Introduction A core component of managing bilateral exposures is CVA – Credit Valuation Adjustment. The grandfather of all XVAs, it describes the change in exposure we have to a counterparty as a result of changes in both the mark-to-market of a derivative and the change in credit-worthiness of our counterparty. Today, we’ll look at the […]

A new study funded by ISDA on Margin Requirements for Non-cleared Derivatives authored by Professor Rama Cont of Imperial College London, was the topic of much comment and debate at the ISDA AGM. It was also covered extensively in the press, see CFTC, Treasury officials boost ISDA push for IM revamp and ISDA faces member backlash […]

FRTB Calculations directly from Excel. What-If analysis of new trades via quick trade entry. We use the CRIF format to make entry of trade portfolios simple. FREE 14-day trials available here. Background FRTB in Excel from Clarus calculates the capital requirements for your portfolio in Excel. We also check whether risk factors are modellable. The […]

Settle to Market is a recent innovation in derivatives trading. It has helped banks reduce regulatory capital and derivatives exposures. We look at STM in detail and compare it to collateralisation. The CFTC have also issued guidance on the subject. What You Need To Know Settle to Market (STM) treats Variation Margin at CCPs as […]

Margin Calculations directly from Excel Are you using LCH SMART, CME CORE or ASX Online? Would you prefer to use Excel? For IM & VM Calcs, What-ifs, Optimize and more 14-day trials are available to members and clients Background CCPs provide software tools for their members and clients to estimate initial margin requirements. Generally these […]

Regulations can only take us so far in improving our markets. Industry Standards to cope with conflicts of interest are therefore being created by the FMSB and backed by all large market players. Swap-pricing tied to the issuance of new bonds is a complex area that the FMSB is creating Standards for. We take a […]

The Current Exposure Methodology is a key part of Leverage Ratio calculations. It dates back to the late 1980s and the first Basel accords on banking capital. CEM calculates the Potential Future Exposure of a derivative trade using a look-up table based on Asset Class and Maturity. CEM is a very simple, notional-based measure of […]

What You Need To Know Swaps Regulation 2.0 is a whitepaper that was presented by Chairman of the CFTC, Christopher Giancarlo, at the annual ISDA AGM. The paper sets out 6 broad areas of reform for Swaps markets. We looked at (1) Trade Execution and (2) Trade Reporting in Part One. This week, we look at […]

What You Need to Know Last week, the CFTC Chairman, Christopher Giancarlo, presented a whitepaper at the annual ISDA shindig. This whitepaper should be a pretty good guide for any regulatory changes that we can expect to see out of the CFTC for the remainder of his term (it expires in April 2019). He looked […]

Today I want to look briefly at the reported solvency of FCM’s during the most recent market panic. Back on February 5th of this year, the US equities market suffered a volatile day and significant losses. The Dow Jones index had its worst ever one-day loss in terms of points (down 1,175), and other indices […]