Chicago,
September 29, 2008
–
In light of recent market events and in response to related inquiries
regarding the regulation of the credit default swap (CDS) market and
the anticipated launch of a central clearing house for CDS transactions,
The Clearing Corporation (TCC) today issued the following statement:
"The Clearing Corporation is currently
in the process of establishing a wholly-owned, limited purpose, New
York trust bank that will be regulated by the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York and the New York State Banking Department and serve as a central
clearing house with respect to CDS transactions. Accordingly,
TCC is working with these regulators in order to obtain a New York State
banking license. In light of recent unprecedented events in the
CDS market and in anticipation of receiving required regulatory approvals,
TCC and its clearing participants are moving aggressively to launch
the CDS clearing platform by the end ... more»
TriOptima
confirmed that the 12% decline in CDS notional outstandings announced
today by ISDA is primarily due to its triReduce tear up cycles in the
first half of 2008. Despite robust trading activity in the first six
months of the year, TriOptima’s termination of $17.4 trillion in
interdealer CDS notional principal during this period contributed to
the overall decline.
“As the sole provider of portfolio
compression services in the first half of 2008, we can confirm that
tear ups were a positive factor in stabilizing the growth in notional
principal levels that had attracted the attention of regulators, “said
Brian Meese, Group CEO. “We have long believed that aggressive use of
tear ups is one of the most effective ways to manage risk, and a vital
complement to central counterparty activities. We include all dealer
counterparties, not just a few, and we eliminate, rather ... more»
NEW YORK, Wednesday,
September 24, 2008 – The International
Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. (ISDA) today announced the results of
its Mid-Year 2008 Market Survey of privately negotiated derivatives. A
webcast of ISDA Executive Director and Chief
Executive Officer Robert Pickel discussing these statistics and recent market
developments is available at https://secure.webex.com/g2.asp?id=WZSBDIOL.
Please note that recipients will need Media Player to listen to the
presentation.
"The derivatives business overall showed consistent growth
over the first half of 2008, but what we are beginning to see in credit
derivatives is a downturn in the notional volumes - the total amount of trades
that are outstanding," said Robert Pickel, Executive Director and Chief
Executive Officer, ISDA. "This decrease
primarily reflects the industry's efforts to reduce risk by tearing up
economically offsetting transactions, and demonstrates the industry's ongoing
commitment to reduce risk and enhance operational efficiency. We ... more»
The events of the past few weeks have clearly been
unprecedented in the annals of the global financial system, and as an
interested party I have been avidly following all that has been said in print
and on-line. Now, whilst the usual commentators have been, in the main,
pursuing their usual measured approach, there also appears to have been a large
tranche of people who have happily leapt aboard the bandwagon – and who have
stoked the fires of hysteria to new levels. This article, I hope will try to
bring a more objective, emotionless view to what is actually going on and (more
importantly) what we should be doing about it.
SciComp
Slashes Development Time and Automates Acceleration
of Pricing Models with the GPU
September 16, 2008 -- Trading in over-the-counter financial derivatives is
a high-risk, high-pressure venture. SciComp, an Austin, Texas-based company,
has a high-tech derivatives software solution to shorten the development time
and accelerate the performance of Monte Carlo pricing models. The company has
enhanced SciFinance®, its flagship product, to deliver accurate NVIDIA® CUDA™-enabled
derivatives pricing models that run up to 100 times faster than serial code.
More significantly, this speed up can be achieved without any additional work
or hand programming which, in a market where a slight delay or inaccuracy can
end up costing millions, is a critical advance.
The key to this speedup is reliance on the graphics processing unit (GPU) for
the calculations. A GPU is a many-core (up to 240 cores in the latest models)
parallel processor that can run parallel applications many times ... more»
