Partner Perspectives: Goldman Sachs’ Antony Harden on Credit Index Futures

From early product design to global market expansion, these conversations offer unique insights into how Credit Index Futures are being used across trading desks, what differentiates them from other instruments, and where the market is headed next.  Credit Index Futures have been among the successful new products launched globally in the listed derivatives market over the past decade. The Eurex product suite covers Euro High Yield and Corporate Index Futures, USD High Yield and Corporate Index Futures, GBP Corporate Index Futures and USD Emerging Market Sovereign Index Futures.  In the first of the series, Eurex caught up with Antony Harden, Executive Drector at Goldman Sachs, who was instrumental in the launch of the products.Eurex: You have been a staunch supporter of Credit Index Futures at Eurex from the start, helping to design the product together with early buyside participants. Please explain to us what excited you about the product and how your vision was able to come to fruition?HardenAH: It’s quite rare that a product receives unanimous support from both clients, the bank and the exchange.  In this case we had significant client demand and strong will from GS Trading to support Credit Index Futures with Eurex.  It was clear from the start that the products would have more than one use case and would remove some of the nuisances that are commonly associated with other credit wrappers.Eurex: We were excited by your and Goldman Sachs’ enthusiastic support during the critical initial days of launching the product. Could you please share some considerations and feedback clients had in the early days and how has that changed over time?AH: The key to any successful futures launch is liquidity! I give credit to Eurex for working with screen market makers and banks to provide both on and off-screen block liquidity.   As a liquidity provider, we pride ourselves on being able to offer our clients large notional blocks on risk within the same time parameters expected of other OTC products. Clients are now able to choose for themselves whether to trade on or off the order book depending on their size.Eurex: Credit futures markets are embedded in an ecosystem of other derivatives and cash products such as ETFs, Corporate Bonds, Credit-Default-Swaps and Total Return Swaps. How do you find clients using the products and what are the biggest differentiators that you find for credit index futures compared to the other alternatives?AH: Many of our clients have added credit futures to their toolkit and many more are actively doing so.  The rationale for doing so has evolved since inception. Initially, 90% of requests were for hedging purpose as it was quick and clean and - critically - it was in their mandate to trade.  Now we see clients using the futures as a standalone for adding to exposures or deploying them as part of an RV strategy. The impact from increased future appetite has been most noticeable in TRS, since now you have a listed product, which carries margin offsets and cleaner settlement and no use of OTC credit capacity.Eurex: Having witnessed this success story in Europe first-hand, how do you think the market will develop globally?AH: We are already receiving questions from our clients about IG Duration Hedged Futures and other benchmarks that can be replicated in futures format.Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Deutsche Boerse AG Unsponsored American Deposit Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Deutsche Boerse AG Unsponsored American Deposit