Streetwise Professor

Major oil traders have profited handsomely from the low price environment. Today Gunvor released results, showing a big increase in profits to $1.25 billion. A big part of the increase was driven by profits on sales of its Russian assets, but the company’s news release states that earnings from continuing operations were up 10 percent. Gunvor’s results were driven by a 24 percent increase in traded volumes.

Timing is everything. No doubt Gennady Timchenko is cursing US sanctions even more now than in March, 2014. The sanctions preceded by a few months the epic oil price collapse which has boosted oil traders’ profits.

Vitol also released some limited information about its 2015. It did not release profits numbers, but the FT reports that in the 9 months ending September, its profits were $1.25 billion, about 40 percent more than in the comparable period of 2014. Vitol’s volumes were up 13 percent.

These results come on the heels of earlier good trading results from Glencore and Trafigura. Both companies showed large increases in volumes, up 22 percent in the case of Trafigura.

Revenues of all oil traders have declined because price declines have more than offset the effect of rising volumes. But that  just points out that what matters to traders is volumes, not flat price. Indeed, low flat prices can be a boon, because (a) to the extent they are driven by higher output, they are associated with increased volumes, and (b) they reduce working capital burdens.

The increase in trader volumes far outstripped increases in output of crude or refined products. This raises the question of what is driving the increase. It could be that a higher fraction of output is traded now. Alternatively, or additionally, each barrel may turn over more frequently. I don’t know the answer, but I am going to make some inquiries to learn more.

These bumper profits in the face of an oil price collapse proves, as if further proof is needed, the idiocy of David Kocieniewski and other non-specialist journalists and politicians (yeah, Liz, I’m taking the risk of turning to stone, and looking at you). Kocieniewski, you may recall (I sure do!), said that my opposition to position limits and my support of speculation in commodity markets was tainted due to my writing of a white paper for Trafigura, a notorious speculator that profits from high prices:

What Mr. Pirrong has routinely left out of most of his public pronouncements in favor of speculation is that he has reaped financial benefits from speculators and some of the largest players in the commodities business, The New York Times has found.

. . .

While he customarily identifies himself solely as an academic, Mr. Pirrong has been compensated in the last several years by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the commodities trading house Trafigura, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and a handful of companies that speculate in energy, according to the disclosure forms.

Except that as the events of the past couple of years demonstrate, physical traders aren’t speculators and don’t have an interest in (let alone the ability to) drive prices higher.

But why let the facts stand in the way of a good story, right?

Most media coverage of hedging is appalling. It tends to focus on the accounting, and not the economics. Unfortunately, managements and analysts too often fall into the same trap.

This WSJ article about hedging by airlines is a case in point:

After decades of spending billions of dollars to hedge against rising fuel costs, more airlines, including some of the world’s largest, are backing off after getting burned by low oil prices.

When oil prices were rising, hedging often paid off for the airlines, helping them reduce their exposure to higher fuel costs. But the speed of the 58% plunge in oil prices since mid-2014 caught the industry by surprise and turned some hedges into big money losers.

Last year, Delta Air Lines Inc., the nation’s No. 2 airline by traffic, racked up hedging losses of $2.3 billion, while United Continental Holdings Inc., the No. 3 carrier, lost $960 million on its bets.

Meanwhile, No. 1-ranked American Airlines Group Inc., which abandoned hedging in 2014, enjoyed cheaper fuel costs than many of its rivals as a result. “Hedging is a rigged game that enriches Wall Street,” said Scott Kirby, the airline’s president, said in an interview.

Now, much of the rest of the industry is rethinking the costly strategy of using complex derivatives to lock in fuel costs, airlines’ second-largest expense after labor.

Roughly speaking, hedgers “lose”–that is, their derivatives positions lose money–about half the time. If the hedge is done properly, that “loss” will be offset by a gain somewhere else on the income statement or balance sheet. The problem is, it’s not identified specifically. In the case of airlines, it shows up as a lower cost of goods sold (fuel expense), but it isn’t identified specifically.

The tendency is to evaluate the wisdom of hedging ex post. But you cannot evaluate hedging that way. You hedge because you don’t know which way prices will go, and because a price move in one direction hurts you more than a price move in the opposite direction of the same magnitude helps you. If you knew which way prices were going to go, you wouldn’t need to hedge.

That is, hedging is valuable for an airline if reducing the variability of profits attributable to fuel cost changes raises average profits. How can this happen? One way is bankruptcy costs. If an airline loses $1 billion due to a fuel price spike, it may go bankrupt, and incur the non-trivial costs associated with bankruptcy: this is a deadweight loss. The airline receives no bonus equivalent in magnitude to bankruptcy costs if it gains $1 billion due a fuel price decline. Therefore, reducing the variability of fuel prices reduces the expected deadweight losses (in this case, expected bankruptcy costs), which is beneficial to shareholders and bondholders.

