A couple of recent pieces suggested a dramatic downturn in SEF IRS trading in week 1 of MAT.   Such short-term effects may be shown significant by more weeks of data but my analysis suggests there is a steady decline since the beginning of the year across both on and off SEF IRS implying that Basel III and Dodd-Frank ET rules are more the causes.

Goldman's research group suggests that market excitement is overblown about MIFID II allowing participants to select their choice of CCP rather than the one currently dictated by an exchange or other trading platform.

A paper from Darrell Duffie on the demand for collateral due to new regulations regarding clearing of CDS contracts.

I was going through some articles these days to get the Market's heartbeat and find out more about the first day of Reporting when I came across ESMA's press release on Friday which, in short, reveals one of the many gaps of this Regulation. 

Further to pushing eTrading offshore through footnote 88 of its SEF rules, another footnote (195) was clarified by CFTC to demand SEFs become a central source of paper ISDA master agreements for non-cleared products executed on their platforms - says a Risk article (subs. required).

Bloomberg's announcement Wednesday published in the FT(subs. required) that it is going to allow sponsored access into its SEF may be another key step in the emergence of agency execution as a new way for buy side firms to trade swaps.

We now know nearly everything we need to know about the SEF go live schedule (apart from what the outcome will be on packaged trades).  Here's a handy summary.

If you are a firm who is not yet prepared for reporting all derivatives (that means ISDA OTC and Exchange Traded) to a Trade Repository, here's some emergency steps you can take: