Chapter 5

Financing debt securities: Repurchase (repo) agreements

Chapter Summary

This chapter defines repo and reverse repo agreements. Through worked-out examples, the chapter illustrates how to finance long positions and establish short positions in repo markets. Real-life features such as haircuts (margins) are treated. The differences between general collateral (GC) repo rates and special repo rates are explained. The relationship between GC repo rates and other short-term interest rates such as the effective Fed funds rate and one-month LIBOR are analyzed. The possibility of fails in repo markets and recent innovations in the repo markets are described.

5.1 Repo and Reverse Repo Contracts

Repurchase agreements, often simply referred to as

Get Fixed Income Markets and Their Derivatives, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.