As another example, an airline that becomes more highly leveraged because of an adverse fuel price movement may underinvest (relative to what an unleveraged firm would) due to “debt overhang”: it underinvests because when it is highly leveraged the benefits of investment accrue to bondholders rather than shareholders. Again, there is unlikely to be a symmetric gain when the company becomes unexpectedly less leveraged due to a favorable fuel price movement. Here, reducing variability reduces the expected losses due to underinvestment.

Hedging can also reduce the costs of providing incentives to management through tying pay to performance. Hedging reduces a source of variability in performance that is outside of managers’ control: since they are risk averse they demand compensation for bearing this risk, so hedging it reduces compensation costs, and makes it cheaper to tie pay and performance.

The problem is, none of these things show up on accounting statements with the clarity of a 9 or 10 figure loss on a derivatives position put on as a hedge. The true gains from hedging are often unseen. The true gains are the disasters avoided that would have occurred in the absence of a hedge. There’s no line for that in the financial statements.

The one saving grace of the WSJ article is that it does mention a relevant consideration in passing, but doesn’t understand its full importance:

Another factor in the hedging pullback: a round of megamergers, capacity cuts and more fuel-efficient aircraft have fattened the industry’s profits, leaving carriers in better financial shape—and less vulnerable to a spike in fuel prices.

Two of the factors that make hedging value-enhance that I mentioned before (bankruptcy costs and underinvestment) are more relevant for highly leveraged firms that are at risk of financial distress. Due to the factors mentioned in foregoing quote, airlines have become less financially distressed, and need to hedge less. But that should have been the focus of the article, rather than the losses on previously undertaken hedges.

And that should be what is driving airlines’ decisions to hedge, although the statement of American Airlines’ president Kirby doesn’t provide much confidence that that is the case, at least insofar as AA is concerned.

Airlines are interesting because they have historically been among the biggest long hedgers in the energy market. This is true because they are one major consumer of fuel that (a) cannot pass on (in the short run, anyways) a large fraction of fuel price increases, and (b) are big enough to make justify incurring the non-trivial fixed costs associated with hedging.

Fuel costs are determined by an airline’s routes and schedule, and fuel consumption is therefore fixed in the short to medium term because an airline cannot expand or contract its schedule willy-nilly, or adjust its aircraft fleet in the short run. Thus, fuel is a fixed cost in the short to medium term. Furthermore, the schedule and the existing fleet determine the supply of seats, and hence (given demand) fares. Since supply and hence fares won’t change in the short to medium term if fuel prices rise or fall, airlines can’t pass on fuel price shocks through higher or lower fares, and hence these price shocks go straight to the bottom line. That increases the benefits for financial hedging: airlines have no self-hedges for fuel prices.

This is to be contrasted to, say, oil refiners. Refiners are able to pass on the bulk of oil price changes via product price changes: pass through provides a self-hedge. Yes, crack spreads contract some when oil prices rise (higher prices->lower consumption->lower utilization->lower margins), but refiners are able to shift most of the crude price changes onto downstream consumers. This reduces the need for financial hedges.

Further, many downstream consumers–gasoline consumers like you and me, for instance–don’t consume in a scale sufficient to justify incurring the fixed costs of managing our exposure to gasoline price changes. Therefore, a large fraction of those who are hurt by rises in the flat price of energy don’t benefit from financial hedging.

Conversely, those hurt by falls in flat prices, firms like oil producers and holders of oil inventories, don’t have self-hedges: they are directly exposed to flat prices. Moreover, they are big enough to find it worthwhile to incur the fixed cost of implementing a hedging program.

This leads to an asymmetry between long and short hedging, which is evident in CFTC commitment of traders data for oil. This asymmetry is why long speculators are essential in these markets. Without long speculators, the (predominant) short hedgers would have no one to take the risk they want to get rid of. This would put downward pressure on futures prices, and increase the risk premium embedded in futures prices.

Which is why airlines have been in the forefront of those hating on speculators. Not because speculators distort prices. But because long speculators compete with long hedgers like airlines to take the other side of short hedgers like oil producers and traders holding oil inventories. This competition reduces the risk premium in futures prices.

This makes it costlier for airlines to hedge, but their higher costs are more than offset by lower hedging costs for producers, stockholders, and other short hedgers. This is why speculators are vital to the commodity markets, and thereby raise prices for producers and reduce costs for consumers.

But apparently this is totally lost on Elizabeth Warren and her ilk. But as the WSJ article shows, ignorance about hedging–and hence about the benefits of speculation–is widespread. Unless and until this ignorance is reduced substantially, policy debates will generate much more heat than light.

The biggest news from the exchange world in a long time is the proposed merger between LSE and Eurex. Both entities operate stock exchanges, but that’s a commoditized business these days, and it’s not the real driver of the merger. Instead, LSE’s LCH.Clearnet, and in particular LCH’s SwapClear, are the prizes. LSE and Eurex also both have valuable index businesses, but its hard to see how their value is enhanced through a combination: synergies, if they exist, are modest.

