Eurex : A major player unknown to the ECB?

I thought I would follow up my posting yesterday on Eurex AG, the group that managed to generate roughly €340 trillion in trading that was visible in the BIS figures for 2011, but for some reason doesn't seem to get a mention in the ECB figures.

You can see a direct comparison of the two reports in the table below. While the BIS report for Germany lists €107.3 trillion in executed derivatives trades for 2011 and €238.2 trillion in contracts and transactions cleared, the ECB only lists a modet €3.25 trillion in securities transactions cleared. How come the ECB doesn't know about this?

It turns out that at least part of the Eurex's trading is extremely easy to find. The people at Eurex are very open about the level of their derivatives trading, and you can download the full details of all trading at the end of every day on their website. For example, the you can find the data for the 2nd of November as an excel file here, and at the bottom of the file it says that the total Euro value of trades so far in 2012 is €74,881,693,608,152 (nearly €75 trillion). Well, you can't get much more specific than that.

You can also download monthly summary sheets which provide hundreds of pages of information in the forms of graphs and tables. For example, the latest complete set for September 2012 provides total transaction levels not just month by month, but also for every year since 2008.

It's reassuring to see that the number for "Capital Volume in Mio EUR" for 2011 (107,434,671) nearly matches the €107. 3 trillion value given in the BIS dataset. Unfortunately, I've only found one set of numbers on the Eurex website - those corresponding to derivatives. I've not yet found specific details of the €235.2 trillion in contracts and transactions - but maybe I'm not looking in the right place.

But the important thing is that it is clear that companies like Eurex AG keep extremely clear records on the levels of transactions that they handle. And there really is no excuse whatsover for the ECB not providing the full details of this sort of activity too.

Given that this sort of information is really easy to find, it would be trivial to impose a modest FTT on this sort of activity. It would be money that would go directly help reduce the drain on the Eurozone's taxpayers.

Frankly, I see no reason whatsoever for not starting tomorrow....