82_FR_57537 82 FR 57306 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; The Options Clearing Corporation; Notice of Filing of Proposed Rule Change Related to The Options Clearing Corporation's Margin Methodology

82 FR 57306 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; The Options Clearing Corporation; Notice of Filing of Proposed Rule Change Related to The Options Clearing Corporation's Margin Methodology

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Federal Register Volume 82, Issue 231 (December 4, 2017)

Page Range57306-57313
FR Document2017-25989

Federal Register, Volume 82 Issue 231 (Monday, December 4, 2017)
[Federal Register Volume 82, Number 231 (Monday, December 4, 2017)]
[Notices]
[Pages 57306-57313]
From the Federal Register Online  [www.thefederalregister.org]
[FR Doc No: 2017-25989]


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SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

[Release No. 34-82161; File No. SR-OCC-2017-022]


Self-Regulatory Organizations; The Options Clearing Corporation; 
Notice of Filing of Proposed Rule Change Related to The Options 
Clearing Corporation's Margin Methodology

November 28, 2017.
    Pursuant to Section 19(b)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 
(``Act''), \1\ and Rule 19b-4 thereunder, \2\ notice is hereby given 
that on November 13, 2017, The Options Clearing Corporation (``OCC'') 
filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (``Commission'') the 
proposed rule

[[Page 57307]]

change as described in Items I, II, and III below, which Items have 
been prepared by OCC. The Commission is publishing this notice to 
solicit comments on the proposed rule change from interested persons.
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    \1\ 15 U.S.C. 78s(b)(1).
    \2\ 17 CFR 240.19b-4.
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I. Clearing Agency's Statement of the Terms of Substance of the 
Proposed Rule Change

    This proposed rule change by OCC would modify OCC's margin 
methodology to move away from the existing monthly data source provided 
by its current vendor and towards obtaining and incorporating daily 
price and returns (adjusted for any corporate actions) data of 
securities to estimate accurate margins.\3\ This would be further 
supported by enhancing OCC's econometric model applied to different 
risk factors; \4\ improving the sensitivity and stability of 
correlation estimates between them; and enhancing OCC's methodology 
around the treatment of securities with limited historical data. OCC 
also proposes to make a few clarifying and clean-up changes to its 
margin methodology unrelated to the proposed changes described above.
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    \3\ OCC also has filed an advance notice with the Commission in 
connection with the proposed changes. See SR-OCC-2017-811.
    \4\ The use of risk factors in OCC's margin methodology is 
discussed in more detail in the Background section of Item II below.
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    The proposed changes to OCC's Margins Methodology document are 
contained in confidential Exhibit 5 of the filing. The proposed changes 
are described in detail in Item II below. The proposed rule change does 
not require any changes to the text of OCC's By-Laws or Rules. All 
terms with initial capitalization that are not otherwise defined herein 
have the same meaning as set forth in the OCC By-Laws and Rules.\5\
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    \5\ OCC's By-Laws and Rules can be found on OCC's public Web 
site: http://optionsclearing.com/about/publications/bylaws.jsp.
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II. Clearing Agency's Statement of the Purpose of, and Statutory Basis 
for, the Proposed Rule Change

    In its filing with the Commission, OCC included statements 
concerning the purpose of and basis for the proposed rule change and 
discussed any comments it received on the proposed rule change. The 
text of these statements may be examined at the places specified in 
Item IV below. OCC has prepared summaries, set forth in sections (A), 
(B), and (C) below, of the most significant aspects of these 
statements.

(A) Clearing Agency's Statement of the Purpose of, and Statutory Basis 
for, the Proposed Rule Change

(1) Purpose
Background
    OCC's margin methodology, the System for Theoretical Analysis and 
Numerical Simulations (``STANS''), is OCC's proprietary risk management 
system that calculates Clearing Member margin requirements.\6\ STANS 
utilizes large-scale Monte Carlo simulations to forecast price and 
volatility movements in determining a Clearing Member's margin 
requirement.\7\ The STANS margin requirement is calculated at the 
portfolio level of Clearing Member accounts with positions in 
marginable securities and consists of an estimate of a 99% expected 
shortfall \8\ over a two-day time horizon and an add-on margin charge 
for model risk (the concentration/dependence stress test charge).\9\ 
The STANS methodology is used to measure the exposure of portfolios of 
options and futures cleared by OCC and cash instruments in margin 
collateral.
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    \6\ See Securities Exchange Act Release No. 53322 (February 15, 
2006), 71 FR 9403 (February 23, 2006) (SR-OCC-2004-20).
    \7\ See OCC Rule 601.
    \8\ The expected shortfall component is established as the 
estimated average of potential losses higher than the 99% value at 
risk threshold. The term ``value at risk'' or ``VaR'' refers to a 
statistical technique that, generally speaking, is used in risk 
management to measure the potential risk of loss for a given set of 
assets over a particular time horizon.
    \9\ A detailed description of the STANS methodology is available 
at http://optionsclearing.com/risk-management/margins/.
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    A ``risk factor'' within OCC's margin system may be defined as a 
product or attribute whose historical data is used to estimate and 
simulate the risk for an associated product. The majority of risk 
factors utilized in the STANS methodology are total returns on 
individual equity securities. Other risk factors considered include: 
Returns on equity indexes; returns on implied volatility \10\ risk 
factors that are a set of nine chosen volatility pivots per product; 
\11\ changes in foreign exchange rates; and changes in model parameters 
that sufficiently capture the model dynamics from a larger set of data.
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    \10\ Generally speaking, the implied volatility of an option is 
a measure of the expected future volatility of the value of the 
option's annualized standard deviation of the price of the 
underlying security, index, or future at exercise, which is 
reflected in the current option premium in the market. Using the 
Black-Scholes options pricing model, the implied volatility is the 
standard deviation of the underlying asset price necessary to arrive 
at the market price of an option of a given strike, time to 
maturity, underlying asset price and given the current risk-free 
rate. In effect, the implied volatility is responsible for that 
portion of the premium that cannot be explained by the then-current 
intrinsic value (i.e., the difference between the price of the 
underlying and the exercise price of the option) of the option, 
discounted to reflect its time value.
    \11\ In December 2015, the Commission approved a proposed rule 
change, and issued a Notice of No Objection to an advance notice 
filing, by OCC to its modify margin methodology by more broadly 
incorporating variations in implied volatility within STANS. See 
Securities Exchange Act Release No. 34-76781 (December 28, 2015), 81 
FR 135 (January 4, 2016) (SR-OCC-2015-016) and Securities Exchange 
Act Release No. 34-76548 (December 3, 2015), 80 FR 76602 (December 
9, 2015) (SR-OCC-2015-804).
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    Under OCC's current margin methodology, OCC obtains monthly price 
data for most of its equity-based products \12\ from a widely used 
industry vendor. This data arrives around the second week of every 
month in arrears and requires a maximum of about four weeks for OCC to 
process the data after any clean up and reruns as may be required prior 
to installing into OCC's margin system. As a result, correlations and 
statistical parameters for risk factors at any point in time represent 
back-dated data and therefore may not be representative of the most 
recent market data. In the absence of daily updates, OCC employs an 
approach where one or many identified market proxies (or ``scale-
factors'') are used to incorporate day-to-day market volatility across 
all associated asset classes throughout.\13\ The scale factor approach, 
however, assumes a perfect correlation of the volatilities between the 
security and its scale factor, which gives little room to capture the 
idiosyncratic risk of a given security and which may be different from 
the broad market risk represented by the scale factor.
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    \12\ The securities underlying these products are also known as 
risk factors within OCC's margin system.
    \13\ Earlier this year, the Commission approved a proposed rule 
change and issued a Notice of No Objection to an advance notice 
filing by OCC which, among other things: (1) Expanded the number of 
scale factors used for equity-based products to more accurately 
measure the relationship between current and long-run market 
volatility with proxies that correlate more closely to certain 
products carried within the equity asset class, and (2) applied 
relevant scale factors to the greater of (i) the estimated variance 
of 1-day return scenarios or (ii) the historical variance of the 
daily return scenarios of a particular instrument, as a floor to 
mitigate procyclicality. See Securities Exchange Act Release No. 
80147 (March 3, 2017), 82 FR 13163 (March 9, 2017) (SR-OCC-2017-001) 
and Securities Exchange Act Release No. 80143 (March 2, 2017), 82 FR 
13036 (March 8, 2017) (SR-OCC-2017-801).
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    In risk management, it is a common practice to establish a floor 
for volatility at a certain level in order to protect against 
procyclicality \14\ in the model.

