Warrants/Waves-problems with issuers

[CrownA]

I have spoken to Debo at the JSE concerning various issues I have had with issuers not being in the market. Like this am, ABSA were offline till about 10am. Not bloody good enough. There is a meeting with the issuers and the JSE on the 6th Dec, so we should all make a list of gripes to be discussed. I am trading the DB Waves and ABSA Knock-Outs and with ABSA they sometimes leave the market at key times of the day. I phone DB and ABSA repeatedly to get their matrices into market. Why can't they do their jobs properly? Another thing is the spreads. I think when a warrant is at say 10c, the spread should be max. 1c - but sometimes it is 5/10 -how the hell are you going to trade a 50% spread. I suggest anything under 50c, should have a max 1c spread, and anything over 50c, should be allowed a max 2% spread. I also don't like the fact that the warrants are only open from 9.10am and close 4.50pm. This gives the issuers time to tweak their matrices to the market -surely the matrix should work everyday, and one day difference should not make that much difference for warrants with more than 90days to expiry. Even so their matrices should ALWAYS work.

[#2]

Well said! Think they'll listen?

[CrownA]

I hope the JSE has some teeth to cause some action. Just thinking that spread could be even tighter say 1%.

[faure]

Another possible solution would be to introduce vanilla options where anybody can issue them, ie. I can write a vanilla call and sell it on the JSE, effectively doing ABSA/DB etc's job. Arbitrage will ensure an efficient market and strict margin call policies should ideally keep the risk of default as close to zero as possible.