Swap spreads quotes

Swap rates (frequently quoted as government bond yield for a chosen benchmark adjusted for swap spreads)... 

Swap spreads are quoted off specific government benchmarks. When a benchmark issue is replaced, it can have a technical effect on swap spreads. Swap spreads can either narrow or widen, depending on the new benchmark issue used and the shape of the yield curve. The change is only technical, however, and absolute swap rate levels remain unchanged. 

In this example, the bank is quoting an offer rate of 5-25 percent, which is what the fixed-rate payer will pay, and a bid rate of 5-19 percent, which is what the floating-rate payer will receive. The bid-offer spread is therefore 6 basis points. The fixed rate is always set at a spread over the government bond yield curve and is often quoted that way. Say the 5-year Treasury is trading at a yield of 4.88 percent. The 5-year swap bid and offer rates in the example are 31 basis points and 37 basis points, respectively, above this yield, and the bank s swap trader could quote the swap rates as a swap spread 37-31. This means that the bank would be willing to enter into a swap in which it paid 31 basis points above the benchmark yield and received LIBOR or one in which it received 37 basis points above the yield curve and paid LIBOR. 

In the pre-euro days, traders were usually organized by currency. Now, sector specialization is the rule. For most issues, buy or sell indications are initially indicated on a spread basis. The spread can be either over the swap curve or over a specified government benchmark. A corporate bond issue keeps the same benchmark for its entire life they roll down the curve together. This is in contrast to the United States, where the convention is to quote a corporate bond s spread over the nearest on-the-run (most recently issued) 2-, 5-, 10-, or 30-year maturity Treasury bond. 

The fixed rate is some spread above the benchmark yield curve with the same term to maturity as the swap. In our illustration, suppose that the 10-year benchmark yield is 8.35%. Then the offer price that the dealer would quote to the fixed-rate payer is the 10-year benchmark rate plus 50 basis points versus receiving EURIBOR flat. For the floating-rate payer, the bid price quoted would be EURIBOR flat versus the 10-year benchmark rate plus 40 basis points. The dealer would quote such a swap as 40-50, meaning that the dealer is willing to enter into a swap to receive EURIBOR and pay a fixed rate equal to the 10-year benchmark rate plus 40 basis points and it would be willing to enter into a swap to pay EURIBOR and receive a fixed rate equal to the 10-year benchmark rate plus 50 basis points. 

A bank s swap screen on Bloomberg or Reuters might look something like FIGURE 7.3. The first column represents the length of the swap agreement, the next two are its offer and bid quotes for each maturity, and the last is the current bid spread over the government benchmark bond. 

As discussed above, vanilla swap rates are often quoted as a spread that is a function mainly of the credit spread required by the market over the risk-free government rate. This convention is logical, because government bonds are the principal instrument banks use to hedge their swap books. It is unwieldy, however, when applied to nonstandard tailor-made swaps, each of which has particular characteristics that call for particular spread calculations. As a result, banks use zero-coupon pricing, a standard method that can be applied to all swaps. 

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