Repurchase Agreement Denominations

Deposits with longer tenors are generally considered riskier. Over a longer period of time, there are more factors that may affect the solvency of the new purchaser, and changes in interest rates affect the value of the repurchased asset. A pension contract (repo) is a form of short-term borrowing for government bond traders. In the case of a repot, a trader sells government bonds to investors, usually overnight, and buys them back the next day at a slightly higher price. This small price difference is the implied day-to-day rate. Deposits are generally used to obtain short-term capital. They are also a common instrument of central bank open market operations. Beginning in late 2008, the Fed and other regulators adopted new rules to address these and other concerns. One consequence of these rules was to increase pressure on banks to maintain their safest assets, such as Treasuries. They are encouraged not to borrow them through boarding agreements. According to Bloomberg, the impact of the regulation was significant: at the end of 2008, the estimated value of the world securities borrowed was nearly $4 trillion.

But since then, that number has been close to $2 trillion. In addition, the Fed has increasingly entered into repurchase (or self-reversion) agreements to compensate for temporary fluctuations in bank reserves. Deposits with a specified maturity date (usually the following day or the following week) are long-term pension transactions. A trader sells securities to a counterparty with the agreement that he will buy them back at a higher price at a given time. In this agreement, the counterparty receives the use of the securities for the duration of the transaction and receives interest that is indicated as the difference between the initial selling price and the purchase price. The interest rate is set and interest is paid at maturity by the trader. A repo term is used to invest cash or financial investments when the parties know how long it will take them. An open pension contract (also known as on-demand repo) works in the same way as a term pension, except that the trader and counterparty accept the transaction without setting the due date.


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