No one in the derivatives market expects 2009 to be easy. The global economic downturn may be deep and long, and futures and options trading is already feeling the pinch. As industry leaders tell Wyn Jenkins, they don’t know how bad it will be – but they are sure that tougher times will give them chances to shake up the industry in new and ultimately creative ways.
“The landscape is changing so fast that whatever I tell you now about what I expect to happen might have changed by tomorrow morning.” That is how Ron Levi, chief operating officer of GFI Group, the US-based interdealer broker, describes the difficult task of predicting the future of the derivatives markets at present.
Many agree with him. We are in unprecedented economic times, which many of the modern and innovative products in the exchange-traded derivatives world have not been...