Authors: Charles Gates and Ken Kapner Interest rate swaps denominated in US dollars (an agreement between two counterparties to exchange a fixed rate of interest for a floating rate of interest for a specific period of time calculated on a notional principal amount) have been in existence since the early…

Author: Charles Gates Negative interest rates have been observed many times in various markets, but over the past few years, have occurred more often than can be explained by a mere anomaly. We have no problem imagining why a government or company would want to issue bonds at a negative…

By Ken Kapner GFMI’s Newest Article The history of marijuana is one fraught with varying degrees of acceptance, illegality, utility, and recreation. As noted in GFMI’s most recent article, Marijuana Related Businesses (MRBs): High Hopes for a Fast-Growing Industry: In the United States, ten states have legalized pot for recreational…

In late 2017, GFMI’s President and CEO, Ken Kapner, wrote an article about the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), which is used by capital markets participants as the rate by which they would lend each other money. For a variety of reasons, including the realization that the rate was being…

by Drew H. Boecher, CFA Managing Director, Darling Consulting Group   Accepting a Regulatory Gift: Exceeding Rising Credit Risk Quantification Standards Encountering a New Standard “That did not go too well” said Barry, my investment expert friend as we left the testing center. He was an extremely intelligent financial expert…

Since shortening the US equity cycle in 1995 from T+5 to T+3, there has been a continued analysis and positioning to further shortening the number of business days from trade to settlement. In October 2014, a total of 29 countries, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, the UK and…

Winter may have been late in arriving for many of us, but we are already looking forward to Spring. With 20-25 inches of snow from #Snowzilla2016, it was a tremendous storm, but it was not tremendous enough to overwhelm our efforts to bring forth some new insights and courses for…

As President and CEO of GFMI, I travel often and have the opportunity to hear questions from a variety of sources: asset managers, institutional investors, regulators, and bankers. One of the more frequent questions I hear is, “What’s the difference between CCAR and DFAST?” To help answer this question, one…

Here at Global Financial Markets Institute (GFMI) we’ve wrapped up the third quarter already and are preparing for the end-run of 2015. Already, our clients are planning budgets for 2016 and, in response, the team at GFMI are preparing our subject matter experts’ calendars for next year’s financial learning requests.…

In GFMI’s latest article, The Federal Reserve Tools: Past and Present, I touch upon a topic that might be familiar to some, yet still a mystery to others. It seemed a timely topic, since the Fed said in March 2015: “Economic growth moderated (some); there are improvements in the labor…