[[Page 57308]]

OCC imposes a floor on volatility estimates for its equity-based 
products using a 500-day look back period. These monthly updates 
coupled with the dependency of margins on scale factors and the 
volatility floor can result in imprecise changes in margins charged to 
Clearing Members, specifically across periods of heavy volatility when 
the correlation between the risk factor and a scale factor fluctuate.
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    \14\ A quality that is positively correlated with the overall 
state of the market is deemed to be ``procyclical.'' For example, 
procyclicality may be evidenced by increasing margin or Clearing 
Fund requirements in times of stressed market conditions and low 
margin or Clearing Fund requirements when markets are calm. Hence, 
anti-procyclical features in a model are measures intended to 
prevent risk-based models from fluctuating too drastically in 
response to changing market conditions.
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    OCC's current methodology for estimating covariance and 
correlations between risk factors relies on the same monthly data 
described above, resulting in a similar lag time between updates. In 
addition, correlation estimates are based off historical returns 
series, with estimates between a pair of risk factors being highly 
sensitive to the volatility of either risk factor in the chosen pair. 
The current approach therefore results in potentially less stable 
correlation estimates that may not be representative of current market 
conditions.
    Finally, under OCC's existing margin methodology, theoretical price 
scenarios for ``defaulting securities'' \15\ are simulated using 
uncorrelated return scenarios with an average zero return and a pre-
specified volatility called ``default variance.'' The default variance 
is estimated as the average of the top 25 percent quantile of the 
conditional variances of all securities. As a result, these default 
estimates may be impacted by extremely illiquid securities with 
discontinuous data. In addition, the default variance (and the 
associated scale factors used to scale up volatility) is also subject 
to sudden jumps with the monthly simulation installations across 
successive months because it is derived from monthly data updates, as 
opposed to daily updates, which are prone to wider fluctuations and are 
subject to adjustments using scale factors.
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    \15\ Within the context of OCC's margin system, securities that 
do not have enough historical data for calibration are classified as 
``defaulting securities.''
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Proposed Changes
    OCC proposes to modify its margin methodology by: (1) Obtaining 
daily price data for equity products (including daily corporate action-
adjusted returns of equities where price and thus returns of securities 
are adjusted for any dividends issued, stock splits, etc.) for use in 
the daily estimation of econometric model parameters; (2) enhancing its 
econometric model for updating statistical parameters (e.g., parameters 
concerning correlations or volatility) for all risk factors that 
reflect the most recent data obtained; (3) improving the sensitivity 
and stability of correlation estimates across risk factors by using de-
volatized \16\ returns (but using a 500 day look back period); and (4) 
improving OCC's methodology related to the treatment of defaulting 
securities that would result in stable and realistic risk estimates for 
such securities.\17\
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    \16\ De-volatization is a process of normalizing historical data 
with the associated volatility thus enabling any comparison between 
different sets of data.
    \17\ In addition to the proposed methodology changes described 
herein, OCC also would make some clarifying and clean-up changes, 
unrelated to the proposed changes described above, to update its 
margin methodology to reflect existing practices for the daily 
calibration of seasonal and non-seasonal energy models and the 
removal of methodology language for certain products that are no 
longer cleared by OCC.
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    The purpose of the proposed changes is to enhance OCC's margin 
methodology to mitigate the issues described above that arise from the 
current monthly update and scale factor approach. Specifically, by 
introducing daily (as opposed to monthly) updates for price data (and 
thereby allowing for daily updates of statistical parameters in the 
model) and making other proposed model enhancements described herein, 
the proposed changes are designed to result in more accurate and 
responsive margin requirements and a model that is more stable and 
proactive during times of market volatility, with margins that are 
based off of the most recent market data. In addition, the proposed 
changes are intended to improve OCC's approach to estimating covariance 
and correlations between risk factors in an effort to achieve more 
stable and sensitive correlation estimations and improve OCC's 
methodology related to the treatment of defaulting securities by 
reducing the impact that illiquid securities with discontinuous data 
have on default variance estimates.
    The proposed changes are described in further detail below.
1. Daily Updates of Price Data
    OCC proposes to introduce daily updates for price data for equity 
products, including daily corporate action-adjusted returns of 
equities, Exchange Traded Funds (``ETFs''), Exchange Traded Notes 
(``ETNs'') and certain indexes. The daily price data would be obtained 
from a widely used external vendor, as is the case with the current 
monthly updates. The purpose of the proposed change is to ensure that 
OCC's margin methodology is reliant on data that is more representative 
of current market conditions, thereby resulting in more accurate and 
responsive margin requirements.
    As described above, OCC currently obtains price data for all 
securities on a monthly basis from a third party vendor. After 
obtaining the monthly price data, additional time is required for OCC 
to process the data prior to installing into OCC's margin system. As a 
result, correlations and statistical parameters for risk factors at any 
point in time represent back-dated data and therefore may not be 
representative of the most recent market data. To mitigate pro-
cyclicality within its margin methodology in the absence of daily 
updates, OCC employs the use of scale-factors to incorporate day-to-day 
market volatility across all associated asset classes. While the scale 
factors help to reduce procyclicality in the model, the scale factors 
do not necessarily capture the idiosyncratic risks of a given security, 
which may be different from the broad market risk represented by the 
scale factor.
    OCC proposes to address these issues associated with its current 
margin methodology by eliminating its dependency on monthly price data, 
which arrives in arrears and requires additional time for OCC to 
process the data prior to installing into OCC's margin system through 
the introduction of daily updates for price data for equity products. 
The introduction of daily price updates would enable OCC's margin 
methodology to better capture both market as well idiosyncratic risk by 
allowing for daily updates to the parameters associated with the 
econometric model (discussed below) that capture the risk associated 
with a particular product, and therefore ensure that OCC's margin 
requirements are based on more current market conditions. As a result, 
OCC would also reduce its reliance on the use of scale factors to 
incorporate day-to-day market volatility, which, as noted above, give 
little room to capture the idiosyncratic risk of a given security and 
which may be different from the broad market risk represented by the 
scale factor. In addition, the processing time between receipt of the 
data and installation into the margin system would be reduced as the 
data review and processing for daily prices would be incorporated into 
OCC's daily price editing process.
2. Proposed Enhancements to the Econometric Model
    In addition to introducing daily updates for price and corporate 
action-adjusted returns data, OCC is proposing enhancements to its 
econometric model

