Chicago Mercantile Exchange

Clearing House Advisory Notice
99-93
October 11,
1999
to:
Clearing Member Firms
Attention:
Chief Financial Officers
Back Office managers
from:
Clearing house department
RE: 3rd
QUARTER, 1999 LIST OF STOCKS AS PERFORMANCE BOND COLLATERAL
The
CME accepts shares of certain equity stocks for customer & house segregated
performance bond collateral. The CME’s Pledgee Bank account number at DTC for
customer segregated stock pledge activity is 858, while the CME’s house
non-segregated origin Pledgee Bank account number is 059. The CME implemented its Stock Pledge Program
to enable clearing members to post shares of selected stock with the Clearing
House to satisfy reserve performance bond requirements. With two-tiered performance bond
requirements, the total performance bond requirement consists of two
amounts. The CORE performance bond requirement represents that portion of the
total performance bond requirement which must be satisfied using the most
liquid forms of collateral. Core
collateral includes all types of collateral currently accepted, recognizing the
current restriction on the use of
Letters of Credit and U.S. Government Agency securities whereby a
clearing member may meet the first five million dollars of its core requirement
and 50% of the remainder of the core requirement using letters of credit and
U.S. Government Agencies. RESERVE performance bond requirements
are set from time to time by the board and are equal to that portion of the
total performance bond requirement which may be met using reserve
collateral. Reserve collateral includes
all core collateral plus shares of stock eligible for the Stock Pledge
Program. There also is no limitation on
the amount of letters of credit or U.S. Government Agencies used to satisfy the
reserve performance bond requirements.
Currently, the clearing level performance bond requirement in the S&P Stock Index Futures are displayed below:
TOTAL
CORE RESERVE P.B. REQUIREMENT
S&P 500 $15,000.00 $3,750.00
$18,750.00
S&P
500/Barra Growth Index $9,600.00
$2,400.00
$12,000.00
S&P
500/Barra Value Index $5,400.00 $1,350.00 $6,750.00
S&P
mini $3,000.00 $750.00
$3,750.00
S&P
Midcap
$8,000.00 $2,000.00 $10,000.00
Russell
2000 $9,200.00 $2,300.00 $11,500.00
All
clearing members with positions in the S&P 500 products will have both Core
and Reserve performance bond requirements, but clearing members are not required
to participate in the Stock Pledge program or to make any other changes in
their collateral on deposit to satisfy their Reserve performance bond
requirement.
The
CME has selected the Depository Trust Company (DTC) as the depository for the
Stock Pledge Program. In order to
participate in the program, clearing members need to have an account at
DTC. For those firms familiar with the
DTC system, the CME’s account has “pledgee bank” status. To facilitate transactions in the Stock
Pledge Program firms must utilize the DTC system.
Clearing
members with an account at DTC can originate free pledges of securities to the
CME account or request the release of pledged securities from the account of
the CME. CME staff have direct access
to DTC’s system to view clearing member pledges and approve release
requests. Release transactions are not
finalized until the CME has approved the transactions. Clearing members have the opportunity to
pledge securities in the morning to facilitate the release of a.m. cash calls at
the intra-day performance bond cycle, or to request the release of pledged
securities. The deadline for morning
transactions is 10:30 a.m. Clearing
members have an additional opportunity to pledge securities in anticipation of
increases in their overnight performance bond requirements from noon until
approximately 1:30 p.m.
STOCK ELIGIBILITY
The
eligible stocks for the Stock Pledge Program include a subset of the stocks in
the S&P 500. On a quarterly basis,
the CME will review the daily volume statistics for the S&P 500 stocks over
the prior calendar quarter. The
guidelines of the stock qualification process are enumerated below:
1)
All
stocks which are for parent or affiliate companies of any clearing member will
be automatically excluded from participation in the program.
2)
All
stocks which had daily trading volume of fewer than 100,000 shares per day on
two-thirds of the days in the preceding
quarter will be excluded from that quarter’s Stock Pledge Program.
3)
All
stocks which had daily trading volume ranging from 100,000 - 249,999 shares per
day on two-thirds of the days in the preceding quarter will be accepted in the
Stock Pledge Program with a limit on the number of shares accepted in any
single clearing member origin of 100,000 shares.
4)
All
stocks which had daily trading volume ranging from 250,000 - 499,999 shares per
day on two-thirds of the days in the preceding quarter will be accepted in the
Stock Pledge Program with a limit on the number of shares accepted in any
single clearing member origin of 250,000 shares.
5)
All
stocks which had daily trading volume ranging from 500,000 - 999,999 shares per
day on two-thirds of the days in the preceding quarter will be accepted in the
Stock Pledge Program with a limit on the number of shares accepted in any single
clearing member origin of 500,000 shares.
5)
All
stocks which had daily trading volume in excess of 1,000,000 shares per day on
two-thirds of the days in the preceding quarter will be accepted in the Stock
Pledge Program with a limit on the number of shares accepted in any single
clearing member origin of 1,000,000 shares.
7)
At
any given time, a stock whose last closing price was less than $10 per share
will be excluded form the program until such time as the stock closes with a
price of $10 or greater.
8)
Clearing
members’ stock pledges will be valued at no more than 70% of market value. Stocks pledged to the CME will be priced at
least on a daily basis.
9)
The
performance bond value of stocks pledged to the CME will be computed as the
lesser of the number of shares on deposit multiplied by the closing price per
share multiplied by 70%, or the maximum number of shares eligible to
participate in the Stock Pledge Program for that stock multiplied by the
closing price per share for that stock multiplied by 70%. If a clearing member has shares pledged to
the CME in excess of the maximum number of shares allowable for a given stock,
the excess shares will receive zero performance bond value. Shares held at zero performance bond value
are not included in the CME’s computations of a clearing member’s excess
collateral, and the clearing member may request the release of such shares
regardless of its remaining collateral excess position.
10)
The
list of eligible stocks will be made available to clearing members. The list will change at lease quarterly but
may also change in mid-quarter due to changes in the composition of the S&P
500 index or changes in clearing member ownership.
If
you need further information about the program please contact, Cheryl L. Rotan,
Financial Analyst, at (312) 930-8005, Marcos Garcia, Financial Analyst, at
(312) 930-2327 or Dora De La Paz, Financial Project Manager, at (312) 930-3171.
Please see the list of pledged stocks at this StockPledge.pdf file. You need to have Adobe acrobat reader to be able to view it and print it. Log on to this website to download Adobe Reader free.