ISDA Margin Survey 2018

Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) for IM have now been in place for two and a half years The ISDA Margin Survey Year-End 2018 provides a good overview of the regulatory IM received $83.8 billion at Dec 31, 2018, up from $73.7 billion at Dec 29, 2017, an increase of 14% Timeline for Margin Rules The following diagram from the […]

Ameribor: The $1.5bn Index That You Need to Know About

Ameribor is an index of overnight unsecured lending taking place across the CBOE platform AFX. It is mainly concerned with the interbank market between smaller, regional US banks. We take a look at the rate versus Fed Funds and some possible uses. Introducing Ameribor I will try to do Ameribor justice in this post. But […]

ISDA SIMM FX Optimisation: The Data and Alternatives

In my recent post on the same topic, I outlined how deliverable currency FX NDFs are being used to reduce SIMM FX delta, as opposed to a product traded in the usual sense.  In today’s article I show the data that underpins my view and consider if NDF delta compression will be a permanent feature […]

CPMI-IOSCO Quantitative Disclosures 4Q 2018

Clearing Houses 4Q 2018 CPMI-IOSCO Quantitative Disclosures are now available, so lets look at what the data shows, similar to my CCP Disclosures 3Q 2018 article. Summary: IM for CDS Clearing shows the highest growth, up 27% YoY IM for IRS and ETD both with decent growth, 9% and 13% YoY Most clearing services with higher IM, a […]

MIFID II Transparency Update

Back in August 2017 I wrote that “MIFID II Transparency will leave us in the dark“. I didn’t realise at the time how right I would be. As I write this blog as of April 2019, I still feel like transparency is sadly lacking. Could things change in the future? Transitional Transparency Regular readers of […]

NOK Rates – NIBOR and NOWA

I wrote about Scandie swaps in October 2018. In that blog I noted that OIS doesn’t really trade. This hasn’t changed in the interim period – SDRView shows just the occasional DKK OIS trade reported. We did, however, see some SEK OIS cleared at Nasdaq OMX in April via CCPView: Generally, it remains true to […]

ISDA SIMM FX Optimisation and NDFs

Since Uncleared Margin Rules started to bite in September 2016, traditional NDFs have shifted markedly to clearing in response to UMR (see NDF Volume Data). Deliverable currency NDFs have also experienced dramatic increases but with much smaller clearing percentages.  Why the low clearing percentages?  Answer: there’s a whole different purpose to these trades. I explain […]

FXOptions Cleared Volumes Up in Q1 2019

FX Options clearing volumes data show a marked jump in Q1 2019 – quadrupling cleared notional outstanding from the end of 2018, unlike IR Swaptions and CDX Swaptions, which show little traction.  In this article I will look into the detail of this jump in FX Option volumes. Options Clearing Overview To recap my prior […]