[[Page 57309]]

for calculating statistical parameters for all qualifying risk factors 
that reflect the most recent data obtained (e.g., OCC would be able to 
calculate parameters such as volatility and correlations on a daily 
basis using the new daily price data discussed above). Specifically, 
OCC proposes to enhance its econometric model by: (i) Introducing daily 
updates for statistical parameters; (ii) introducing features in its 
econometric model that are designed to take into account asymmetry in 
the model used to forecast volatility associated with a risk factor; 
(iii) modifying the statistical distribution used to model the returns 
of equity prices; (iv) introducing a second-day forecast for volatility 
into the model to estimate the two-day scenario distributions for risk 
factors; and (v) imposing a floor on volatility estimates using a 10-
year look back period.
    These proposed model enhancements are described in detail below.
i. Daily Updates for Statistical Parameters
    Under the proposal, the statistical parameters for the model would 
be updated on a daily basis using the new daily price data obtained by 
OCC (as described in section 1 above).\18\ As a result, OCC would no 
longer need to rely on scale factors to approximate day-to-day market 
volatility for equity-based products. Statistical parameters would be 
calibrated on daily basis, allowing OCC to calculate more accurate 
margin requirements that are representative of the most recent market 
data.
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    \18\ OCC notes that this change would apply to most risk factors 
with the exception of certain equity indexes, Treasury securities, 
and energy futures products, which are already updated on a daily 
basis.
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ii. Proposed Enhancements To Capture Asymmetry in Conditional Variance
    In addition to the daily update of statistical parameters, OCC 
proposes to include new features in its econometric model that are 
designed to take into account asymmetry in the conditional variance 
process. The econometric model currently used in STANS for all risk 
factors is a GARCH(1,1) with Student's t-distributed innovations of 
logarithmic returns,\19\ which is a relatively straightforward and 
widely used model to forecast volatility.\20\ The current approach for 
forecasting the conditional variance for a given risk factor does not, 
however, consider the asymmetric volatility phenomenon observed in 
financial markets (also called the ``leverage effect'') where 
volatility is more sensitive and reactive to market downturns. As a 
result, OCC proposes to enhance its model by adding new features (i.e., 
incorporating asymmetry into its forecast volatility) designed to allow 
the conditional volatility forecast to be more sensitive to market 
downturns and thereby capture the most significant dynamics of the 
relationship between price and volatility observed in financial 
markets. OCC believes the proposed enhancement would result in more 
accurate and responsive margin requirements, particularly in market 
downturns.
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    \19\ The Student's t distribution is a widely used statistical 
distribution to model the historical logarithmic price returns data 
of a security that allows for the presence of fat tails (aka 
kurtosis) or a non-zero conditional fourth moment.
    \20\ See generally Tim Bollerslev, ``Generalized Autoregressive 
Conditional Heteroskedasticity,'' Journal of Econometrics, 31(3), 
307-327 (1986). The acronym ``GARCH'' refers to an econometric model 
that can be used to estimate volatility based on historical data. 
The general distinction between the ``GARCH variance'' and the 
``sample variance'' for a given time series is that the GARCH 
variance uses the underlying time series data to forecast 
volatility.
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iii. Proposed Change in Statistical Distribution
    OCC further proposes to change the statistical distribution used to 
model the returns of equity prices. OCC's current methodology uses a 
fat tailed distribution \21\ (the Student's t-distribution) to model 
returns; however, price scenarios generated using very large log-return 
scenarios (positive) that follow this distribution can approach 
infinity and could potentially result in excessively large price jumps, 
a known limitation of this distribution. OCC proposes to move to a more 
defined distribution (Standardized Normal Reciprocal Inverse Gaussian 
or NRIG) for modeling returns, which OCC believes would more 
appropriately simulate future returns based on the historical price 
data for the products in question (i.e., it has a better ``goodness of 
fit'' \22\ to the historical data) and allows for more appropriate 
modeling of fat tails. As a result, OCC believes that the proposed 
change would lead to more consistent treatment of log returns both on 
the upside as well as downside of the distribution.
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    \21\ A data set with a ``fat tail'' is one in which extreme 
price returns have a higher probability of occurrence than would be 
the case in a normal distribution.
    \22\ The goodness of fit of a statistical model describes the 
extent to which observed data match the values generated by the 
model.
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iv. Second Day Volatility Forecast
    OCC also proposes to introduce a second-day forecast for volatility 
into the model to estimate the two-day scenario distributions for risk 
factors.\23\ Under the current methodology, OCC typically uses a two-
day horizon to determine its risk exposure to a given portfolio. This 
is done by simulating 10,000 theoretical price scenarios for the two-
day horizon using a one-day forecast conditional variance, and the 
value at risk and expected shortfall components of the margin 
requirement are then determined from the simulated profit/loss 
distributions. These one-day and two-day returns scenarios are both 
simulated using the one-day forecast conditional variance estimate. 
This could lead to a risk factor's coverage differing substantially on 
volatile trading days. As a result, OCC proposes to introduce a second-
day forecast variance for all equity-based risk factors. The second-day 
conditional variance forecast would be estimated for each of the 10,000 
Monte Carlo returns scenarios, resulting in more accurately estimated 
two-day scenario distributions, and therefore more accurate and 
responsive margin requirements.
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    \23\ This proposed change would not apply to STANS implied 
volatility scenario risk factors. For those risk factors, OCC's 
existing methodology would continue to apply. See supra note 11.
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v. Anti-Procyclical Floor for Volatility Estimates
    Additionally, OCC proposes to modify its floor for volatility 
estimates. OCC currently imposes a floor on volatility estimates for 
its equity-based products using a 500-day look back period. OCC 
proposes to extend this look back period to 10-years (2520 days) in the 
enhanced model and to apply this floor to volatility estimates for 
other products (excluding implied volatility risk factor scenarios). 
The proposed model described herein is calibrated from historical data, 
and as a result, the level of the volatilities generated by the model 
will vary from time to time. OCC is therefore proposing to establish a 
volatility floor for the model using a 10-year look back period to 
reduce the risk of procyclicality in its margin model. OCC believes 
that using a longer 10-year look back period will ensure that OCC 
captures sufficient historical events/market shocks in the calculation 
of its anti-procyclical floor. The 10-year look back period also is in 
line with requirements of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation 
(including regulations thereunder) \24\ concerning the calibration of 
risk factors.
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    \24\ Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European Parliament and 
of the Council of 4 July 2012 on OTC derivatives, central 
counterparties and trade repositories. Specifically, the proposed 
floor would be compliant with Article 28 of Commission Delegated 
Regulation (EU) No. 153/2013 of 19 December 2012 Supplementing 
Regulation (EU) No. 648/2012 of the European Parliament and of the 
Council with regard to Regulatory Technical Standards on 
Requirements for Central Counterparties (the ``Regulatory Technical 
Standards'').

