Sterling Work: Looking into GBP Swaps
Guest Blog Series Profile: Interest Rate Swaps trader. 12+ years’ experience, European and cross markets focused We open this week with an age old adage – what applies to one market does not and should not be applied to another. This applies across the board, but seems particularly apt in terms of trade reporting. Let’s […]
The Professionals: USD Swaps on Bloomberg SEF
Guest Blog Series Profile: Interest Rate Swaps trader. 12+ years’ experience, European and cross markets focused Happily we are coming into the quiet summer time. As well documented, many market participants head to the beach for August and we expect to see a significant drop-off in liquidity and trading volumes as a result. Of course, […]
SONIA’S Mansion House: OIS Swaps on the Up and Up
Guest Blog Series Profile: Interest Rate Swaps trader. 12+ years’ experience, European and cross markets focused There is a lot of doom and gloom out there. Analysts lament the demise of FICC revenues (Deutsche Bank a bright spot today though). IDBs seem to be particularly struck by a dearth of volumes, despite significant investments into […]
Forward Start and Backward Start Swaps?
We’ve received many comments and citations around the data we presented at the CFTC TAC meeting in June. Nearly all of the comments are positive, but as with any data, many wanted to confirm their understanding of the data presented. In particular, people took note of the 72.8% of swaps dealt in June being forward […]
Swaps Compression and Compaction on trueEX and Tradeweb SEFs
We are seeing increasing volumes of Cleared Swap Compression trades and this article will take a detailed looked at the mechanics of such trades. The Reason for Compression Lets start with the rational for compression trades. Every Cleared Swap trade shows up as a line item on a Clearing Statement and over time we have […]
Portugal – Banks quibble over Ronaldo’s haircut
Guest Blog Series Profile: Interest Rate Swaps trader. 12+ years’ experience, European and cross markets focused Cristiano Ronaldo couldn’t make Portugal front page news in July, but its’ financial system certainly could. The worries over the financial soundness of Banco Espirito Santo (BES) began on the July 3rd, but on July 2nd, Portugal issued the […]
The Land of Make Believe: Euribor and Eonia
Guest Blog Series Profile: Interest Rate Swaps trader. 12+ years’ experience, European and cross markets focused A wise man once asked me: Why don’t we all trade OIS instead of Libor swaps? The answer-in-a-nutshell goes something like liquidity, customer demand and habit. Certainly, if you look in the futures space, liquidity is concentrated overwhelmingly in […]
A Six Month Review of Swap volumes
In this article I will look at Interest Rate Swap data volumes and trends in the first half of 2014. This period includes both the start of mandatory SEF trading of IRS (February) as well as the expiry of package trade exemptions (May/June). USD IRS Volumes Lets start with On SEF USD IRS plain […]
FRA Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope
In a Galaxy FRA, FRA away….the OTC FRA markets were murky places with no one really knowing how much traded during weekly volume matching sessions, or at what price. Enter Dodd Frank, Trade Reporting and Clarus Financial Technology. Now we can produce whole pricing curves from publicly disseminated data. With the right analysis, we can even […]
Oracle $10b Bond Issue, Looking for the Swaps
On June 30, Oracle issued $10 billion in bonds; the second largest corporate bond offering of 2014 after Apple’s $12 billion in April. In this article I will look for Interest Rate Swap trades associated with this bond issue. Bonds Issued Lets start with the bonds themselves, which were issued in 7 tranches. (See Financial […]