Browsing: Derivatives

By Shreekant Daga, CAIA, CFA, FRM What is structured finance? Finance has several theoretical traditional and modern frameworks in practice. Needless to say, often the frameworks have conflicting assumptions. The sub-prime mortgage crisis is a modern classic example. Data-reliant credit rating agencies (CRAs) had not seen such a large drawdownRead More

By Robert Hoffman, Managing Director, Investment Research and Kara O’Halloran, Associate, Investment Research, FS Investments Structured products are no stranger to the limelight. Once only garnering interest from niche Wall Street trading floors, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) have become household names, as these products were cited asRead More

By Matt Malone, Managing Director, Real Estate and Andrew Korz, Associate, Investment Research, FS Investments As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept across the world, it has become clear that the necessary steps being taken by governments to protect human life have thrust the global economy into a recession. In theRead More

Bitcoin derivatives act a lot like the derivatives of other asset classes. Two scholars at the University of London recently looked at bitcoin’s “volatility smiles and skews” as found in the short and long dated maturity of options traded at the Deribit Exchange in 2019. Helyette Geman and Henry Price,Read More

A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development surveys the main quantitative investment restrictions to which pension funds and other pension providers are subject in both OECD countries and a selection of International Organization of Pension Supervisors’ (IOPS) member countries. It reminds us of the general desireRead More

CFTC Commissioner Daniel Berkovitz recently spoke to the FIA Commodities Symposium, in Houston, Texas, about the reduction of systemic risks and the strengthening of market integrity under the Dodd-Frank Act. He gave the usual disclaimer, that the views he expressed in this address were his own not those of theRead More

By Mark Shore As the discussions of trade wars and tariffs persisted throughout 2018 and into 2019, it may have influenced a sense of uncertainty in the global financial and commodity markets as companies might have to rethink their supply chains and manage potential disruptions and at least in theRead More

Henry T.C. Hu, of the University of Texas at Austin, School of Law, has written an article on the “information asymmetries” that are associated with corporations that are in financial distress, but not under bankruptcy court protection. It is an article that sends us back to the Christmas selling seasonRead More

The VIX may be about to get some competition. VIX is the “fear gauge,” the very visible measure of expected price fluctuations in the S&P 500 index options. On the foundation of its popularity, CBOE has built a monopoly on exchange-traded volatility products. VIX derivatives have become among the mostRead More

Given a long wave of scandals that lasted from 2008 until 2012, most of the derivatives industry, and most of its regulators, have agreed that the London Interbank Offered rate [Libor] ought to be replaced by a more tamper-resistant mechanism. Surely there must be an index that will measure theRead More

Three scholars affiliated with the University of Manchester have  published a paper that reaches a striking view of corporate leadership and the decision to issue convertible bonds. Cynics have long suspected that Wall Street smart-alecks have roped the executives of corporations into issuing instruments that are contrary to the bestRead More

A recent report by the Bank of Italy looks at why the various banks of Italy use derivatives. Specifically, the central bank of that country wanted to know: is it a matter of hedging? Or is it a matter of keeping a proprietary book? Hedge fund managers and other pursuersRead More

In a new article in the Journal of Alternative Investments, Scott Mixon and Esen Onur quantify the over the counter index dividend swap market. Along the way, they provide a good example of the scientific method: positing a relationship, testing it against the data, and then abandoning it when theRead More

It has been seven years and a few days more now since Bernard Madoff acknowledged to authorities that “there is no innocent explanation” for the story they had just heard from his sons. It has been 15 and a half years since Harry Markopoulos ran the numbers regarding Madoff’s performanceRead More

If it is possible for bubbles to arise in frictionless circumstances, then it follows that any theory that treats bubbles as the consequence of friction is, at very best, incomplete. And that is important to know especially if policy makers are busy drawing their own conclusions from those incomplete-or-worse theories. Read More

When it all hit the fan, U.S. investigators in particular (the Brits somewhat less so) came to see Hayes as a mastermind behind its digestive generation. But Arvedlund seeks in her new book on the Libor Rigging scandal to place the role Hayes played in context. Read More

Guest columnist Ginger Szala looks at pro rata and what happens if...Read More

National and international markets have long been accustomed to the fact that various states in the United States have their own usury laws. Still, litigation in the 2d Circuit, arising out of New York, may have a substantial impact on credit markets and their derivatives. Read More

Bitcoin's price charts nowadays seem to have settled into an equilibrium between $240 and $220 per. But ESMA, and the authorities in Sweden, are both paying attention. Read More

Trafigura has done quite well from the decline in crude oil prices in recent months. So well, in fact, as to throw a harsh light on a story that appeared in The New York Times in December 2013. Read More

Spoofing is probably about as ubiquitous as texting-while-driving. And it is possible to make an example of a spoofer caught red-handed. But it isn't clear what purpose that will serve. The real problem is that a broken market contains a broken set of incentives. Read More

Judy Collins might suggest looking at risk from ‘both sides now.’ But it appears that according to DB at a critical moment in global financial history, risk existed only to the extent that it worked to enhance the value of DB positions: it didn’t exist in any sense that might have required a haircut.Read More

SPM "sticks out in [his] mind" as a successful manager with a "17 year track record" with returns in the mid 20s. "Where else are you going to get that?" Well, there is at least one other place that then comes to Brian Shapiro's thoughts: SPM's return compares to the return available from Elliott.Read More

Bill Broeksmit, with whom Tavakoli worked closely at the interest-rate swaps desk at Merrill Lynch in the late 1980s, killed himself in January 2014. The manner of this death, and the circumstances surrounding it, give this book even more gravitas than would a global financial crisis or two. Read More