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[[Page 57310]]

3. Proposed Enhancements to Correlation Estimates
    As described above, OCC's current methodology for estimating 
covariance and correlations between risk factors relies on the same 
monthly price data feeding the econometric model, resulting in a 
similar lag time between updates. In addition, correlation estimates 
are based off historical returns series, with estimates between a pair 
of risk factors being highly sensitive to the volatility of either risk 
factors in the chosen pair. The current approach therefore results in 
correlation estimates being sensitive to volatile historical data.
    In order to address these limitations, OCC proposes to enhance its 
methodology for calculating correlation estimates by moving to a daily 
process for updating correlations (with a minimum of one week's lag) to 
ensure Clearing Member account margins are more current and thus more 
accurate. Moreover, OCC proposes to enhance its approach to modeling 
correlation estimates by de-volatizing \25\ the returns series to 
estimate the correlations. Under the proposed approach, OCC would first 
consider the returns excess of the mean (i.e., the average estimated 
from historical data sample) and then further scale them by the 
corresponding estimated conditional variances. OCC believes that by 
using de-volatized returns, which is a widely suggested approach in 
relevant literature, it would lead to normalizing returns across a 
variety of asset classes and make the correlation estimator less 
sensitive to sudden market jumps and therefore more stable.
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    \25\ See supra note 16.
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4. Defaulting Securities Methodology
    Finally, OCC proposes to enhance its methodology for estimating the 
defaulting variance in its model. OCC's margin system is dependent on 
market data to determine Clearing Member margin requirements. 
Securities that do not have enough historical data are classified as to 
be a ``defaulting security'' within OCC systems (e.g., IPO securities). 
As noted above, within current STANs systems, the theoretical price 
scenarios for defaulting securities are simulated using uncorrelated 
return scenarios with a zero mean and a default variance, with the 
default variance being estimated as the average of the top 25 percent 
quantile of the conditional variances of all securities. As a result, 
these default estimates may be impacted by extremely illiquid 
securities with discontinuous data. In addition, the default variance 
(and the associated scale factors used to scale up volatility) is also 
subject to sudden jumps with the monthly simulation installations 
across volatile months. To mitigate these concerns, OCC proposes to: 
(i) Use only optionable equity securities to estimate the defaulting 
variance; (ii) use a shorter time series to enable calibration of the 
model for all securities; and (iii) simulating default correlations 
with the driver Russell 2000 index (``RUT'').
i. Proposed Modifications to Securities and Quantile Used in Estimation
    OCC proposes that only optionable equity securities, which are 
typically more liquid, be considered while estimating the default 
variance. This limitation would eliminate from the estimation almost 
all illiquid securities with discontinuous data that could contribute 
to high conditional variance estimates and thus a high default 
variance. In addition, OCC proposes to estimate the default variance as 
the lowest estimate of the top 10% of the floored conditional variance 
across the risk factors. This change in methodology is designed to 
ensure that while the estimate is aggressive it is also robust to the 
presence of outliers caused by a few extremely volatile securities that 
influence the location parameter of a distribution. Moreover, as a 
consequence of the daily updates described above, the default variances 
would change daily and there would be no scale factor to amplify the 
effect of the variance on risk factor coverage.
ii. Proposed Change in Time Series
    In addition, OCC proposes to use a shorter time series to enable 
calibration of the model for all securities. Currently, OCC does not 
calibrate parameters for defaulting securities that have historical 
data of less than two years. OCC is proposing to shorten this time 
period to around 6 months (180 days) to enable calibration of the model 
for all securities within OCC systems. OCC believes that this shorter 
time series is sufficient to produce stable calibrated parameters.
iii. Proposed Default Correlation
    Finally, OCC proposes that returns scenarios for defaulting 
securities, securities with insufficient historical data, be simulated 
using a default correlation with the driver RUT.\26\ The RUT Index is a 
small cap index and is hence a natural choice to represent most new 
issues that are small cap and deemed to be a ``defaulting security.'' 
The default correlation is roughly equal to the median of all 
positively correlated securities with the index. Since 90% of the risk 
factors in OCC systems correlate positively to the RUT index, OCC would 
only consider those risk factors to determine the median. OCC believes 
that the median of the correlation distribution has been steady over a 
number of simulations and is therefore proposing that it replace the 
current methodology of simulating uncorrelated scenarios, which OCC 
believes is not a realistic approach.
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    \26\ OCC notes that, in certain limited circumstances where 
there are reasonable grounds backed by the existing return history 
to support an alternative approach in which the returns are strongly 
correlated with those of an existing risk factor (a ``proxy'') with 
a full price history, the Margins Methodology allows OCC's Financial 
Risk Management staff to construct a ``conditional'' simulation to 
override any default treatment that would have otherwise been 
applied to the defaulting security.
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Clearing Member Outreach
    OCC has discussed the proposed changes with its Financial Risk 
Advisory Council \27\ at a meeting held on October 25, 2016. OCC also 
provided general updates to members at OCC Roundtable \28\ meetings on 
June 20, 2017, and November 9, 2017. Clearing Members expressed 
interest in seeing how reactive margin changes would be under the 
proposal; however, there were no objections or significant concerns 
expressed regarding the proposed changes. OCC will provide at least 30-
days of parallel reporting prior to implementation so that Clearing 
Members can see the impact of the proposed changes. In addition, OCC 
would publish an Information Memorandum to all Clearing Members 
describing the proposed change and will provide additional periodic 
Information Memoranda updates prior to the implementation date. 
Additionally, OCC would perform targeted and direct outreach with 
Clearing Members that would be most impacted by the proposed changes to 
the margin methodology and OCC would work closely with such Clearing 
Members to coordinate the implementation and associated funding for 
such Clearing