There are potentially large synergies on the clearing side. In particular, the ability to portfolio margin across interest rate products (notably various German government securities futures traded and cleared on Eurex, and Euro-denominated swaps cleared through LCH) would provide cost savings for customers that the merged entities could capture through higher fees. (Which is one reason why some market users are less than thrilled at the merger.)

A potential competitor to buy LSE, ICE, could also exploit these synergies. Indeed, its Euro- and Sterling-denominated short term interest rate futures contracts are arguably a better offset against Euro- and Sterling-denominated swaps than are Bunds or BOBLs.

The CME’s experience suggests that these synergies are not necessarily decisive competitively. The CME clears USD government security and STIRs, as well as USD interest rate swaps, and therefore has the greatest clearing synergies in the largest segment of the world interest rate complex. But LCH has a substantial lead in USD swap clearing.

It is likely that ICE will make a bid for LSE. If it wins, it will have a very strong clearing offering spanning exchange traded contracts, CDS, and IRS. Even if it loses, it can make Eurex pay up, thereby hobbling it as a competitor going forward: even at the current price, the LSE acquisition will strain Eurex’s balance sheet.

CME might also make a bid. Success would give it a veritable monopoly in USD interest rate clearing.

And that’s CME’s biggest obstacle. I doubt European anti-trust authorities would accept the creation of a clearing monopoly, especially since the monopolist would be American. (Just ask Google, Microsoft, etc., about that.) US antitrust authorities are likely to raise objections as well.

From a traditional antitrust perspective, an ICE acquisition would not present many challenges. But don’t put it past the Europeans to engage in protectionism via antitrust, and gin up objections to an ICE purchase.

Interestingly, the prospect of the merger between two huge clearinghouses is making people nervous about the systemic risk implications. CCPs are the new Too Big to Fail, and all that.

Welcome to the party, people. But it’s a little late to start worrying. As I pointed out going back to the 1990s, there are strong economies of scale and scope in clearing, meaning that consolidation is nearly inevitable. With swaps clearing mandates, the scale of clearing has been increased so much, and new scope economies have been created, that the consolidated entities will inevitably be huge, and systemically important.

If I had to handicap, I would put decent odds on the eventual success of a Eurex-LSE combination, but I think ICE has a decent opportunity of prevailing as well.

The most interesting thing about this is what it says about the new dynamics of exchange combinations. In the 2000s, yes, clearing was part of the story, but synergies in execution were important too. Now it’s all about clearing, and OTC clearing in particular. Which means that systemic risk concerns, which were largely overlooked in the pre-crisis exchange mergers, will move front and center.

If Elizabeth Warren were to have her way, you’d see my mug on the wall of your local Post Office. What have I done to become to earn her nomination as Public Enemy? Having the temerity to oppose position limits, and co-authoring a report summarizing the deliberations of the CFTC’s Energy & Environmental Markets Advisory Committee, which strongly criticized the need for, and details of, the Commission’s proposed position limits rule.

The backstory is this. In 2015 I was an associate member of EEMAC. (As of 10 days ago, I am a full member.) The Committee’s sponsor, Commissioner Christopher Giancarlo, asked me to write the (Dodd-Frank mandated) report summarizing the Committee’s deliberations at two meetings in 2015. I agreed, and along with Jim Allison (who just retired from ConocoPhillips), I wrote a relatively short draft that just summarized the transcripts of the two meetings. The report went through some additional edits, and was then submitted to the nine full members of EEMAC for their approval. It was approved by an 8-1 vote.

The conclusions and recommendations of these meetings were rather straightforward to recapitulate, because there was considerable agreement on the major issues of (a) whether position limits were necessary, (b) the proposed rule’s bona fide hedging exemptions, and (c) whether to implement limits for spot months only initially, or to implement for all months.

If you read the transcript, and read the final report, you will see that the report is a faithful record of what happened during the meetings. As I said in yesterday’s meeting, I viewed my role to be that of “faithful scribe,” and that’s what I was.

But since the message in the report was NOT what Elizabeth Warren (and one of the EEMAC members, Public Citizen’s Tyson Slocum) wanted to hear, Warren, Slocum, and Warren’s journalistic creatures (most notably the New York Times) decided to kill the messenger. Warren wrote a letter to the CFTC, demanding that the report be withdrawn. Slocum wrote a dissent to the majority report. Assorted journos scurried along behind. Each called foul on my authorship. Here’s what Warren said about yours truly:

The second panelist I am concerned about is Dr. Pirrong. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Pirrong has positioned himself as the hard-nosed defender of financial speculators – the combative, occasionally acerbic academic authority to call upon when difficult questions arise in Congress and elsewhere about the multitrillion-dollar global commodities trade…. [who] has reaped financial benefits from speculators and some ofthe largest players in the commodities business,” and played a key part in “a sweeping campaign [by the financial industry] to beat back regulation.”10

With specific regard to the position limits rule, Dr. Pirrong served as a consultant for the International Swaps and Derivatives Association – a lead plaintiff suing to block the very rule he was asked to provide his views on for the EEMAC.11 There is no record indicating that these conflicts were even disclosed by Dr. Pirrong when he served as a witness, let alone addressed by the EEMAC.

