On September 25, 2012, we reviewed trading volume in credit default swaps for 1,112 reference names reported by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation and found that only three reference names in the world had averaged more than 10 non-dealer trades per day in the 103 weeks ended on June 29, 2012. In today’s blog, we look at weekly credit default swap trading volume for sovereigns among those 1,112 reference names. We find that a small set of sovereigns leads trading volume in single name credit default swaps: Spain, Italy, France and Brazil. Beyond those names, trading volume drops off rapidly.
The most recent blog in our series on trading volume in the credit default swap market focused on trading volume in all 1,112 reference names reported by Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation:
van Deventer, Donald. “CDS Trading Volume for 1,112 Reference Names For 103 Weeks Ended June 29, 2012,” Kamakura blog, www.kamakuraco.com, September 25, 2012. Redistributed by Riskcenter.com on September 26, 2012.
In this blog, we analyze credit default swap trading volume for the sovereign reference names among the 1,112 reference names for which CDS trades were reported by DTCC during the 103 week period ending June 29, 2012. The weekly trade information is from the Section IV reports from DTCC. The data is described this way in the DTCC document “Explanation of Trade Information Warehouse Data” (May, 2011):
“Section IV (Weekly Transaction Activity) provides weekly activity where market participants were engaging in market risk transfer activity. The transaction types include new trades between two parties, a termination of an existing transaction, or the assignment of an existing transaction to a third party. Section IV excludes transactions which did not result in a change in the market risk position of the market participants, and are not market activity. For example, central counterparty clearing, and portfolio compression both terminate existing transactions and re-book new transactions or amend existing transactions. These transactions still maintain the same risk profile and consequently are not included as ‘market risk transfer activity.’”
As discussed in the September 25 blog, our emphasis is not on gross trading volume. As of September 7, 2012, dealer-dealer volume is 76.00% in the single name credit default swap market and it would be nearly costless for dealers to inflate gross trading volume by trading among themselves. Instead, we focus on “end user” trading where at least one of the parties to a trade is not a dealer. Accordingly, we make the following adjustments to the weekly number of trades reported by DTCC for each sovereign reference name:
- We divide each weekly number of trades by 5 to convert weekly trading volume to an average daily volume for that week
- From that gross daily average number of trades, we classify 76.00% of trades as “dealer-dealer” trades, using the average “dealer-dealer” share of trades in the DTCC trade warehouse on September 7, 2012.
- The remaining 24.00% is classified as daily average “non-dealer” volume, the focus of the reporting below.
Daily Non-Dealer Trading Volume for Sovereign Reference Names
Of the 1,112 reference names for which DTCC reported credit default swap trades in the 103 week period, only 58 were sovereigns:
ABU DHABI
ARAB REPUBLIC OF EGYPT
ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
CZECH REPUBLIC
DUBAI
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
FEDERATIVE REPUBLIC OF BRAZIL
FRENCH REPUBLIC
HELLENIC REPUBLIC
IRELAND
JAPAN
KINGDOM OF BELGIUM
KINGDOM OF DENMARK
KINGDOM OF NORWAY
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
KINGDOM OF SPAIN
KINGDOM OF SWEDEN
KINGDOM OF THAILAND
KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS
LEBANESE REPUBLIC
MALAYSIA
NEW ZEALAND
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
PORTUGUESE REPUBLIC
REPUBLIC OF AUSTRIA
REPUBLIC OF BULGARIA
REPUBLIC OF CHILE
REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA
REPUBLIC OF CROATIA
REPUBLIC OF CYPRUS
REPUBLIC OF ESTONIA
REPUBLIC OF FINLAND
REPUBLIC OF HUNGARY
REPUBLIC OF ICELAND
REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA
REPUBLIC OF ITALY
REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN
REPUBLIC OF KOREA
REPUBLIC OF LATVIA
REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA
REPUBLIC OF PANAMA
REPUBLIC OF PERU
REPUBLIC OF POLAND
REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES
REPUBLIC OF TURKEY
ROMANIA
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
SLOVAK REPUBLIC
SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM
STATE OF ISRAEL
STATE OF QATAR
UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND
UNITED MEXICAN STATES
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
No credit default swap trades were reported in the 103 weeks ending June 29, 2012 for the other 127 sovereigns which have default probabilities in Kamakura Risk Information Services sovereign default service.
Analysis of Daily Average Non-Dealer Trades Per Day
We first analyze the 103 week averages for the 58 sovereigns for which CDS trading volume was greater than zero during the 103 weeks ending June 29, 2012. The daily average non-dealer trading volume, calculated as described above, was distributed as follows:
The conclusions that can be drawn from this table are summarized here:
- 39.7% of the 58 sovereigns averaged less than one non-dealer CDS trade per day
- 93.1% of the 58 sovereigns averaged less than six non-dealer CDS trades per day
- The remaining 4 sovereigns had the highest levels of non-dealer CDS trades per day of the 1,112 reference names reported by DTCC. We report those figures below.
- The average 103 week daily average number of non-dealer trades per day for the 58 sovereigns was 2.71 trades per day
- The median 103 week daily average number of non-dealer trades per day was 1.17 trades per day
- The United States of America 103-week average non-dealer trades per day was 1.06 trades per day, the 32nd highest of the 58 sovereigns.
We conclude that trading volume for the most active sovereigns is higher than it is for the most active corporations, which is only logical given that such sovereigns issue more debt than the most active corporations. The correlation between trading volume and debt outstanding is weak, however, with the United States and Japan well down on the ranking of trade volume even though those two countries have the largest amount of debt outstanding.
Analyzing Trading Volume in Aggregate
We now analyze all 103 weeks of data, not just the average over that period, for all 58 sovereigns for which DTCC reported non-zero trade volume. There were 5,974 ( = 58 x 103) observations on CDS trading volume for these 58 sovereigns, and there were no trades during 439 observations, 7.35% of the total. The distribution of non-dealer trades per day over these 5,974 observations is summarized in the following chart:
One can draw the following conclusions over 5,974 weekly observations:
- 48.84% of the observations showed 1 non-dealer trade per day or less
- 87.61% of the observations showed 6 non-dealer trades per day or less
- 94.79% of the observations showed 10 non-dealer trades per day or less
- Only 0.69% of the observations were for more than 25 non-dealer trades per day
- The highest volume week featured 1,444 gross trades per week, 288.8 gross daily average trades, and 69.3 average non-dealer trades per day.
- Just 4 sovereigns account for 31.8% of the total trading volume in credit default swaps over the 103 week period ending June 29, 2012.
While the sovereign CDS market shows more non-dealer CDS daily average volume than the corporate market, trading is concentrated in a relatively few names and 127 sovereigns had no CDS trades at all over the 103 week period studied.
Detailed Information on CDS Trading Volume by Individual Reference Name
The weekly, daily, and daily non-dealer trading volume for the top 35 sovereign names is given here:
Additional Information
Kamakura is pleased to provide a detailed listing of trading volume by sovereign reference name to those Kamakura clients and friends of the firm who e-mail info@kamakuraco.com and certify that they have read and agreed to the following DTCC terms of use agreement:
http://www.dtcc.com/products/consent.php?id=tiwd/products/derivserv/data/index.php
Donald R. van Deventer
Kamakura Corporation
Honolulu, September 27, 2012