Category Archives: markets

Backwardation in Gold Prices?

May 2, 2013 – 5:53 am

Izabella Kaminska at FT Alphaville clarifies what’s going on.

By John Parsons | Also posted in commodities, dynamic risks, exposure | Comments (0)

Would you like fries with that McSwap?

May 1, 2013 – 7:14 am

McSwap

Last week the OTC swaps market took a big step towards the creation of standardized interest rate swaps. Pushed by the buy-side, ISDA developed a “Market Agreed Coupon” or MAC contract with common, pre-agreed terms. From the ISDA press release:

The MAC confirmation features a range of pre-set terms in such areas as start and end dates, payment dates, fixed coupons, currencies and maturities. It is anticipated that coupons in the contract will be based on the three- or six-month forward curve and rounded to the nearest 25 basis point increments. Effective dates will be IMM dates, which are the third Wednesday of March, June, September and December. The initial currencies covered include the USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CAD and AUD. Maturities will be 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20 and 30 years.

This is good for end-users. Dealers have long used superfluous customization as a tool to blunt competition and maintain margins. Creating a subset of contracts with standardized terms will make the interest rate swap market more efficient in many ways.

Some in the industry worry this just feeds the trend to futurization of swaps:

“It’s quite speculative to try to figure how this will turn out, but on the one hand a more standardised product is presented as more homogeneous, which is good for OTC markets, while on the other, you could argue the more a product is standardised, the less differentiated it is from futures and ultimately could lose out to straight futures activity,” says one New York-based rates trader. “I think there is a fear that this standardisation process creates a much easier path towards futurisation. You could argue this is one step closer towards promoting the success of swap future contracts.” (RISK magazine, subscr. required)

But that ship had already sailed. The G20 specifically rejected the old model of faux customization, and mandated standardization in support of improved transparency and clearing. Whether standardization happens within the OTC swaps space, or via futurization is a detail.

By John Parsons | Also posted in Dodd-Frank, financial innovation, OTC reform, regulation | Comments (0)

Margins, Liquidity and the Cost of Hedging

April 5, 2013 – 12:02 pm

JACF

Our paper on end-users and the cost of margins is now out in Morgan Stanley’s Journal of Applied Corporate Finance.

By John Parsons & Antonio Mello | Also posted in credit risk, Dodd-Frank, hedging, OTC reform | Comments (0)

3 points on the futurization of swaps

January 31, 2013 – 7:49 am

Today, the CFTC is hosting a Roundtable on the “Futurization of Swaps.” More than 30 people from various parts of the industry are speaking. I’m on the first panel. Here are 3 points I’ll be making:

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By John Parsons | Also posted in Dodd-Frank, OTC reform, packaging risk, regulation | Comments (0)

Crude oil basis risk is receding… for now.

January 17, 2013 – 5:59 pm

Companies that hedge oil prices have been forced to reevaluate their strategies over the last couple of years. Many companies have used the NYMEX WTI contract, one of the oldest energy futures contracts and still one of the most liquid. The WTI contract is for oil delivered into Cushing, Oklahoma, but since crude oil is a global commodity and transportation links have historically been good, fluctuations in the WTI price have been a reasonable benchmark for global supply and demand.

However, in the last few years, the differential between WTI and Brent, the other leading global benchmark, have exploded and been very volatile. Suddenly, geography made a great deal of difference. Technology has opened up new production in North America, first from the Canadian oil sands and more recently from US tight oil fields. A bottleneck in the capacity of pipelines for shipping production out of Oklahoma down to the US Gulf Coast meant that the central US experienced a glut of supply, disconnecting the regional price from the global one.

Historical Spreads 2

This has meant that fluctuations in NYMEX’s WTI futures price reflected local variations in demand and supply that did not necessarily track variations in global supply and demand and global crude price. Hedgers not located in the central US faced increasing basis risk in using the WTI contract. Some switched to using the ICE Brent contract instead. Others adjusted their hedge ratios. These events have been a key feature of the recent marketing duels between NYMEX and ICE over which contract is best.

