The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) says that last week was the second consecutive week in which it experienced the busiest weekly trading activity for options on the S&P 500 Index (SPX) in its history. Volume during the week of March 12-19, 2007 totalled a reported 5,051,009 contracts traded, besting the previous record of 4.35 million contracts set just a week ago (March 5-9, 2007).
Bloomberg Tradebook Services has launched an electronic foreign exchange trading platform called BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK FX, which it says "ushers in a new era for global FX market participants."
BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK FX is an electronic marketplace providing institutional traders with the ability to transact in foreign currency exchange while preserving their anonymity from other FX market participants. Users can also make use of sophisticated trading algorithms to implement trading strategies.
SunGard says its Margin Advisor application for monitoring of cross-asset margin now meets the requirements of the New York Stock Exchange's Rule 431 amendments and the Chicago Board of Options Exchange's Rule 12.4 that give broker-dealers, futures commission merchants (FCMs) and non-clearing members the ability to adopt a risk-based portfolio margin methodology from 2 April.
Quantifi, a provider of analytics and risk management solutions to the global credit markets, yesterday announced the launch of Quantifi Version 8.6, a toolkit for the pricing and risk assessment of credit derivatives. With the release of version 8.6, Quantifi maintains its leadership by being first-to-market with pricing models for some of the market's latest innovations, such as constant proportional debt obligations (CPDOs), options on CDO tranches, and forward starting CDO tranches.
ClusterSeven, a spreadsheet management software provider, announced a strategic alliance with DoubleHelix, a management consulting firm specialising in derivatives, credit derivatives and treasury departments, to offer spreadsheet management solutions for mission critical spreadsheets in major investment banks, asset management firms and private banks. This partnership, formed in 2006, covers the UK and Europe.
Derivatives trading software vendor Trading Technologies International (TT) is introducing a trading gateway to connect its X_TRADER order-entry platform to the Spanish derivatives exchange, MEFF.
TT plans to release the MEFF gateway later this year. The company will also launch a MEFF simulation environment, which will allow X_TRADER users to test and refine trading strategies without risking capital.
The American CSD, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), says its Deriv/SERV OTC derivatives order routing and matching business has had a record year, with transaction volume tripling in 2006. As a result, DTCC is providing a first-time rebate of $3 million to its dealer customers.
The trade association for the American securities industry, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) says it will respond to a market best practices guide published by the US Treasury Department on 9 February.
American insurer AIG has launched the AIG Emerging Markets Foreign Exchange Index in response to the growth of investor interest in emerging markets and foreign exchange as asset classes in recent years.
Eurex, the international derivatives exchange, yesterday announced it will use a new Bloomberg model to calculate the final settlement prices of its new credit index future, to be launched on 27 March. These prices will be displayed and can be analysed on the Bloomberg Professional service.