Platts is preparing for a Brentless future by introducing a new Dated Brent CIF Rotterdam assessment.  The idea is that as North Sea production continues its decline, other streams of light crude that are imported into Rotterdam can be added to the assessment. Adding (or substituting) say Nigerian crude to the FOB Brent assessment would be much more difficult because of locational differences: FOB Nigeria and FOB North Sea can be quite different, even adjusting for quality, due to freight differentials. A CIF contract eliminates that.

The decline in North Sea production has been occurring for some time, so the need to adjust the pricing mechanism has been apparent. Plants has been thrashing around for a while, mooting the possibility of adding other crude (e.g., Urals Med) to the assessment.  It had already widened the delivery window to make more cargoes eligible (remember 15 Day Brent? 21? It’s now 25 Day.) This problem has become more pressing though, as the decline in prices is hastening the decline in North Sea production.

It is ironic that at the same time that Platts (and therefore, ICE) are grappling with the problem of  declining supply, the main rival to Brent has the exact opposite problem. The WTI contract is currently drowning in oil. Storage at Cushing is bumping up against capacity, and there are reports that some storage operators there are refusing requests to store additional crude.

Although the current situation at Cushing (and in the North American market generally) is as much a demand story as a supply story, the facts are that (a) the NYMEX WTI contract is linked to a much more robust and flexible production base than Brent, and (b) the WTI contract’s periodic difficulties are due to infrastructure issues that are more readily, cheaply, and rapidly addressed than production issues. Thus it has been for the past five years or so, as I discussed when I wrote that those foretelling the demise of WTI were fundamentally mistaken:

But these problems are all surmountable.  WTI’s problems arise from the consequences of too much supply at the delivery point, which is a good problem for a contract to have.  The price signals are leading to the kind of response that will eliminate the supply overhang, leaving the WTI contract with prices that are highly interconnected with those of seaborne crude, and with enough deliverable supply to mitigate the potential for squeezes and other technical disruptions.

Brent’s problems are more fundamental, because they arise from declining supply.  Even as paper volumes continue to rise, physical volumes available for delivery are falling inexorably.  The Brent complex had faced this problem before, and confronted it by adding Forties, Oseberg, and Ekofisk to the eligible stream.  But BFOE production has declined from 1.6 mm bbl/d in 2006 to barely more than half that today.  And the decline continues apace.  This makes the contract vulnerable to squeezes of a kind that were chronic in the 1990s and early 2000s, and which spurred Platts to add the three other grades to the benchmark.

. . . .

Which means that those who are crowing about Brent today, and heaping scorn on WTI, will be begging for WTI’s problems in a few years.  For by then, WTI’s issues will be fixed, and it will be sitting astride a robust flow of oil tightly interconnected with the nexus of world oil trading.  But the Brent contract will be an inverted paper pyramid, resting on a thinner and thinner point of crude production.  There will be gains from trade–large ones–from redesigning the contract, but the difficulties of negotiating an agreement among numerous big players will prove nigh on to impossible to surmount.  Moreover, there will be no single regulator in a single jurisdiction that can bang heads together (for yes, that is needed sometimes) and cajole the parties toward agreement.

The CIF alternative makes sense, and is probably superior to the “economic par” contract I suggested in the 2011 post. But once you move to a Rotterdam pricing basis, why remain tied to an assessment mechanism based on transactions in immense full cargoes? The large size of the lots inherently limits the number of transactions, which makes the assessment mechanism more erratic and subject to manipulation. The lumpiness of the market has also led Platts to design a baroque process involving bids and offers, contracts for differences, futures prices, spreads, etc., to increase the number of trades that go into the assessment.

The WTI contract, in contrast, is based on delivery in store of modest-sized (1000 barrel) units of crude. This is much more flexible, and permits a large number of firms to participate in the delivery process. This makes delivery and the threat of delivery a reliable and efficient way of ensuring convergence of futures to cash market values. The mechanism is not immune to all types of manipulation: delivery squeezes are still possible (though relatively unlikely in current market conditions). But small numbers of transactions can’t have a pronounced impact on pricing, and the in store delivery mechanism does not rely on an arcane and mysterious assessment mechanism (which also helps to enrich the party making the assessment).

So rather than shifting to a Rotterdam CIF mechanism, why not shift the futures market to a Rotterdam in store delivery contract? This mechanism is more flexible and resilient in the short run, and is readily adjusted in the long run to respond to changes in the underlying physical production base as NYMEX did by adding foreign crude streams (including Brent) to address the (then) declining domestic production base.

I can see why Platts wouldn’t like this, but it has some decided advantages for ICE, not the least of which is reducing its dependence on Platts. Given the difficulties of changing contract specifications, or generating liquidity for even a better contract introduced in competition with an established liquid one, I doubt this will happen. Which means that ICE, and the market generally, will have to continue to endure periodic changes the “Brent” assessment mechanism as North Sea production continues to decline.