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By John Parsons | Also posted in commodities, hedging, packaging risk, volatility | Comments (0)

Reading the Term Structure

December 10, 2012 – 1:25 pm

Natural gas prices have been rising recently. But I always like to look at the whole term structure of futures prices to get a better sense of what is really going on. My colleagues at CRA, Billy Muttiah and James Dunning, prepared this chart which overlays snapshots of the term structure at the start of the last several months. It tells a simple story.

Natural Gas Futures Prices - 12-05-2012

What’s going on is mostly a story about the long-run. Only a small amount of recent spot price changes are due to short-run factors and changes in the spot vs. futures price. Prices at all maturities have been going up. And the shifts are roughly parallel throughout the term structure.

A quick look like this doesn’t clarify whether it is long-run demand shocks, long-run supply shocks or any number of other combination of factors. But it does focus attention in the right place.

By John Parsons | Also posted in commodities, volatility | Comments (0)

Futurization advances in interest rate products

December 4, 2012 – 4:01 pm

The NYSE Liffe is moving to adapt their futures products to grab more business away from the OTC swaps market. It announced changes yesterday to enable large block trading in 3 of its products–three month Euribor futures, three month sterling futures and long gilt futures. The block trades will be handled on its Bclear system. The service is scheduled to be available starting December 10.

The FT’s coverage is here. It will be interesting to see how the new service does and how it affects the overall flow of trade in those futures contracts.

This looks to me like another example of the futures marketplace easily being expanded to offer a service in standardized derivatives formerly performed OTC. There was never any special economic rationale for this business in standardized derivatives being handled OTC. This move exposes, once again, the fallacy that the OTC swaps market was dominated by customized products that are ill-suited to standardized markets like futures exchanges.

By John Parsons | Also posted in Dodd-Frank, financial innovation, OTC reform, packaging risk | Comments (0)

Futurization #4 — an agenda item for the CFTC hearing

December 2, 2012 – 9:47 am

In a speech this past Friday, CFTC Commissioner Scott O’Malia once again voiced his concern that burdensome swap dealer registration rules and disadvantageous margin requirements for swaps may be driving the futurization of derivatives trading. He proposed that the Commission host a hearing on the futurization question in order to inform development of the right rules for the swaps market.

In order for a hearing to be informative, it is essential to put the right questions on the agenda. I suggest the Commission squarely ask what swap markets are for?

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By John Parsons | Also posted in commodities, Dodd-Frank, financial innovation, OTC reform, packaging risk, regulation | Comments (0)

Futurization #3 — long live innovation and customization

November 26, 2012 – 10:56 am

Defenders of the OTC swaps model like to talk a lot about the ability to custom tailor the terms of a swap to each customer’s particular needs, and also about the room given to innovate new product designs. The listed futures exchange model cannot accommodate this degree of innovation and customization. That’s true, as far as it goes.

Fortunately, the Dodd-Frank OTC derivative reforms preserve a space for this element of the OTC swaps model. Customized swaps are still allowed. Swaps that implement new product designs are still allowed. Exchange trading is not mandatory for all swaps. Clearing is not mandatory for all swaps.

When we talk about futurization of swaps, we are talking about the larger subset of swaps that are either already marketed as off-the-rack products, or that can be easily repackaged as such. This represents the vast majority of OTC swap trading.

Dodd-Frank was architected to allow standardized derivative trading either on the newly created swap exchanges or on the pre-existing futures exchanges. The current talk about futurization is all about the choices being made for trading these standardized derivatives. Instead of transitioning onto swap exchanges, they are moving out of the swaps marketplace and onto the futures marketplace. Customized derivatives will have to continue to be offered as swaps, which Dodd-Frank explicitly allows.

Moving standardized derivatives onto exchanges, and clearing those transactions can benefit customers. There is a lot to be gained from encouraging efficiency and product development in ready-to-wear derivatives.

Artisinal production has its benefits, but mass production does, too. The Dodd-Frank reform permits both.

By John Parsons | Also posted in commodities, Dodd-Frank, financial innovation, OTC reform, packaging risk, regulation | Comments (1)

It never hurts to check the data

November 26, 2012 – 9:07 am

This coming Friday the CFTC will be hosting a Research Conference on derivatives markets. The agenda touches on HFT, swaps market structure and the financialization of commodities.

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By John Parsons | Also posted in commodities, Dodd-Frank, OTC reform, regulation, systemic risk | Comments (0)
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