Where is ESTR? (6) Where is SOFR?

 A monthly follow-up on the "Where is ESTR?" posts.  Previous installments are Where is ESTR?, Where is ESTR? (2), Where is ESTR? (3), Where is ESTR? (4) and Where is ESTR? (5).


Increase in the volume, but still below the January and February levels.

With the recent big bang from EFFR to SOFR for collateral (and discounting) at LCH and CME, how is the volume of SOFR related swaps doing?

The volume has been increasing to reach more than 600 billions from a previous maximum of less than 400 billions the previous month. But October was the "big bang" month. Part of that volume may (or may not) be related to the auction and be a one-off increase.

For USD-SOFR, I have also added (weekly) figures from ISDA Swap Info. Those figures are related only to transactions disclosed under US regulation, hence only a very partial (in both sense of the term) view of the figures. We see also an increase of SOFR volume (in yellow), but this has already decreased significantly since the auction week. In term of relative figures, the SOFR related trades are still only a small part (below 2%) of the LIBOR trades. Transition still very much in its infancy, both for EFFR to SOFR and LIBOR to SOFR.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Multi-curve framework book: new edition in progress

Image
Subject: Interest Rate Modelling in the Multi-curve Framework: Foundations, Evolution, and Implementation It has been more than 10 years since I wrote the first edition of the multi-curve framework book. What happened in those 10 years? Why did it take me so long to start a new version? It took me roughly 10 years to write the first edition. The reason it took so long at that time, was that I did not know that I was writing it! I thought I was writing a couple of pages on an obscured and theoretical idea that there was not a `` one curve to rule them all '' but multiple curves. It turned out that it became the actual practice for very clear and important reasons. That was the excuse for the first edition, what is the excuse for the second edition? Since the first edition, many things happen, in particular: March 2015: BCBS - IOSCO: margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives and mandatory variation margin July 2017: The future of LIBOR -- actually it...
Read more

Rigged: part 1 - Will there be a part 2?

Image
I have been reading book “Rigged: The Incredible True Story of the Whistleblowers Jailed after Exposing the Rotten Heart of the Financial” (Andy Verity, Flint, June 2023) for some time. It was published several month ago, but I just finished it. To my defence, I have to say that I don’t feel comfortable reading fiction where the “bad guys” are systematically winning by cheating. The book is the story of the miscarriage of justice done in the LIBOR manipulation story. The book content did not surprise me. For anybody having worked on a (swap) trading desk, it is clear that what was described by the accusation was impossible. It is not possible for some middle level trader to create a multi-year, multi-desk, multi-bank international conspiracy over open lines, broker lines, on open offices etc. without all around them, including compliance and senior management to be fully aware of what is going on. Moreover the regulators cannot be ignorant of the situation, except pleading complete in...
Read more

Treasury / Swap spreads are negative. And what?

In recent weeks there were several news articles related to the negative treasury/Swap spread. This is in particular the case of a Bloomberg article and a Zero Hedge blog . Some of the “information” in those notes are Swap rates are what companies, investors and traders pay to exchange fixed interest payments for floating ones. That rate falling below Treasury yields […]  is illogical in the eyes of most market observers, because it theoretically signals that traders view the credit of banks as superior to that of the U.S. government. It’s hard to overstate how illogical it is when swap spreads are inverted. That’s because it suggests that governments are less creditworthy than the very financial institutions they bailed out during the credit crisis just seven years ago. Let’s be clear, to me, those claims are purely wrong , nothing is “ illogical ” in negative swap spread. But why do I rant about that in the “multi-curve framework” blog? Because it is exactly the same that ...
Read more