I put “Brent” in quotes because the handwriting is on the wall: any future European-based contract may be called “Brent” even after Brent (and Forties, and Oseberg, and Ekofisk) no longer represent the bulk of the benchmark stream. The contract will come to resemble the old Harry Anderson comedy bit, where he juggled a chainsaw and an axe. He would stop juggling, hold up the axe and say: “This is George Washington’s axe. The handle was replaced years ago, and I just put on a new head, but it’s George Washington’s axe!” So it will be with Brent, and sooner than anyone would have thought even a few short years ago.

Igor Sechin comes in a close second to Rogozin the Ridiculous in providing Russian comic relief. Perhaps there are others in Russia that excel them, and I am only aware of these two because they have a bigger presence in the West, but both can be relied upon for some levity–unintentional, to be sure.

Sechin no longer has the outrageous mullet to amuse, but his public utterances suffice. Today at International Petroleum Week in London are a case in point. The mood at the event was gloomy, with pretty much everyone predicting that we are in a prolonged era of low prices, and everyone had their favorite culprit. But Sechin’s scapegoat was unique: Robots! Well, “robot traders”, anyways:

He blamed ‘financial players’ and automated ‘robot’ traders for driving down the price, saying the collapse to near $30 had little to do with supply and demand.

I presume he means algo traders and HFT. Just how these “robots” trading at subsecond frequencies have mesmerized producers and consumers to behave so as to lead to relentless buildups of inventory–including a looming topping out of capacity at Cushing–is beyond my mere economist’s skills to fathom.

Maybe Igor can commiserate with US cattle producers, who blame HFT for causing excessive volatility in beef prices.

Igor also seems to misunderstand that the “US” is not analogous to Saudi Arabia as a producer (although the phrasing is ambiguous, but I interpret this to include the US in “they”):

“At the end of 2014 some Middle East producers followed the US in their desire to increase production,” Mr Sechin told London’s International Petroleum Week. “They have deliberately created this situation and they are committed to low prices.”

The US oil sector is not a unitary decision maker in the way the Saudis are. The US industry is extremely fragmented and diffuse, with dozens of producers acting independently. They are price takers, not price makers. Very different from KSA or other producers with NOCs. (Relatedly, this is why calling the US the “new swing producer” analogous to the Saudis is dumb.)

It’s also more than a little hypocritical of him to criticize others for increasing output: Russian production has been increasing steadily over this same period.

Sechin also engaged in a little wishful thinking:

He forecast prices would recover later this year as US shale output slows. “We believe that in the coming years US shale will lose its grip on the market,” he said.

Good luck with that, Igor. US shale output has proved to be far more resilient than anyone had expected. Productivity gains and lower input costs have mitigated the impact of low prices. More importantly, the shale sector has the ability to ramp up output rapidly if prices do rise, either due to a rise in demand, or an attempt by other major producers to cut output. Indeed, this is likely the real reason the Saudis resist cutting output: they know it is futile because the supply of non-OPEC output is much more elastic than it used to be. This makes the demand for the output of the major producers, notably the Saudis (and the Russians!) more elastic than it used to be. This implies that it is not in the individual interest of any major producer to cut output unilaterally.

Which brings us to the most informative and refreshingly different part of Sechin’s remarks: his discussion of the prospects of a coordinated output cut involving OPEC and Russia.

This idea has captivated traders, who chase the idea like Randy Chasing the Dragon, shooting (the price!) up every time the rumor is floated, only to watch it fly away from their grasp. Once upon a time, Igor was notorious for encouraging such notions. Not this time around:

The most powerful figure in Russia’s oil industry on Wednesday signalled his steadfast opposition to combining with Opec to reverse the crude price rout through co-ordinated cuts in production.

. . . .
“Who are we supposed to be talking to about cuts?” Mr Sechin said when asked by the Financial Times if he was considering working with Opec, the producers’ cartel, to try to shore up the oil price. “Will Saudi Arabia or Iran cut production?”

Methinks that the real story is that the Saudis have made it clear that they trust neither the Russians nor (especially) other members of OPEC to adhere to any agree upon cuts, even assuming a deal can be cut, which is highly doubtful. So Sechin is acting as if he is the one rejecting the idea, primarily because he knows that it is DOA.

Not that this will stop all those Randys from chasing the next rumor of a coordinated cut.

Which raises the questions: Is Randy a robot? Are robots programmed to buy whenever a rumor of a Russo-Saudi oil deal is announced?

Maybe Igor will enlighten us in his next public appearance. Maybe he can do it to some musical accompaniment. Might I suggest this?:

Putin held a meeting with the CEOs of seven state-owned enterprises to discuss the sale of minority stakes in their companies (a move sometimes mischaracterized as “privatization”). Putin frankly admitted that the impetus for this discussion is Russia’s dire budgetary situation. Putin caused some confusion by saying the “new owners of privatized assets must have Russian jurisdiction,” leading some to conclude that he was ruling out foreign investment. Peskov clarified the next day, saying that Russia welcomed foreign investors, but “If the question is about a foreign investor, that’s one thing. If it’s about a Russian investor, it must not be another offshore scheme.”

