Derivs - Equity

Saxo Bank has launched stock options trading on its trading platform for both retail and institutional investors in response to increased client demand.

UBS has launched a high-capacity algorithmic trading platform for US equity swaps, SwapsDirect, allowing institutional clients to execute US equity swap transactions electronically directly from their execution management or order management systems.

Borden Ladner Gervais has been a leader in representing sellside and buyside derivative users at a time of increased regulation from Canadian regulators. One highlight from the firm over the past 12 months was securing exemptive relief from the Canadian securities regulatory authorities in respect of conflicting Canadian mutual fund requirements in order to permit Canadian-domiciled funds, including those managed by international investment managers such as Fidelity and Franklin Templeton, to comply with the Dodd Frank clearing mandates.

Davis Polk and Wardwell’s role alongside the growth in structured equity finance transactions in the US during the last year, as well as its work in helping European and Asian clients trade equity derivatives products in the US, was key to the firm winning Global Capital’s US Law Firm Of The Year award.

CIBC’s continued investment in derivatives professionals and technology have given it staying power in the Canadian derivatives market. Its expansion in cross-asset trading and structuring in New York and Canada helped it clinch this year’s Global Capital Derivatives Canada House of the Year award.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued another no-action letter for certain members of swap execution facilities and designated contract markets from the requirement to record oral communications, in connection with the execution of swap transactions.

The Options Clearing Corp. has launched clearing services for over-the-counter equity index options on the S&P 500, making it the first clearinghouse in the US to do so.

Investment managers and other market participants should drop the financial jargon when dealing with pension, foundation and endowment boards and understand the full distribution beyond mean and standard deviation when pitching option-based investment programmes, according to Ryan Bailey, former investment officer and interim chief investment officer at Meadows Foundation. He gave his outline for best practices for firms dealing with allocators on the pension, foundation and endowment use of options panel. Rob McGlinchey reports.

Ed Tilly, CBOE chief executive, sat down with Peter Thompson on Monday March 17 for an exclusive Q&A to talk about what stage the exchange is at on new product development, the extension of trading hours and how the RMC, in its 30th anniversary, has developed in recent years.

The changing sources of volatility demand has led to more vega being traded in VIX futures and VIX exchange-traded products over listed S&P 500 and SPDR S&P 500 ETF options. In a presentation on the shifting landscape of volatility products, Maneesh Deshpande, head of Americas equity derivatives strategy at Barclays, identifies the changing trends in volatility demands and the likely market outlook for the VIX and volatility products. Rob McGlinchey reports.

After more than 10 years since futures on the VIX began trading on the CBOE Futures Exchange, GlobalCapital Derivatives hosted a roundtable with senior buyside and exchange officials to look at how the exchange-traded and over-the-counter volatility markets have progressed in recent years. The topics of discussion included whether volatility has reached a point where it can be considered an asset class, implementation considerations for investors looking to allocate to volatility and persistent low liquidity in European and Asian volatility products.

By Scott Maidel, senior portfolio manager at Russell Investments