Repo Transaction Volumes By Venue

Volume

Transaction volume is an indicator of market liquidity. These charts present insights into volumes across various short-term funding markets.

Repo transaction volumes by venue

Transaction volumes in repo broken out by venue

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The market for repurchase agreements (repo) supports short-term liquidity and price discovery by allowing financial institutions to lend or borrow cash, usually overnight, with securities as collateral. Repo venues vary on the extent to which participants know their counterparty, the extent to which they know the specific security being used as collateral, and whether their trades are cleared by a central counterparty.

The OFR currently receives data on three venues for repo transactions. The first is the tri-party market. In tri-party repurchase (repo) transactions, participants know their counterparty, but transact against classes of collateral, rather than specific securities. As a result, tri-party repo is used only for financing, and not for obtaining specific securities. A custodian, usually a bank, maintains post-trade processing activities such as collateral selection, payments and deliveries, custody of collateral securities, and collateral management. Borrowers in tri-party tend to be larger dealers to which cash lenders are willing to be directly exposed. The Federal Reserve has used tri-party repos on occasion to deliver liquidity to dealers in times of market stress.

The second venue is the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation's (FICC) DVP Service. This is a centrally cleared market in which participants know the specific security used as collateral for a transaction. It contains both unbrokered activity, where participants know their ultimate counterparty, and brokered activity, where participants do not know their ultimate counterparty. Because DVP Service settles on a specific-security basis, some of the activity surrounds securities that lenders want, using the market to gain temporary ownership of the security.

The third venue is FICC's GCF Repo Service. This is a centrally cleared market in which participants know neither the specific securities used as collateral nor their counterparty in a transaction. The venue is purely general collateral, so all activity is financing driven. Because it is counterparty-blind, it can be a popular venue for participants concerned about revealing their immediate liquidity needs.

In April 2024 additional historical data was added for DVP and GCF from May 7, 2018. Previously data was only available from December 2019. Due to differences in the timing of data retrieval, this digest may update with a lag relative to the underlying series displayed.

Series Used

Related Charts

Money market fund investment holdings of repos by counterparty type
Aggregate value of money market investment fund holdings of repos by counterparty type
 Repo transaction volumes by venue
Transaction volumes in repo broken out by venue
 Primary dealer failures to deliver or receive
Aggregate failures to deliver or receive securities for primary dealers
 Federal Reserve Bank of New York overnight reference rate volumes
Dollar volume of transactions underlying reference interest rates
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Suggested Citation

Office of Financial Research, “OFR Short-term Funding Monitor,” refreshed daily, https://www.financialresearch.gov/short-term-funding-monitor/ (accessed ).