[[Page 57311]]

Members resulting from the proposed change.\29\
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    \27\ The Financial Risk Advisory Council is a working group 
consisting of representatives of Clearing Members and exchanges 
formed by OCC to review and comment on various risk management 
proposals.
    \28\ The OCC Roundtable was established to bring Clearing 
Members, exchanges and OCC together to discuss industry and 
operational issues. It is comprised of representatives of the senior 
OCC staff, participant exchanges and Clearing Members, representing 
the diversity of OCC's membership in industry segments, OCC-cleared 
volume, business type, operational structure and geography.
    \29\ Specifically, OCC will discuss with those Clearing Members 
how they plan to satisfy any increase in their margin requirements 
associated with the proposed change.
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(2) Statutory Basis
    OCC believes that the proposed rule change is consistent with 
Section 17A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the 
``Act''),\30\ and the rules thereunder applicable to OCC. Section 
17A(b)(3)(F) of Act \31\ requires that the rules of a clearing agency 
be designed to assure the safeguarding of securities and funds which 
are in the custody or control of the clearing agency or for which it is 
responsible. OCC believes the propose rule change would enhance its 
margin methodology in a manner designed to safeguard the securities and 
funds in its custody or control for the reasons set forth below.
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    \30\ 15 U.S.C. 78q-1.
    \31\ 15 U.S.C. 78q-1(b)(3)(F).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    As noted above, OCC's current margin methodology relies on monthly 
price data being obtained from a third party vendor. This data arrives 
monthly in arrears and requires additional time for OCC to process the 
data prior to installing into OCC's margin system. As a result, 
correlations and statistical parameters for risk factors at any point 
in time represent back-dated data and therefore may not be 
representative of the most recent market data. To mitigate 
procyclicality within its margin methodology in the absence of daily 
updates, OCC employs a scale factor approach to incorporate day-to-day 
market volatility across all associated asset classes throughout.\32\ 
For the reasons noted above, these monthly updates coupled with the 
dependency of margins on scale factors can result in imprecise changes 
in margins charged to Clearing Members, specifically across periods of 
heavy volatility.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \32\ See supra note 13 and accompanying text.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    OCC proposes to enhance its margin methodology to introduce daily 
updates for equity price data, thereby allowing for daily updates of 
statistical parameters in its margin model for most risk factors. In 
addition, the proposed changes would introduce features to the model to 
better account for the asymmetric volatility phenomenon observed in 
financial markets and allow for conditional volatility forecast to be 
more sensitive to market downturns. The proposed changes would also 
introduce a new statistical distribution for modeling equity price 
returns that OCC believes would have a better goodness of fit and would 
more appropriately account for fait tails. Moreover, the proposed 
changes would introduce a second-day volatility forecast into the model 
to provide for more accurate and timely estimations of its two-day 
scenario distributions. OCC also proposes to enhance its econometric 
model by establishing a volatility floor using a 10-year look back 
period to reduce procyclicality in the margin model. OCC believes the 
proposed changes would result in more accurate and responsive margin 
requirements and a model that is more stable and proactive during times 
of market volatility, with risk charges that are based off of most 
recent market data.
    In addition, the proposed rule change is intended to improve OCC's 
approach to estimating covariance and correlations between risk factors 
in an effort to achieve more stable and sensitive correlation 
estimations and improve OCC's methodology related to the treatment of 
defaulting securities by reducing the impact that illiquid securities 
with discontinuous data have on default variance estimates.
    The proposed methodology changes would be used by OCC to calculate 
margin requirements designed to limit its credit exposures to 
participants, and OCC uses the margin it collects from a defaulting 
Clearing Member to protect other Clearing Members from losses that may 
result from such a default. As a result, OCC believes the proposed rule 
changed is designed to assure the safeguarding of securities and funds 
in its custody or control in accordance with Section 17A(b)(3)(F) of 
the Act.\33\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \33\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Rules 17Ad-22(b)(1) and (2) \34\ require that a registered clearing 
agency that performs central counterparty services establish, 
implement, maintain and enforce written policies and procedures 
reasonably designed to, in part: (1) Measure its credit exposures to 
its participants at least once a day and limit its exposures to 
potential losses from defaults by its participants under normal market 
conditions so that the operations of the clearing agency would not be 
disrupted and non-defaulting participants would not be exposed to 
losses that they cannot anticipate or control and (2) use margin 
requirements to limit its credit exposures to participants under normal 
market conditions and use risk-based models and parameters to set 
margin requirements.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \34\ 17 CFR 240.17Ad-22(b)(1) and (2).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    As noted above, the proposed changes would introduce the use of 
daily price updates into OCC's margin methodology, which allows for 
daily updates to the statistical parameters in the model (e.g., 
parameters concerning volatility and correlation). These changes would 
be supported by a number of other risk-based enhancements to OCC's 
econometric model designed to: (i) More appropriately account for 
asymmetry in conditional variance; (ii) more appropriately model the 
statistical distribution of price returns; (iii) provide for an anti-
procyclical floor for volatility estimates based on a 10-year look back 
period; and (iv) more accurately model second-day volatility forecasts. 
Moreover, the proposed changes would improve OCC's approach to 
estimating covariance and correlations between risk factors in an 
effort to achieve more stable and sensitive correlation estimations and 
improve OCC's methodology related to the treatment of defaulting 
securities by reducing the impact that illiquid securities with 
discontinuous data have on default variance estimates.
    OCC would use the risk-based model enhancements described herein to 
measure its credit exposures to its participants on a daily basis and 
determine margin requirements based on such calculations. The proposed 
enhancements concerning daily price updates, daily updates of 
statistical parameters, and to more appropriately account for asymmetry 
in conditional variance would result in more accurate and responsive 
margin requirements and a model that is more stable and proactive 
during times of market volatility, with margin charges that are based 
off of the most recent market data. In addition, the proposed 
modifications to extend the look back period for determining volatility 
estimates for equity-based products from 500 days to 10 years will help 
to ensure that OCC captures sufficient historical events/market shocks 
in the calculation of its anti-procyclical floor. Additionally, the 
proposed changes would enhance OCC's margin methodology for calculating 
correlation estimates by moving to a daily process for updating 
correlations (with a minimum of one week's lag) so that Clearing Member 
account margins are more current and thus more accurate and using de-
volatized returns to normalize returns across a variety of asset 
classes and make the correlation estimator less sensitive to sudden 
market jumps and therefore more stable. Finally, the proposed changes 
to OCC's methodology for the treatment of defaulting securities is 
designed to result in stable and realistic risk estimates for such 
securities The proposed changes are therefore designed to ensure that 
OCC sets margin

