​Weekly Bulletin: Jan 19-23

While the market was hit with the ECB’s quantitative easing news this week, most pundits are saying the real test will come this weekend when the Greeks go to the polls on what is basically shaping up to be a referendum on the county’s continued membership in the Eurozone. In the U.S., oil prices are continuing to weigh on market sentiment with some investors dipping into the OTC market to trade risk reversals on single names. In our pension fund coverage, we take a look at the difficulties some are having accounting for contingent hybrid options, while one manager talks up a rotation into equity. In Asia, Hong Kong based Contineo has launched a multi-issuer structured products platform that aims to provide greater access to equity-linked structured products for private banking and wealth management firms. Contineo, which is backed by Barclays, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Société Générale and AG Delta, is aiming to go live with the platform early this year. Also, don’t miss the first released snippet of our upcoming research and data. The exclusive research maps the views of buysiders deploying derivatives on USD30 billion of assets and spending up to USD26.5 million in annual commissions. It seems major U.S. buysiders want to see tradable variance products developed this year, while Barclays has topped the counterparty rankings for those buysiders trading VIX options in 2014.