DTCC to open up CDS data to address transparency concerns

The DTCC announced today that it will begin to publish aggregate market data from its trade information warehouse, the worldwide central trade registry it maintains on credit derivatives. Starting Tuesday, 4 November and continuing weekly, DTCC will post on its website www.dtcc.com/derivserv the outstanding gross and net notional values of credit default swap contracts registered in the warehouse for the top 1,000 underlying single-name reference entities and all indices, as well as certain aggregates of this data on a gross notional basis only. The data is intended to address market concerns about transparency.

The data will be shown in two sections. Section 1 will show the outstanding notional values at a given point in time (the end of each week). Section 2 will show data relating to the weekly confirmed trade volume, or “turnover,” with respect to the same underlying reference entities and indices, as well as similar aggregations of such data. Section 2 data will be published beginning the week after the initial publication of outstanding notional values.