Derivs - Equity

Philip Brides, managing director, multi-asset and asset allocation trader at BlackRock in London, has resigned. He led a team of seven portfolio managers as head of BlackRock’s Institutional Global Tactical Asset Allocation mandates in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Euronext has appointed three senior executives separately covering financial derivatives, commodities and cash equities.

The Korean financial regulator has delayed a planned expansion to the country’s derivatives-based product lineup as its grapples instead with an unrelated credit card scandal.

Hedge fund investors and some asset managers are entering short-dated puts and put spreads on the Nikkei 225, targeting strikes between 14,000 and 14,800.

Alexandre Werno, senior adviser to the general manager at Fortune SG Fund Management in Shanghai, has been promoted to executive vice general manager as the firm looks to expand into index-linked offerings in China.

Investors have been entering June, September 2014 1.5 x 1 call calendar ratios on the Nikkei 225, targeting strikes of 16,000. The trade involves selling 1.5x June call and buying a September call.

Market participants are switching from trading credit options against indices to trading options outright in anticipation of the expiry of no-action relief from SEF trading for packaged trades on May 14.

Propriety trading desks and hedge funds are focusing on reversion trades in the Japanese equity markets due to large dispersions in intra-sector single stocks, according to traders and strategists.

Approximately 75% of buysiders are unable to process many of the newer and more complicated products such as swaps, swaptions and swap futures, without manual intervention, according to a survey conducted by TABB Group and SimCorp.

Parvest, the flagship international fund range of BNP Paribas Investment Partners, has begun offering a low volatility emerging market equities fund.

Hedge funds are selling puts on the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets exchange-traded fund (EEM) and country specific ETFs, such as the Market Vectors Russia ETF Fund (RSX), to position for upside in the underlyings.

Chinese authorities and bourses are now looking to launch equity options trading on single stock and index underlyings sometime in the second half of the year. Stock options were originally slated for Q2 this year.