Download PDF What are the Basel Agreements? Financial risks have long been observed and studied, but it was only in 1974, with the failure of West Germany’s Bankhaus Herstatt, that central bankers became aware of and decided to act on settlement risk. For these very purposes, the Bank of International Read more…
Download PDF Introduction In 2022, rates traders have had to navigate a landscape of deteriorating liquidity in sovereign debt markets. Over the past few years, there have been multiple episodes of severe illiquidity in US Treasuries and related markets. Firstly, US repo rates spiked in September 2019, with intraday secured Read more…
Download PDF Abstract While the literature investigating risk premia driving the cross section of stock returns is extensive, fewer studies analyze corporate bond returns. We set out to understand which factors and firm characteristics command a premium in terms of expected returns on corporate bonds, both in the investment grade Read more…
Download PDF Over the last few decades, the overnight and intraday returns of the American market exhibit strange behavior, considering that the highest share of returns accrue in the after-hours trading and not during the day, as most would have expected. Indeed, a good visualization of the phenomenon is shown Read more…
Download PDF Introduction An ATM equity long straddle position is delta neutral. If systematic risk is the only factor predicting expected returns, a delta neutral strategy should have an expected return equal to the risk-free rate. In this article we will review academic literature suggesting that not only is this Read more…
Download PDF When lockdowns and travel restrictions started to threaten companies’ survival in March last year, all eyes turned to cash. What was before a mundane Treasury responsibility became a hot topic for discussion amongst C-suite executives. Mentions of cash, liquidity, and lines of credit multiplied in earnings calls. Cash Read more…
Download PDF Introduction This article explores the short-term commercial financing landscape and the most important financial instruments therein. We elaborate on how the coronavirus affected short-term financing of SMEs and how institutions intervened to avoid large scale insolvencies. Subsequently, we detail the most important practices within trade finance and in Read more…
Real estate is traditionally associated with large capital expenditures and not a high amount of liquidity. Hence, the sector is usually reserved for long-term investments by high net worth individuals. Even more so, commercial use buildings are out of reach for most private individual’s pockets, making developers and other large Read more…
How expensive can it be to borrow USD cash for one night collateralizing fully with the US Treasuries? Given current rates, perhaps somewhat above 2% would be reasonable. What about 10%? This is how much some of the participants in the USD Repo market had to pay to provide themselves Read more…
Introduction 2018 was a somehow controversial year in IPO terms, with Q1, Q2 and Q3 building a strong momentum for companies to go public, and Q4 eroding the optimism recorded in the preceding timeframe. Unfortunately, 2019 has opened with the same negative outlook, with scheduled IPOs all throughout the world Read more…
“In the old days you built armies, now you build a sovereign-wealth fund” Jayne Bok In the month of January, there has been significantly more willingness by sellers to sell assets at any price. Volume has been extremely high and markets have been strongly linked to oil prices even though, Read more…
The Emerging Markets sell-off of late January highlighted the importance of the Chinese economy in the global markets and the instability of its financial sector. China has pulled global growth in the last decade, attracting investments, exporting goods all over the world and financing businesses and governments, especially the US. Read more…
Panel_29|11|13 US This week has been really quiet for the US. Two main issues arise: the initial jobless claims surprise on the downside (actual 316K vs expected 330K), and the decline in the durable goods orders. (-2%) in October. With regard to the first data, although it is clearly good Read more…
Panel 22|11|2013 US This week Bernanke surprised the markets outlining the chance of early tapering of QE (December meeting). For us this is quite surprising, as we still believe the US economy is not performing as well as it was believed this spring. Three main reasons have worsened our outlook Read more…