I consider it likely that this initiative will be stillborn, at least insofar as sales of stakes to foreigners are concerned. Putin said that the sales must not take place at “knockdown prices.” Well, in the current environment, the prices (especially for Rosneft and VTB) are likely to be very low indeed.

This is especially so since foreign investors will demand a substantial discount to compensate for expropriation risk. Savvy investors with long memories will recall that Putin justified expropriating Shell’s Sakhalin II project by saying that the terms of the Sakhalin PSA were unfair to Russia, and that Shell had exploited Russia’s economic desperation when it signed the deal at a previous time of low energy prices. Putin (or whoever succeeds him) could easily resurrect such rhetoric in the future when oil prices rebound. Further, minority shareholders in Russian enterprises–especially state enterprises–have few protections against schemes that divert assets, or which dilute their holdings.

Given that prices are likely to be very low, if there are sales to foreigners, it will indicate (1) that Russia is desperate indeed, and (2) Putin et al consider it unlikely that sanctions will be relaxed anytime soon.

If there are sales, it is likely to be to Russian oligarchs, and in particular those with extensive holdings outside Russia. Just as Putin dragooned them into paying for Sochi and other prestige projects, he could well pressure them into overpaying for stakes in the state enterprises. This would allow him to kill two birds with one stone. It would help stanch the budgetary bleeding. It would also advance Putin’s longstanding goal of onshoring Russian capital. That would fit with the “owners must have Russian jurisdiction” remark.  And Putin has substantial leverage to get oligarchs to do his bidding–literally.

Even if partial sales take place, it will be merely a stopgap budgetary measure: it will not indicate a fundamental reconsideration of Russian economic policy.  Putin is still obviously a firm believer in the state control/state champion model, despite its manifest inefficiency. Putin prefers the control over resources that state control provides to having an efficient economy. Which is why he finds himself in his current straits.

The WSJ reports that the CME Group’s new Euro-Denominated cocoa futures contract is floundering, due to a pronounced lack of liquidity. (h/t @libertylynx) The incumbent ICE Futures Europe Sterling-denominated and ICE Futures US USD-denominated contracts dwarf the CME contract’s volume, even though European hedgers face some currency risks in using these contracts.

This is not a surprise, not by a long shot. It is always very difficult for upstart contract to make inroads, let alone dominate, in competition with an established incumbent. Liquidity is king, and the established contracts have a liquidity advantage that new entrants almost never overcome, even if the new contract is superior on some dimensions.

The only real example of the displacement of an incumbent is Eurex’s wresting of the Bund contract from LIFFE in 1997-1998. That story, which I analyze in a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, is the exception that proves the rule.

First, because it was supported by German banks who direct a lot of order flow to it, Eurex (and its predecessor, Deutsche Terminborse) had a base of liquidity on which to build.

Second, because it was electronic, it was possible for Eurex to offer faster and easier access to US users once the CFTC approved Eurex’s application to install terminals in the US.

Third, and most important, Eurex exploited LIFFE’s smug complacency. Eurex aggressively cut fees, and LIFFE did not match: it was convinced that its superior liquidity, and the inherent superiority of floor trading, would prevent its customers from defecting to Eurex to save a few DM per contract in fees.

Wrong! As I document in the JACF paper, the liquidity cost difference between the markets wasn’t that great by 1997 (due to the German bank support and the influx of US customers), and taking into account the lower trading fees it was actually cheaper to trade on Eurex. Volume started to leak to Eurex, and the leak turned into a flood. LIFFE belatedly cut fees, but by then it was too late. The market had tipped completely to Eurex, and LIFFE had a near-death experience.

I can speak first hand of LIFFE’s overconfidence. In 1992, I produced a study for DTB that showed that its electronic market’s liquidity was comparable to that of the floor-based LIFFE. The study was not intended for release: it was commissioned to determine whether it was advisable for DTB to add a new membership type analogous to locals in order to improve liquidity. But the results were so surprisingly favorable for DTB that they released the study, much to the derision of LIFFE and the futures trading community generally, which was truly in the grip of the Cult of the Floor.

The CEO of LIFFE was quoted in the FT and Risk Magazine to the effect that I was an ivory tower academic who had no idea the way the real world works, because everybody knows the floor is more liquid and always will be. Real bulletin board material. Literally, in my case.

He who laughs last. When Eurex launched its assault on LIFFE in 1997, it distributed my 1992 study broadly. I doubt that had much of an impact on the final outcome, but it couldn’t have hurt.

The LIFFE CEO ended up resigning after LIFFE capitulated, and voted to close the floor and go electronic. I was a good boy. I resisted the very strong temptation to send him clippings of the FT and Risk articles.

