Category Archives: OTC reform

Be careful how you swing that hatchet!

May 21, 2013 – 12:35 pm

Eugene

During last year’s debate about the Volcker Rule, Morgan Stanley commissioned a study by the consulting firm IHS that predicted dire consequences for the U.S. economy. I called the study a hatchet job. My main complaint was that the study made the obviously unreasonable assumption that the bank commodity trading operations would be closed down and not replaced. IHS even excluded the option of having banks sell the operations.

So this story in today’s Financial Times gave me a good chuckle:

US private equity group Riverstone is leading talks on an investment of as much as $1bn in a new commodities investment venture to be run by a former Deutsche Bank executive…

Morgan Stanley is considering a sale or a joint venture for its commodities business… James Gorman, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, last October said the bank was exploring “all form of structures” for its commodities business.

Glenn Dubin, Paul Tudor Jones and a group of other commodity hedge fund investors last year bought the energy trading business from Louis Dreyfus Group and Highbridge Capital, the hedge fund owned by JPMorgan Chase. The parties later renamed the business Castleton Commodities International.

And so, another industry funded hatchet job on the Dodd-Frank financial reform ages poorly.

By John Parsons | Also posted in commodities, Dodd-Frank, hedging, markets | 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, markets, 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, markets | 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:

Read More »

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

Futurization wheat and chaff

January 16, 2013 – 7:42 am

classroom

Finally, a journalist has located a real cost of futurization, as opposed to the many imagined ones.

 

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

Congressional Intent & Futurization

December 13, 2012 – 11:55 am

The Capital Markets subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing yesterday on the derivatives portion of the Dodd-Frank Act — Title VII. The question of the futurization of swaps captured a good bit of attention.

House Hearing

Representative Bachus, who chairs the full Committee, said (at 14:04 in the video),

If all derivatives were supposed to be traded on an exchange, then they would all be futures. [Swaps] are differeent from exchange listed products, and imposing the listed futures or equity market model on [swaps] is not the mandate of Title VII.

Read More »

By John Parsons | Also posted in Dodd-Frank, packaging risk, regulation | Comments (1)

How Futures Can Steal Market Share from Customized Swaps

December 6, 2012 – 11:50 am

alterations

Many people underestimate the threat that futures markets pose for the OTC swaps industry because they have been suckered into thinking of swaps as carefully custom tailored instruments. It’s true that a small fraction of the OTC swaps market cannot be replicated in the futures marketplace. And it is good that the Dodd-Frank Act preserved a space for customized swaps. But the vast majority of swaps are not custom tailored, or the custom tailoring is so inconsequential that it will be an easy matter for the futures market to serve the same purpose.

Even when the swap does contain some important element of customization, that is usually not the whole story. Many customized swaps can be broken up into 2 pieces: (i) a basic, plain vanilla swap, plus (ii) a small bit of customization that adapts the plain vanilla swap around the edges. The futures market can substitute for the plain vanilla swap, and then the OTC swap market can provide the customization around the edges.

It’s like buying a suit ready-to-wear, but having the tailor adjust the hems or waistline a little bit. So long as the adjustments are small, its an economic alternative to true customization.

An illustration of how a custom swap can be broken up into two pieces appears in an article by Sean Owen, Director of Fixed Income Research and Consulting at Woodbine Associates, published in a recent special issue of the Review of Futures Markets. He breaks up an irregularly amortizing 10-year interest rate swap into (i) a 7-year bullet interest rate swap, and (ii) a customized swap that produces the irregular amortization relative to the 7-year bullet. (H/T to CFTC Commissioner Scott O’Malia for highlighting the article)

measure

By John Parsons | Also posted in Dodd-Frank, packaging risk | 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, markets, 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?

Read More »

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

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.