- The Clarus Microservices API makes it very easy to compute ISDA SIMM™ from Python
- The input data required is a CRIF file contain risk sensitivities
- What-if trades can be easily added to determine the incremental change in margin
- We provide a Sandbox within our API Reference page for you to try the API methods
- Before moving to Python on your own computer
What is Python?
Python is an interpreted language with a design philosophy that emphasizes code readability and a syntax that expresses concepts in fewer lines of code than Java. It has become increasingly popular and there are many commonly used python packages for specific domains and tasks.
Trying out the API
We provide a Clarus python package to make it super convenient to call the Clarus API.
And our API Reference Page allows you to try in the browser, within a Sandbox environment.
First you need to register for a free trial account here. (Only for potential customers, no competitors please).
Then go to the Clarus API Reference Page, login and try out the examples below.
A Simple Example
To calculate SIMM for a single NDF trade, you just need to execute the following three lines:
import clarus response = clarus.simm.margin(whatif='Buy 100m USDKRW 2m') print (response)
Returning:
SIMM Margin Margin 7,900,000
Portfolio CRIF Files
ISDA SIMM specifies a Common Risk Interchange Format (CRIF) for the required risk factor sensitivity inputs to the SIMM calculation.
An extract of such as file for three counterparts is shown below:
ProductClass PortfolioID RiskType Qualifier Bucket Label1 Label2 Amount AmountCurrency AmountUSD RatesFX CptyA Risk_IRCurve USD 1 10y Libor3m "1,000,000" USD "1,000,000" RatesFX CptyB Risk_IRCurve USD 1 5y Libor1m " -500,000" USD "-500,000" RatesFX CptyC Risk_IRCurve USD 1 2y OIS "200,000" USD "200,000" RatesFX CptyA Risk_Inflation USD "-10,000" USD "-10,000" RatesFX CptyB Risk_IRCurve EUR 1 10y Libor3m "-600,000" USD "-600,000" RatesFX CptyC Risk_IRCurve EUR 1 20y Libor3m "50,000" USD "50,000" RatesFX CptyA Risk_Inflation GBP "10,000" USD "10,000" RatesFX CptyB Risk_IRCurve JPY 2 6m Libor3m "300,000" USD "300,000" RatesFX CptyC Risk_IRCurve JPY 2 3m Libor3m "100,000" USD "100,000"
And to work out which of these counterparts to do our NDF trade with, we just need the following one line:
print (clarus.simm.margin(portfolios=clarus.read('CRIF.txt'), whatif='buy 100m USDKRW 2m'))
Returning:
SIMM Account WhatIf Change Margin CptyA 44,982,458 7,900,000 2,743,077 47,725,535 CptyB 39,383,626 7,900,000 2,824,081 42,207,707 CptyC 11,049,380 7,900,000 4,170,195 15,219,575 Margin 95,415,464 9,737,353 105,152,817
Showing the SIMM margin for our account with each Cpty before the trade, the WhatIf margin of the NDF trade by itself, the Change (+/-) that would result and the new Margin.
In this case trading with CptyC would increase the margin the most, while CptyA and CptyB have lower and similar changes. So if the price from each of these three counterparts is the same, then it would be optimal to trade with CptyA or CptyB as doing so would result in a lower funding cost of margin.
(A similar example is available in the Sandbox, in the file SIMMCalc.py, see Example 3)
Impact Grids
While it is super-easy to run whatIf requests for individual trades, it is often useful to pre-run a grid in standard risk sizes for the impact on our margin with each counterparty.
For interest rate risk, it is most convenient to specify this as product, currency, index, tenor and DV01.
The one line below will do this for USD Libor Swaps in 50k DV01 for the four major tenors.
print (clarus.simm.impact(portfolios=clarus.read('CRIF1.txt'), parSwapTenors='2Y,5Y,10Y,30Y'))
Returning:
Portfolio CptyA CptyB CptyC 2Y Pay 0050K DV01 1,834,182 -1,648,017 2,358,821 2Y Rcv 0050K DV01 -1,773,449 1,686,285 -2,309,760 5Y Pay 0050K DV01 2,138,494 -1,730,473 2,071,515 5Y Rcv 0050K DV01 -2,116,623 1,784,815 -1,959,617 10Y Pay 0050K DV01 2,202,367 -1,567,388 1,735,091 10Y Rcv 0050K DV01 -2,198,273 1,601,046 -1,567,247 30Y Pay 0050K DV01 2,481,752 -1,692,578 1,791,044 30Y Rcv 0050K DV01 -2,460,933 1,722,969 -1,466,055
Showing that received fixed swaps will reduce SIMM margin with CptyA and CptyC, while pay fixed will reduce SIMM margin with CptyB.
Also while each of these trades has the same 50K DV01 risk, with CptyA the longer tenors show a larger SIMM margin change, while for CptyC the opposite is true; suggesting a further preference in our trading for short tenors vs long tenors.
(See Example 6 in SIMMCalc.py )
SIMM Sensitivity
We expect firms to produce CRIF files from their own risk systems covering the trades with counterpartys with whom they have SIMM margin agreements in place. However we also provide a method to generate CRIF format risk sensitivities, as this can be useful for testing an internal system’s CRIF generation or for ad-hoc analysis purposes.
The one line below will do this for an NDF.
print (clarus.simm.sensitivity(trades='buy 200m BRLUSD 3.3 3m')
Returning:
RiskType Qualifier Bucket Label1 Label2 Amount AmountCurrency AmountUSD ProductClass PortfolioID ValuationDate Risk_FX BRL 621827.71 USD 621827.71 RatesFX Adhoc 2017-08-02 Risk_FX USD -604190.85 USD -604190.85 RatesFX Adhoc 2017-08-02
(See Example 8 in SIMMCalc.py )
Ready for Python
The Sandbox is great for playing and trying out the API, however at some point you will want to move to running python code from your own computer.
Before doing so, you just need to to two things:
- Generate an API Key and Secret from the API Reference page menu item
- Install our python package, using the following from a command prompt.
pip install clarus
For an introduction and further details on installation and using, see Microservices for Absolute Beginners.
Invitation to Try
Thats it for today.
Thank you for reading to the end.
It just remains for me to invite you to register for the trial. (Standard caveats apply).
Calculate ISDA SIMM from Python.
Begin your journey to Microservices.