Every other exchange learned a lesson at LIFFE’s expense, and responded to a fee cutting entrant by cutting fees immediately. For instance, the CBT saw off Eurex’s attempt to compete in the Treasury market in short order by cutting fees to zero, raising them after Eurex capitulated.

So CME shouldn’t feel bad. It has plenty of company in launching a contract that fails to make headway against an established incumbent. Indeed, the experience should be comforting, because it is the dominant incumbent in USD STIRs, govvies, equity indexes, FX, grain, precious metal, livestock, and energy futures. It benefits massively from the liquidity entry barrier. Compared to that, the failure to penetrate ICE’s cocoa monopoly doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

The Bank of England has received a lot of attention for its just-released study on the liquidity impact of swap execution facilities (SEFs). It finds that:

as a result of SEF trading, activity increases and liquidity improves across the swap market, with the improvement being largest for USD mandated contracts which are most affected by the mandate. The associated reduction in execution costs is economically significant. For example, execution costs in USD mandated contracts, where SEF penetration is highest, drop, for market end-users alone, by $3 million–$4 million daily relative to EUR mandated contracts and in total by about $7 million–$13 million daily.

The basic methodology is to use a difference-in-difference approach to compare measures of liquidity pre-and-post SEF mandate, and which exploits the fact that non-US banks can avoid the mandate by avoiding trading with US banks: this avoidance issue will is important, and I will discuss it later.

The study is carefully done, but I am not persuaded. For one thing, the measures of liquidity employed are driven by data availability (transactions prices), and are not the ideal measures of liquidity. The primary liquidity measures employed are really measures of price dispersion, rather than preferred measures of liquidity such as bid-ask spreads, depth, or price impact (although greater (lower) price dispersion could be associated with lower (greater) price impact).

There is also the issue that transaction characteristics are endogenous. For instance, it may be the case that it is cheaper to do large deals off-SEF than on-SEF. These deals will tend to be done at prices that are further away from the mean price (or the end-of-day midpoint price), and in the volume-weighted measures employed in the paper, these deals get a bigger weight in the liquidity measures. Thus, price dispersion may be greater pre-mandate, and in Europe, where the mandate can be avoided not because SEFs improve liquidity, but because it is prohibitively costly to transact large deals on SEFs. That is, the results could be symptomatic of a loss of liquidity on some dimensions, rather than proof that the mandate improves liquidity.

The paper documents that there is less dealer intermediation where the mandate is binding. This could also reflect changes in transactions characteristics. Dealers are more likely to be needed to intermediate big deals, or deals that are exceptional on some other dimension.

The paper doesn’t break down transaction characteristics by mandate-impacted and non-mandate-impacted subsamples, and in particular doesn’t include a measure of the dispersion of transactions sizes. As a result, it’s not possible to determine whether the mandate has altered the mix of transaction characteristics.

This relates to another finding of the study: namely, that the mandate has led to the fragmentation of the interest rate swap markets along geographic/currency lines, with SEFs gaining far lower penetration in Euro-denominated swaps that are dominated by European banks who can avoid the mandate by trading with one another, and by trading with European end-users. There is confirmation of this result from Tabb Group, which finds that “European derivatives market continues to resist electronic trading.”

Well, this raises the dog food question: If the dog food is as great as the ads say, why don’t the dogs eat it? if SEFs are so much more liquid, why don’t traders flock to them?

When given a choice between a statistical finding, and revealed preference, I go with the latter. Those who actually internalize the cost of trading largely avoid SEFs. This suggests that they are actually costlier to use, at least for some users, such as those who want to trade in large size, or have other idiosyncratic needs. The choices of those who have the choice strongly suggests that the statistical evidence purportedly showing lower execution costs on SEFs is flawed and misleading.

With this in mind, it was gratifying indeed to see CFTC Chairman Massad stating that he favors allowing market participants to decide whether they transact swaps electronically or using traditional voice execution. There was never a compelling case-or even a weak one-for forcing diverse market users with diverse transactional needs to use a one-size-fits-all execution method. Massad’s free-to-choose approach is therefore a vast and welcome improvement over his predecessor Gary Gensler’s monomaniacal determination to bash everybody over the head with a CLOB.

Update. Here’s a more detailed description of the Tabb Group study I linked to above. One important takeaway: European end users really hate electronic execution, and really love voice execution:

Despite the cost benefits of e-trading, institutional investors still prefer to interact with their dealers via phone. Nearly 80 [!] per cent of the more than 200 European investors interviewed as part of the Greenwich Associates 2015 European Fixed-Income Study confirmed their trading protocol of choice was the phone.

“These trades often require white-glove treatment, and clients work with dealers that are best at limiting market impact and providing the support needed to get the trade done,” says Greenwich Associates Managing Director Andrew Awad (pictured). “As a result, clients still place a high value on the support provided by swaps salespeople in executing complex and large trades.”

