CFTC (thanks Jamie for making us all scramble around on a Friday afternoon!). This is great news. The ball is rolling that will make SEF trading volumes finally matter. But of course, as with everything derivatives reform, things are not yet cut and dry. […]
SEF Day: A boring October 2 is official, but in 10 seconds or less
Quite a lot of hoop-la on Friday (September 27, 2013) around the October 2 SEF implementation deadline. On that point, the response to my post on the CFTC de-electronifying the market has been mostly positive. And it looks like the CFTC decided to listen to all of us wanting October 2 to go smoothly, providing […]
October 2nd Should Be Boring (Unless the CFTC Kills Electronic Trading)
On October 2 the CFTC’s swap execution facility (SEF) rules are scheduled to finally take effect. It’s amazing that we’ve finally gotten to this point, given I wrote my first piece about SEFs in 2010, a few months after the signing of Dodd-Frank. While the day is technically historic, don’t expect to anything exciting to […]
Determining if SEF Aggregation Really Matters
This post also published at TabbFORUM.com Regulations will have a significant impact on how SEF aggregators function and how widely these aggregators will be adopted by various market participants. Some of the most contentious rule proposals are those that will have the greatest impact on liquidity fragmentation. They include the 15-second rule, the ability to […]
A Year Later, Dodd Frank Causes Banks to Shrink (Bloomberg)
Wow – it really has been a year. Even more amazing is that Bear, Lehman and the rest were almost three years ago. Things have changed. I’d argue even as early as 2009 the swaps markets were more transparent than ever before. The bottom line today is the rules are coming and everyone knows it […]
US rules exemption on forex swaps near (Financial Times)
Dodd-Frank talks about the swaps market as a whole – meaning all swaps. Sure, it breaks out securities based swaps and a few others, but the intention seemed to be that they wanted all swaps regulated. But as I much as I’m for the idea of not creating loopholes – intentionally or otherwise – its […]
How to Create a New Bank Capital Crisis
Also published at TabbFORUM.com Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are so 2005. My new favorite derivative is the contingent convertible bond – better known as the CoCo. CoCos work like traditional convertible bonds in that the buyer buys a bond that can be converted to equity at an agreed upon price. The difference is that CoCo […]
Wall Street Bets on Debt That Doesn't Exist (Wall Street Journal)
Many still seem skeptical of credit default swaps (CDS), but the reality is (and always has been) that they play an important benchmarking function for the global credit markets. That’s why when I heard that GM CDS was trading without the existing of any underlying GM bond I wasn’t at all surprised. Two things to […]