The Futures Bond Basis

Dr Moorad Choudhry is Head of Treasury at KBC Financial Products in London. He is a Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, London Metropolitan University, a Visiting Research Fellow at the ICMA Centre, University of Reading, a Senior Fellow at the Department of Mathematical Trading and Finance, Cass Business School, and a Fellow of the Securities and Investment Institute.

Preface xiii About the author xix 1 Bond Futures Contracts 1 1.1 Introduction 2 1.1.1 Contract specifications 4 1.2 Futures pricing 11 1.2.1 Theoretical principle 12 1.2.2 Arbitrage-free futures pricing 16 1.3 Hedging using bond futures 21 1.3.1 Introduction 21 1.3.2 Hedging a bond portfolio 26 1.3.3 The margin process 31 1.A Conversion factor for the long gilt future 34 Selected bibliography 38 2 The Government Bond Basis 39 2.1 An introduction to forward pricing 41 2.1.1 Introduction 41 2.1.2 Illustrating the forward bond basis 43 2.2 Forwards and futures valuation 46 2.2.1 Introduction 46 2.2.2 Forwards 47 2.2.3 Futures 49 2.2.4 Forwards and futures 50 2.2.5 Relationship between forward and future price 52 2.2.6 The forwardspot parity 54 2.2.7 The basis and implied repo rate 57 2.3 The bond basis: basic concepts 60 2.3.1 Introduction 60 2.3.2 Futures contract specifications 62 2.3.3 The conversion factor 67 2.3.4 The bond basis 75 2.3.5 The net basis 78 2.3.6 The implied repo rate 82 2.4 Selecting the cheapest-to-deliver bond 92 2.5 Trading the basis 94 2.5.1 The basis position 94 2.6 Exercises 97 Selected bibliography 100 3 Basis Trading and the Implied Repo Rate 103 3.1 Analysing the basis 104 3.1.1 No-arbitrage futures price 105 3.1.2 Options embedded in bond futures contracts 110 3.2 Bond delivery factors 112 3.2.1 The cheapest-to-deliver 112 3.2.2 Selecting delivery time 114 3.2.3 Changes in CTD status 117 3.A General rules of the CTD bond 119 3.B A general model of the CTD bond 121 Selected bibliography 122 4 The Fundamentals of Basis Trading 123 4.1 Rates and spread history 124 4.1.1 Net basis history 124 4.1.2 The implied repo rate 128 4.2 Impact of the repo rate 129 4.2.1 The repo rate 130 4.2.2 Short bond position squeeze 134 4.3 Basis trading mechanics 136 4.3.1 Using the conversion factor 137 4.3.2 Trading profit and loss 138 4.4 Timing the basis trade using the IRR 139 4.4.1 The implied repo rate (again) 139 4.4.2 The IRR across futures contracts: Bloomberg illustration 143 Selected bibliography 145 Appendices A Repo Financing and the Concept of the special 147 A.1 Classic repo 150 A.2 Basket repo: Illustration using Malaysian government bonds 151 A.3 Special bonds in repo 155 B Relative Value Analysis: Bond Spreads 159 B.1 Swap spread and Treasury spread 161 B.2 Assetswap spread 163 B.3 Z-Spread 165 B.4 CashCDS basis 169 References 173 C Liffe Long Gilt Delivery History, March 1996 to June 2001 175 Glossary 199 List of abbreviations 227 Index 229