Stock-lending market

Stream. The stock-lending market is virtually nonexistent, as there is no official facility and banks are not keen to enter into a stock loan, as they remain unfamiliar with the concept. 

Stock lending is not a sale and repurchase in the conventional sense but is used by banks and securities houses to cover short positions in securities put on as part of market-making or proprietary trading activity. In some markets (for example, the Japanese equity market) regulations require a counterparty to have arranged stock lending before putting on the short trade. 

The seller in a classic repo is selling or offering stock, and therefore receiving cash, whereas the buyer is buying or bidding for stock, and consequently paying cash. So if the one-week repo interest rate is quoted by a market-making bank as 51 5 4, this means that the market maker will bid for stock, that is, lend the cash, at 5.50% and offers stock or pays interest on borrowed cash at 5.25%. In some markets the quote is reversed. 

Fundamentally both classic repo and sell/buybacks are money market instruments that are a means by which one party may lend cash to another party, secured against collateral in the form of stocks and bonds. Both transactions are a contract for one party to sell securities, with a simultaneous agreement to repurchase them at a specified future. They also involve ... 

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