The transparency initiative undertaken by various major financial regulators in the aftermath of the global financial crisis continues to provide regular statistics data. According to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the European Union’s derivatives markets are becoming more and more transparent due to the public availability of harmonized aggregate data reported to six of the trade repositories.
All of the TRs are registered with the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) under the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). With the data being publicly available, it gives market participants and researchers the opportunity to monitor and analyze the dynamics and trends of derivatives trading in the European Union (EU).
Under the regulatory framework outlined in the EMIR, TRs publish regular breakdowns of the aggregate open positions per derivative class, aggregate transactions volumes per derivative class and aggregate values per derivative class.
According to data provided by the six TRs across the European Union, since February 2014, when the derivatives reporting requirement kicked in, over 16 billion submissions were filtered into the databases, with an average of 300 million submissions weekly.
The data for April 2015 reveals that more than 200 million new trades were added, with 55% Exchange -traded derivatives (ETD) trades, 31% over-the-counter (OTC) and 14% listed derivatives traded off exchange.
Foreign exchange derivatives lead the way in the OTC space with 56%, followed by ETD which are mainly split into commodities with 33%, equities 27%, and interest rates with 19% of the trades.