[[Page 57312]]

requirements, using risk-based models and parameters, that would serve 
to limit OCC's exposures to potential losses from defaults by its 
participants under normal market conditions so that the operations of 
OCC would not be disrupted and non-defaulting participants would not be 
exposed to losses that they cannot anticipate or control. Accordingly, 
OCC believes the proposed changes are consistent with Rules 17Ad-
22(b)(1) and (2).\35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \35\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Rule 17Ad-22(e)(6) \36\ further requires OCC to establish, 
implement, maintain and enforce written policies and procedures 
reasonably designed to cover its credit exposures to its participants 
by establishing a risk-based margin system that, among other things: 
(i) Considers, and produces margin levels commensurate with, the risks 
and particular attributes of each relevant product, portfolio, and 
market; (ii) calculates margin sufficient to cover its potential future 
exposure to participants in the interval between the last margin 
collection and the close out of positions following a participant 
default; and (iii) uses reliable sources of timely price data and uses 
procedures and sound valuation models for addressing circumstances in 
which pricing data are not readily available or reliable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \36\ 17 CFR 240.17Ad-2(e)(6).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    As described in detail above, the proposed changes are designed to 
ensure that, among other things, OCC's margin methodology: (i) More 
appropriately accounts for asymmetry in conditional variance; (ii) more 
appropriately models the statistical distribution of price returns, 
(iii) more accurately models second-day volatility forecasts; (iv) 
improves OCC's approach to estimating covariance and correlations 
between risk factors to provide for stable and sensitive correlation 
estimations; and (v) improves OCC's methodology related to the 
treatment of defaulting securities by reducing the impact that illiquid 
securities with discontinuous data have on default variance estimates. 
These methodology enhancements would be used to calculate daily margin 
requirements for OCC's Clearing Members. In this way, the proposed 
changes are designed to consider, and produce margin levels 
commensurate with, the risks and particular attributes of each relevant 
product, portfolio, and market and to calculate margin sufficient to 
cover its potential future exposure to participants in the interval 
between the last margin collection and the close out of positions 
following a participant default.
    Moreover, the proposed changes would introduce daily updates for 
price data for equity products, including daily corporate action-
adjusted returns of equities, ETFs, ETNs, and certain indexes. This 
daily price data would be obtained from a widely used and reliable 
industry vendor. In this way, the proposed changes would ensure that 
OCC uses reliable sources of timely price data in its margin 
methodology, which better reflect current market conditions than the 
current monthly updates, thereby resulting in more accurate and 
responsive margin requirements.
    For these reasons, OCC believes that the proposed changes are 
consistent with Rule 17Ad-22(e)(6).\37\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \37\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The proposed rule changes are not inconsistent with the existing 
rules of OCC, including any other rules proposed to be amended.

(B) Clearing Agency's Statement on Burden on Competition

    Section 17A(b)(3)(I) requires that the rules of a clearing agency 
do not impose any burden on competition not necessary or appropriate in 
furtherance of the purposes of Act.\38\ OCC does not believe that the 
proposed rule change would impose any burden on competition. The 
proposed risk model enhancements would apply to all Clearing Members 
equally. While OCC expects that margin requirements may see slight 
reductions in the aggregate, the individual impact of the proposed 
changes will be mixed and depend on market conditions and the 
composition of the portfolio in question. The proposed rule change is 
primarily designed to allow OCC to determine margin requirements that 
more accurately represent the risk presented by its cleared products 
and that are more responsive to changes in volatility or overall market 
conditions. OCC does not believe that the proposed rule change would 
unfairly inhibit access to OCC's services or disadvantage or favor any 
particular user in relationship to another user. Accordingly, OCC 
believes that any competitive impact would be necessary and appropriate 
in furtherance of the safeguarding of securities and funds which are in 
the custody or control of OCC or for which it is responsible, and in 
general, the protection of investors and the public interest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \38\ 15 U.S.C. 78q-1(b)(3)(I).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

(C) Clearing Agency's Statement on Comments on the Proposed Rule Change 
Received from Members, Participants or Others

    Written comments on the proposed rule change were not and are not 
intended to be solicited with respect to the proposed rule change and 
none have been received. OCC will notify the Commission of any written 
comments received by OCC.

III. Date of Effectiveness of the Proposed Rule Change and Timing for 
Commission Action

    Within 45 days of the date of publication of this notice in the 
Federal Register or within such longer period up to 90 days (i) as the 
Commission may designate if it finds such longer period to be 
appropriate and publishes its reasons for so finding or (ii) as to 
which the self-regulatory organization consents, the Commission will:
    (A) By order approve or disapprove the proposed rule change, or
    (B) institute proceedings to determine whether the proposed rule 
change should be disapproved.

IV. Solicitation of Comments

    Interested persons are invited to submit written data, views and 
arguments concerning the foregoing, including whether the proposed rule 
change is consistent with the Act. Comments may be submitted by any of 
the following methods:

Electronic Comments

     Use the Commission's Internet comment form (http://www.sec.gov/rules/sro.shtml); or
     Send an email to [email protected]. Please include 
File Number SR-OCC-2017-022 on the subject line.

Paper Comments

     Send paper comments in triplicate to Secretary, Securities 
and Exchange Commission, 100 F Street NE., Washington, DC 20549-1090.
All submissions should refer to File Number SR-OCC-2017-022. This file 
number should be included on the subject line if email is used. To help 
the Commission process and review your comments more efficiently, 
please use only one method. The Commission will post all comments on 
the Commission's Internet Web site (http://www.sec.gov/rules/sro.shtml). Copies of the submission, all subsequent amendments, all 
written statements with respect to the proposed rule change that are 
filed with the Commission, and all written communications relating to 
the proposed rule change between the

[[Page 57313]]

Commission and any person, other than those that may be withheld from 
the public in accordance with the provisions of 5 U.S.C. 552, will be 
available for Web site viewing and printing in the Commission's Public 
Reference Room, 100 F Street NE., Washington, DC 20549, on official 
business days between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Copies of 
such filing also will be available for inspection and copying at the 
principal office of OCC and on OCC's Web site at https://www.theocc.com/about/publications/bylaws.jsp.
    All comments received will be posted without change. Persons 
submitting comments are cautioned that we do not redact or edit 
personal identifying information from comment submissions. You should 
submit only information that you wish to make available publicly. All 
submissions should refer to File Number SR-OCC-2017-022 and should be 
submitted on or before December 26, 2017.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    \39\ 17 CFR 200.30-3(a)(12).

