Top Posts of 2013 from Kevin on the Street

2013
Image credit: www.manduka.com

With 2013 just about behind us, I thought it would be fun to look back at the most read posts on Kevin on the Street since my joining Greenwich Associates roughly 5 months ago.  While the history books will look at 2013 as the year that central clearing took hold, the latter half of the year was filled with all things SEF (as demonstrated by the top KOTS posts).  This tells me two things: first, that the time of the SEF is finally upon us; and second, that I need to inject a little more variety into the blog!  As for the former, here are the top five posts of 2013:

  1. Swap Execution Facility Trading Volumes: Here are the Real Numbers: still a popular post even today, although the great work by Clarus can’t go unmentioned here.
  2. Why SEF Volumes Don’t Matter (Yet): I still don’t think they really matter.  There is too much real money not yet trading on SEFs.  Expect to see this gradual ramp up start in late January, early February.
  3. October 2nd Should Be Boring (Unless the CFTC Kills Electronic Trading): October 2 was ultimately boring, although they did temporarily kill e-trading a month later (see post 5 below).
  4. Impartial Access: The CFTC Isn’t Messing Around This Time: Arguably one of the biggest bombs dropped by the CFTC in the past six months.  It caused more headache for the dealer-to-client platforms than the inter-dealer brokers, which seems somewhat ironic given the direct language targeted towards the latter.
  5. The CFTC Killed SEF Trading (for now): SEF Day take 2 saw SEF volumes drop off 80% overnight.  Much of drop has now come back to the market, although uncertainties are still keeping real money accounts on the side line.

I found it interesting that despite the intrigue surrounding the MAT debate, no MAT post made it into the top 5 (the closet was number 7).  Maybe for those in the know the short term MAT outcome was never in question?  Despite some clarity gained late in November, the questions of currencies and packaged trades still remain.  Something to look forward to in 2014.

Speaking to the lack of variety on this blog, I’m going to work on that in 2014.  Our 2014 research calendar dives deeper into various parts of the fixed income and FX markets, using the insights of thousands of market participants per study to tease out how and why market structure is changing.  We also have a whole host of regulatory change and technology innovation to examine next year (which I will lay out in more detail after the New Year).

Thanks for following Kevin on the Street and Greenwich Associates in 2013.  I hope everyone can enjoy some nice time off over the coming weeks, and is ready come January to tackle with us what is inevitably going to be an exciting 2014.

 

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