For the first time, basis trading reported to the SDRs has topped $1trn in a single month. Similarly, global basis trading has now topped $2trn cleared at LCH SwapClear in a single month. We see that average maturity of basis trades varies according to the indices being traded. Activity in 30y and 50y basis trading […]

We saw record cleared volumes in vanilla IRS in June 2018. We take a look at the data behind these records. SDR data covers 60% of cleared volumes in USD swaps. SDR data also covers non-USD swaps and we quantify exactly what proportion of the market it covers. Introduction With MIFID data soon to be […]

USD can be funded domestically or in international funding markets. These two funding markets create natural links between Libor-OIS spreads and Cross Currency Basis. We saw record volumes in USD Libor-OIS trading over the past three months. We also saw record notional volumes traded in Cross Currency Basis during Q1 2018. However, when we look […]

January 2018 saw all time notional volume records in Cross Currency Swaps. Some of this volume was in short-dated USDJPY products. BGC captured a large portion of the uptick in volumes, seeing a 40% market share for on-SEF products. We need to be able to see European volumes to improve our understanding of this important […]

The Office of the Chief Economist at the CFTC, recently published the research paper “Introducing ENNs: A Measure of the Size of Interest Rate Swap Markets“, which I found very interesting. This paper argues that gross notional , a common measure of the size of swap markets, does not accurately represent the amount of risk […]

EUR/USD, GBP/USD and JPY/USD are the big three in Cross Currency Basis swaps. The maturity profiles of the three markets are very different to each other. We can confidently state that JPY/USD is a short-end market, EUR/USD a medium term one and GBP/USD long-end. ICAP are dominant in the SEF market, with BGC increasing market […]

Shortly after Trump became president, true to his campaign promises to “roll back regulation”, he issued an executive order for a review of the American Financial system, with some core principles around making regulation smarter and fostering growth, among others. The US Treasury is responding to this order by providing 4 reports covering Banking, Capital […]

Today, I looked at packages of FX NDF trades on the SDR, expecting to be able to find some basic packages, or even just logical groupings of trades such as: FX NDF Swaps.  These would have a near & far leg, and the price differs by some forward points. Par Forwards.  These are a structure […]