    For the Commission, by the Division of Trading and Markets, 
pursuant to delegated Authority.\39\
Eduardo A. Aleman,
Assistant Secretary.
[FR Doc. 2017-25989 Filed 12-1-17; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8011-01-P



                                                57306                       Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 231 / Monday, December 4, 2017 / Notices

                                                securities, to remove impediments to                    III. Date of Effectiveness of the                       comments more efficiently, please use
                                                and perfect the mechanism of a free and                 Proposed Rule Change and Timing for                     only one method. The Commission will
                                                open market and a national market                       Commission Action                                       post all comments on the Commission’s
                                                system, and, in general, to protect                        Because the foregoing proposed rule                  Internet Web site (http://www.sec.gov/
                                                investors and the public interest.                      change does not: (A) Significantly affect               rules/sro.shtml). Copies of the
                                                Additionally, the Exchange believes the                 the protection of investors or the public               submission, all subsequent
                                                proposed rule change is consistent with                 interest; (B) impose any significant                    amendments, all written statements
                                                the Section 6(b)(5) requirement that the                burden on competition; and (C) by its                   with respect to the proposed rule
                                                rules of an exchange not be designed to                 terms, become operative for 30 days                     change that are filed with the
                                                permit unfair discrimination between                    from the date on which it was filed or                  Commission, and all written
                                                customers, issuers, brokers, or dealers.                such shorter time as the Commission                     communications relating to the
                                                  In particular, the proposed rule                      may designate it has become effective                   proposed rule change between the
                                                change will allow investors to more                     pursuant to Section 19(b)(3)(A) of the                  Commission and any person, other than
                                                easily use SPY, IVV, DIA options, which                 Act 11 and paragraph (f)(6) of Rule 19b–                those that may be withheld from the
                                                protects investors and the public                       4 thereunder,12 the Exchange has                        public in accordance with the
                                                interest. The Exchange also believes the                designated this rule filing as non-                     provisions of 5 U.S.C. 552, will be
                                                proposed rule change is consistent with                 controversial. The Exchange has given                   available for Web site viewing and
                                                Section 6(b)(1) of the Act, which                       the Commission written notice of its                    printing in the Commission’s Public
                                                provides that the Exchange be organized                 intent to file the proposed rule change,                Reference Room, 100 F Street NE.,
                                                and have the capacity to be able to carry               along with a brief description and text                 Washington, DC 20549, on official
                                                out the purposes of the Act and the                     of the proposed rule change at least five               business days between the hours of
                                                rules and regulations thereunder, and                   business days prior to the date of filing               10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Copies of the
                                                the rules of the Exchange. The Exchange                 of the proposed rule change, or such                    filing also will be available for
                                                does not believe that the proposed rule                 shorter time as designated by the                       inspection and copying at the principal
                                                would create additional capacity issues                 Commission.                                             office of the Exchange. All comments
                                                or affect market functionality. The                        At any time within 60 days of the                    received will be posted without change.
                                                Exchange believes that the proposed                     filing of the proposed rule change, the                 Persons submitting comments are
                                                rule change, like other strike price                    Commission summarily may                                cautioned that we do not redact or edit
                                                programs currently offered by the                       temporarily suspend such rule change if                 personal identifying information from
                                                Exchange, will benefit investors by                     it appears to the Commission that such                  comment submissions. You should
                                                giving them increased flexibility to more               action is: (1) Necessary or appropriate in              submit only information that you wish
                                                closely tailor their investment and                     the public interest; (2) for the protection             to make available publicly. All
                                                hedging decisions. Moreover, the                        of investors; or (3) otherwise in                       submissions should refer to File
                                                proposed rule change is consistent with                 furtherance of the purposes of the Act.                 Number SR-CboeBZX–2017–002 and
                                                the rules of other exchanges.9                          If the Commission takes such action, the                should be submitted on or before
                                                                                                        Commission shall institute proceedings                  December 26, 2017.
                                                (B) Self-Regulatory Organization’s
                                                                                                        to determine whether the proposed rule                    For the Commission, by the Division of
                                                Statement on Burden on Competition                                                                              Trading and Markets, pursuant to delegated
                                                                                                        should be approved or disapproved.
                                                   The Exchange does not believe that                                                                           authority.13
                                                the proposed rule change will impose                    IV. Solicitation of Comments                            Eduardo A. Aleman,
                                                any burden on competition that is not                     Interested persons are invited to                     Assistant Secretary.
                                                necessary or appropriate in furtherance                 submit written data, views, and                         [FR Doc. 2017–25988 Filed 12–1–17; 8:45 am]
                                                of the purposes of the Act. Rather, the                 arguments concerning the foregoing,                     BILLING CODE 8011–01–P
                                                Exchange believes that the proposed                     including whether the proposed rule
                                                rule change will result in additional                   change is consistent with the Act.
                                                investment options and opportunities to                 Comments may be submitted by any of                     SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE
                                                achieve the investment and trading                      the following methods:                                  COMMISSION
                                                objectives of market participants seeking
                                                                                                        Electronic Comments                                     [Release No. 34–82161; File No. SR–OCC–
                                                efficient trading and hedging vehicles,                                                                         2017–022]
                                                to the benefit of investors, market                       • Use the Commission’s Internet
                                                participants, and the marketplace in                    comment form (http://www.sec.gov/                       Self-Regulatory Organizations; The
                                                general. Additionally, this proposed                    rules/sro.shtml); or                                    Options Clearing Corporation; Notice
                                                rule change seeks to match the strike                     • Send an email to rule-comments@
                                                                                                                                                                of Filing of Proposed Rule Change
                                                setting regime for IVV, SPY, and DIA                    sec.gov. Please include File Number SR-
                                                                                                                                                                Related to The Options Clearing
                                                options available on other options                      CboeBZX–2017–002 on the subject line.
                                                                                                                                                                Corporation’s Margin Methodology
                                                exchanges; thus, the proposed rule                      Paper Comments
                                                change may alleviate any potential                                                                              November 28, 2017.
                                                                                                           • Send paper comments in triplicate                     Pursuant to Section 19(b)(1) of the
                                                burden on competition.10
                                                                                                        to Brent J. Fields, Secretary, Securities               Securities Exchange Act of 1934
                                                (C) Self-Regulatory Organization’s                      and Exchange Commission, 100 F Street                   (‘‘Act’’), 1 and Rule 19b–4 thereunder, 2
                                                Statement on Comments on the                            NE., Washington, DC 20549–1090.                         notice is hereby given that on November
sradovich on DSK3GMQ082PROD with NOTICES




                                                Proposed Rule Change Received From                      All submissions should refer to File                    13, 2017, The Options Clearing
                                                Members, Participants or Others                         Number SR–CboeBZX–2017–002. This                        Corporation (‘‘OCC’’) filed with the
                                                  Written comments were neither                         file number should be included on the                   Securities and Exchange Commission
                                                solicited nor received.                                 subject line if email is used. To help the              (‘‘Commission’’) the proposed rule
                                                                                                        Commission process and review your
                                                  9 See Box Rule IM–5050–1 and Cboe Rule                                                                          13 17 CFR 200.30–3(a)(12).
                                                5.5.08(b).                                                11 15 U.S.C. 78s(b)(3)(A).                              1 15 U.S.C. 78s(b)(1).
                                                  10 Id.                                                  12 17 CFR 240.19b–4.                                    2 17 CFR 240.19b–4.




