Derivs - Equity

BNP Paribas is pitching ways to help retail clients gain exposure to options on stock indices while navigating extraordinary volatility.

Markit has hired Sal Naro, co-founder of USD3 billion hedge fund Sailfish Capital Partners, in the newly created role of co-head of equities, commodities and risk management.

Credit Suisse is marketing a variance swap strategy to institutional clients that incorporates volatility plays based on algorithms while remaining market neutral.

Citigroup senior single stock options trader in London Jean Charles Sabran has left the firm amid reported restructurings at the bank.

Barclays Capital is directing investors toward the fact correlation appears cheap in Europe by its own historical standards and relative to the U.S.

Increased correlation between the equity and fx markets is prompting interest in trades which play the normally divergent asset classes against each other.

Law firm Latham & Watkins has tapped Yulia Makarova from Clifford Chance to beef up its equity derivatives practice in Moscow.

European credit default swap trading has dried up to just a handful of trades a day, with many investors sitting tight after the equity markets took a beating.

Investors are looking to cheapen protection strategies as they attempt to judge whether the market’s recent rally will continue.

Asian-style options are starting to be structured in to principal protected notes, replacing European-style options which have become too expensive.

Banks are staying away from pitching volatility as a trade at least until year’s end.

Exotic equity market makers are being forced to shell out huge sums to gamma hedge correlation and dispersion plays as the underlying equity market gyrations undermine trading positions.