This strongly suggests that there are likely to be considerable differences between deals done on SEFs and those done the old fashioned way. Not particularly the point about “limiting market impact.” Those who want to do trades that are “complex and large” go to dealers to trade bilaterally to avoid price impact. If they are not able to do that, because of an electronic execution mandate, they will almost certainly trade differently. Fewer big, complex trades. If that is correct, then the Bank of England study is comparing grapes to grapefruit. If so, the difference in price dispersion documented in the study does not demonstrate greater liquidity on SEFs: it demonstrates worse liquidity, at least for some kinds of trades.

Mind you: end users were the supposed beneficiaries of the SEF mandate. According to GiGi et al, they were being shamelessly exploited by dealers, and SEFs would set them free. Apparently they like their chains just fine, thank you very much.

Again: revealed preference rules. Believe it over a stat every time.

My grandfather had a wealth of colorful expressions, most of which were the product of his Appalachian upbringing. One, however, was a little different. Whenever it was too late to do something about a particular problem, he’d say: “Well, it’s a little late for herpicide.” In context, I understood what he meant, but the exact meaning escaped me. I asked him one time, and it turns out that Herpicide was a (quack) hair loss cure in the ’30s or ’40s. The company’s add campaign pictured a cue ball-bald man with the caption: “A Little Late for Herpicide.” I guess now it would be “A Little Late for Rogaine.”

This expression came to mind when I read in the FT that “Russia considers hedging part of its oil revenues.” It would have been a good idea when the price was $100, or $90, or even $50. At $30 (or below, as happened on Wednesday and Thursday), well, it’s a little late for hedgicide. Yes, oil could indeed go lower, but hedging today would lock in prices that are low by historical levels.

Hedging would make sense for Russia, just as it does for a highly-leveraged corporate. It clearly incurs financial distress costs when prices are very low. Hedging would reduce the expected costs of financial distress.

Presumably Russia would implement a program like Mexico’s, buying large quantities of out-of-the-money puts. This would allow it to capture the upside but obtain protection on the downside. It would also avoid a problem that it might face if it sold swaps/forwards: finding a counterparty. Selling a put to Russia doesn’t involve counterparty risk. Buying swaps from them would. Although this would be a right-way risk, one could readily see Russia balking on performance if oil prices were to spike, putting a short swap position well out of the money. It would have the cash to pay: the willingness to pay, not so much. Further, although Russia’s ability to pay is closely related to oil prices, it is exposed to other risks that could impair that ability, and these risks would create credit risks for anyone buying swaps from Russia.

Buying puts does create an issue, though: this would require Russia paying a rather hefty premium upfront, at a time when it is cash-strapped. As an illustration of its financial straits, note that it is attempting to avoid having to come up with cash to stabilize troubled megabank VEB. Borrowing to pay the premium is also problematic, given its dicey creditworthiness. Russia’s CDS spread is around 370bp (which, although it has turned up as oil prices took their latest plunge, is still below post-Crimea levels, and even below the levels seen in August). Current sanctions and the prospect of the crystallization of future political risks may also make lenders reluctant to front Russia the premium money.

One interesting thing to consider is how hedging would affect Russia’s output decisions going forward. Hedging, whether by buying puts or selling swaps, would reduce its incentive to cut output in low price environments. As I’ve written before, Russia doesn’t have a strong incentive to cut output anyways because  market share, market demand elasticity, and the cost of shutting down production in Siberia make it a losing prospect (as its refusal to cut output in 2009 and in the past 18 months clearly indicate). However, whatever weak incentives Russia has to cut (in cooperation with the Saudis for instance) would be even weaker if it was hedged. If cooperation on output between OPEC and Russia has proved hard up to now, it would be harder still if Russia was hedged.

A Russian hedging program, if big enough, could affect market pricing, but not the price of oil (at least not directly*): hedging is a transfer of risk, and a big Russian hedge would affect the price of oil risks. Its hedging pressure would tend to increase market risk premia (i.e., reduce forward prices relative to expected spot prices). If done using puts, it would also tend to steepen the put-wing volatility skew and increase volatility risk premium. Adding its hedging pressure to the market would also necessitate the entry of additional speculative capital into the market in order to mitigate these effects. Sechin has criticized speculators in the past: hedging Russian oil price risk would be prohibitively expensive without them.

Although Russia has mooted the possibility, I doubt it will follow through. I would imagine that the combination of the cash cost of options and criticism within the ruling clique of locking in low prices will cause them to pass. If and when oil prices rise substantially, I predict they will forego hedging because they will convince themselves that prices won’t fall again, just as they did post-2009.

In sum, this sounds like an idea that the technocrats have advanced that will die at the hands of the siloviki, like various privatization initiatives.

* The spot price of oil depends on output and demand. Hedging affects spot prices to the extent that it affects output. One way that could happen is that if it reduced Russia’s incentive to cut output. Another way it could happen is that hedging increases Russia’s capacity to finance investments in oil production by reducing capital costs. In this case, investment would be higher and output would be higher.

In each of these scenarios hedging reduces spot oil prices in some states of the world, not because of the direct effects of forward selling, but because the hedging provides incentives to increase output. This is a good thing.