Final US Rules on Margin for Non-Cleared Swaps

On October 22, the United States published its Final Rules to establish the minimum margin requirements for swaps transacted by  insured depository institutions, which are not cleared by a clearing house. The Joint Rules are the work of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal […]

What I Learned at SEFCON VI

The 6th annual SEF event took place on Monday. Always a good day to meet folks and hear what’s happening in SEF-land. As usual I’ll summarize the event for those who could not attend. For starters, ICAP pulled out of the WMBA so was generally not present. I noted only one ICAP representative in the […]

Update on The Health of FCMs

Six months ago I wrote a report that looked at the health of the FCM community.  My general findings were that: The number of FCM’s was actively shrinking Only a small portion of FCM’s were handling Cleared Swaps The amount of client funds to support cleared swaps has doubled in the last year, concentrated largely […]

MiFID II and Best Execution for Derivatives

Following on from my recent article on MiFID II and the Trading Obligation for Derivatives, I wanted to look into another key section in the ESMA Final Report; namely the requirements for Best Execution. There are two specific requirements, one for Trading venues and another for Investment Firms. MiFID II Background The Final Report deals with Draft Regulatory […]

Our new Belfast office

We recently announced our expansion with a new office in Belfast. Key reasons for the choice of Belfast are; Well educated, English speaking STEM graduates, A very positive business environment, An existing financial technology cluster. Universities Belfast has two universities, Queens University of Belfast, dating back to the mid 1800s, and Ulster University a modern […]

September 2015 Review – More of the Same

Continuing with our monthly review series, let’s take a look at US Interest Rate Swap volumes in Sep 2015. First the highlights: On SEF USD IRS Sep 2015 volume was >$1.2 trillion, Up from August and similar to July SEF Market Share remains the same as YTD Bloomberg in front with 30%, Tradeweb 23%, IDBs in mid-teens […]

Performance of Block Trades on RFQ Platforms

The nature of swaps trading (RFQ to 1 participant for example) means that there can be a motivation to trade large-sized tickets in an old-school fashion – bilaterally. Therefore, unlike more mature electronic markets, these orders are not sliced’n’diced. This means that not only the performance of these large trades can be monitored in public data…. […]