Authorities now claim that the shenanigans that set off the flash crash of May 2010 were the work of Navinder Singh Sarao. Does this mean Waddell & Reed were unjustly maligned? Almost certainly. Read More

Is it possible or desirable to separate "speculation" from operational hedging, so as to clear the way for industries to do the latter without the regulatory burdens that planners want to impose upon the former? Once Europe has decided that speculation is a bad thing, won't it end up pursuing the demon ways that will collapse the proposed distinction? Read More

Basel III has given us three different statistics with a common goal, to keep banks to a stable funding profile, neither too illiquid nor too highly leveraged. As these requirements come on-line, what will be the consequences for the relationship between prime brokers and hedge fund managers? Read More

This is the story of one high-frequency trading firm suing one or more others and giving detailed credence to everything that has been said over the last year or so by those who bemoan the rise of HFT firms. Read More

The first half-hour return of the S&P 500 ETF predicts the last half-hour return of the same trading day rather well. Why isn't this effect arbitraged away and a random walk restored? Read More

The international push to mandate central clearing has expanded the clearinghouses "well beyond levels the market has ever seen," Greenwich Associates reminds us in a new report. This is an experiment, and there remains some grounds for uncertainty about the outcome. Read More

Commenters successful pressed for certain changes in this massive new rule during its years of gestation. For example, the rule incorporates a T + 24 approach for the reporting of block trades. But warned, though, blizzards in NYC don't stop the ticking of that 24 hour clock. Read More

To the extent that high-frequency trading is analogized to 'insider trading,' it may be in trouble with securities regulators but still in the clear with commodities regulators. After all, the latter do allow hedgers to use non-public material information to protect themselves. But Gregory Scopino doesn't believe pinging and related HFT practices should be in the clear with the CFTC at all. Read More

A December 15 opinion by the SEC limits the significance of a Supreme Court decision of three years ago, and so at least pending appeal it broadens the applicability of the basic anti-fraud rule 10b-5 to the employees of an investment adviser. Read More

Alan Rechtschaffen quotes two definitions of "moral hazard" in this book. The first, from Ben Bernanke, seems to get the book off to a rather awkward start. The second, from Zachary Gubler much later on, represents something of a recovery. Read More

The Manhattan bankruptcy court has now granted individual defendants in the MF Global matter, including Jon Corzine, access to funds from their D&O insurance. But it wasn't easy for them to get here, and therein lies our moral. Read More

The SEC's new rules for asset backed securities require asset level disclosures both at the time of offering and later, on an ongoing basis. The disclosures are required to appear in a standardized XML format.Read More

The clearing-for-everything parade continues. Christopher Faille reviews three representative comments among those just released by ESMA, elicited by its consultation paper on the new clearing obligation for interest-rate swaps. Read More

Let's not make clearinghouses too big to fail. Or if, through, Dodd-Frank, we already have, let's turn back and reconsider that decision. That's how not to end up bailing them out or nationalizing them in due course. Read More

If such institutions as the ECB keep rewarding indebtedness, then over time they get their way. They'll get a lot of deal making, even if it amounts to a frenzy. Then investors will demand funds that play to that frenzy. Read More

It does appear that speed is helpful in generating alpha. How is it helpful? Here there are two views, and the less HFT-friendly of these views has received some scholarly/empirical support. Read More

"Isn't there anything good to be said for the practice of historical cost accounting, especially when the cost figures are higher than the mark-to-market figures? Well ... no. It's reality avoidance."Read More

ESMA defines HFT as “a special class of algorithmic trading in which computers make decisions to initiate orders based on information that is received electronically, before human traders are capable of processing the information they observe and of taking a decision in relation thereto.” It then decides that needs further definition.Read More

Three scholars find a very real possibility that there is a cause and effect relationship between index flows in the derivatives markets, at least the agricultural index markets, on the one hand and price moves in the underlying commodity on the other. Read More

Under the Dodd-Frank Act, and the implementing rules now approved by the CFTC, trades that aren't "large notional swaps" are to be reported more rapidly and thoroughly than those that are. This of course makes the definition of a large notional swap (a/k/a a block trade) an important matter.Read More

A new SEC proposal, promulgated May 1, would provide that Dodd-Frank requirements regarding swaps apply if a transaction is entered into by a U.S. person or conducted within the U.S. but that an entity operating outside the U.S. may be able to substitute foreign regulatory requirements for the U.S. requirements if the extraterritorial party's home system produces comparable regulatory outcomes.Read More

IOSCO's new draft report says that regulators ought to do a lot of "monitoring" of the consequences of changes in market structure. A little less predictably: it goes into some detail on the diversity of regulatory systems that bear on the question of fragmentation. Read More

The benchmarking consultation paper from ESMA/EBA has produced intriguing responses from, among others, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association and the EDHEC-Risk Institute.Read More

Just as one buys bourbon from a retailer who buys it from a distributor who buys it from the manufacturer, so in the world of stocks someone desiring a share of Apple will call a broker who will often go through an exchange which matches him with the broker for a seller. But in a networked world, one can disintermediate. Read More

Lehman's adversary proceeding may yet raise the important issues of risk management that arise out of the relationships among the major Wall Street players at times of crisis. But the latest 'Blame the whale' request by the bankruptcy lawyers involved is a blatant distraction and diversion. Read More

This is the second of a two-part discussion of a paper jointly issued by Basel and IOSCO on margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives. The new paper solicits feedback on the phase-in timeline it proposes, a phase-in designed to provide flexibility so the affected markets can meet "operational and logistical challenges" by which they might otherwise be stymied. Read More