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                                                                            Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 231 / Monday, December 4, 2017 / Notices                                                            57307

                                                change as described in Items I, II, and                 (A) Clearing Agency’s Statement of the                      product; 11 changes in foreign exchange
                                                III below, which Items have been                        Purpose of, and Statutory Basis for, the                    rates; and changes in model parameters
                                                prepared by OCC. The Commission is                      Proposed Rule Change                                        that sufficiently capture the model
                                                publishing this notice to solicit                                                                                   dynamics from a larger set of data.
                                                                                                        (1) Purpose                                                    Under OCC’s current margin
                                                comments on the proposed rule change
                                                from interested persons.                                Background                                                  methodology, OCC obtains monthly
                                                                                                                                                                    price data for most of its equity-based
                                                I. Clearing Agency’s Statement of the                      OCC’s margin methodology, the                            products 12 from a widely used industry
                                                Terms of Substance of the Proposed                      System for Theoretical Analysis and                         vendor. This data arrives around the
                                                Rule Change                                             Numerical Simulations (‘‘STANS’’), is                       second week of every month in arrears
                                                                                                        OCC’s proprietary risk management                           and requires a maximum of about four
                                                   This proposed rule change by OCC                     system that calculates Clearing Member                      weeks for OCC to process the data after
                                                would modify OCC’s margin                               margin requirements.6 STANS utilizes                        any clean up and reruns as may be
                                                methodology to move away from the                       large-scale Monte Carlo simulations to                      required prior to installing into OCC’s
                                                existing monthly data source provided                   forecast price and volatility movements                     margin system. As a result, correlations
                                                by its current vendor and towards                       in determining a Clearing Member’s                          and statistical parameters for risk factors
                                                obtaining and incorporating daily price                 margin requirement.7 The STANS                              at any point in time represent back-
                                                and returns (adjusted for any corporate                 margin requirement is calculated at the                     dated data and therefore may not be
                                                actions) data of securities to estimate                 portfolio level of Clearing Member                          representative of the most recent market
                                                accurate margins.3 This would be                        accounts with positions in marginable                       data. In the absence of daily updates,
                                                further supported by enhancing OCC’s                    securities and consists of an estimate of                   OCC employs an approach where one or
                                                econometric model applied to different                  a 99% expected shortfall 8 over a two-                      many identified market proxies (or
                                                risk factors; 4 improving the sensitivity               day time horizon and an add-on margin                       ‘‘scale-factors’’) are used to incorporate
                                                                                                        charge for model risk (the                                  day-to-day market volatility across all
                                                and stability of correlation estimates
                                                                                                        concentration/dependence stress test                        associated asset classes throughout.13
                                                between them; and enhancing OCC’s
                                                                                                        charge).9 The STANS methodology is                          The scale factor approach, however,
                                                methodology around the treatment of
                                                                                                        used to measure the exposure of                             assumes a perfect correlation of the
                                                securities with limited historical data.                portfolios of options and futures cleared
                                                OCC also proposes to make a few                                                                                     volatilities between the security and its
                                                                                                        by OCC and cash instruments in margin                       scale factor, which gives little room to
                                                clarifying and clean-up changes to its                  collateral.                                                 capture the idiosyncratic risk of a given
                                                margin methodology unrelated to the
                                                                                                           A ‘‘risk factor’’ within OCC’s margin                    security and which may be different
                                                proposed changes described above.                                                                                   from the broad market risk represented
                                                                                                        system may be defined as a product or
                                                   The proposed changes to OCC’s                        attribute whose historical data is used to                  by the scale factor.
                                                Margins Methodology document are                        estimate and simulate the risk for an                          In risk management, it is a common
                                                contained in confidential Exhibit 5 of                  associated product. The majority of risk                    practice to establish a floor for volatility
                                                the filing. The proposed changes are                    factors utilized in the STANS                               at a certain level in order to protect
                                                described in detail in Item II below. The               methodology are total returns on                            against procyclicality 14 in the model.
                                                proposed rule change does not require                   individual equity securities. Other risk
                                                                                                                                                                       11 In December 2015, the Commission approved a
                                                any changes to the text of OCC’s By-                    factors considered include: Returns on
                                                                                                                                                                    proposed rule change, and issued a Notice of No
                                                Laws or Rules. All terms with initial                   equity indexes; returns on implied                          Objection to an advance notice filing, by OCC to its
                                                capitalization that are not otherwise                   volatility 10 risk factors that are a set of                modify margin methodology by more broadly
                                                defined herein have the same meaning                    nine chosen volatility pivots per                           incorporating variations in implied volatility within
                                                                                                                                                                    STANS. See Securities Exchange Act Release No.
                                                as set forth in the OCC By-Laws and                                                                                 34–76781 (December 28, 2015), 81 FR 135 (January
                                                Rules.5                                                    6 See Securities Exchange Act Release No. 53322
                                                                                                                                                                    4, 2016) (SR–OCC–2015–016) and Securities
                                                                                                        (February 15, 2006), 71 FR 9403 (February 23, 2006)         Exchange Act Release No. 34–76548 (December 3,
                                                II. Clearing Agency’s Statement of the                  (SR–OCC–2004–20).                                           2015), 80 FR 76602 (December 9, 2015) (SR–OCC–
                                                                                                           7 See OCC Rule 601.
                                                Purpose of, and Statutory Basis for, the                                                                            2015–804).
                                                                                                           8 The expected shortfall component is established           12 The securities underlying these products are
                                                Proposed Rule Change
                                                                                                        as the estimated average of potential losses higher         also known as risk factors within OCC’s margin
                                                                                                        than the 99% value at risk threshold. The term              system.
                                                  In its filing with the Commission,                    ‘‘value at risk’’ or ‘‘VaR’’ refers to a statistical           13 Earlier this year, the Commission approved a
                                                OCC included statements concerning                      technique that, generally speaking, is used in risk         proposed rule change and issued a Notice of No
                                                the purpose of and basis for the                        management to measure the potential risk of loss for        Objection to an advance notice filing by OCC
                                                proposed rule change and discussed any                  a given set of assets over a particular time horizon.       which, among other things: (1) Expanded the
                                                                                                           9 A detailed description of the STANS                    number of scale factors used for equity-based
                                                comments it received on the proposed                    methodology is available at http://                         products to more accurately measure the
                                                rule change. The text of these statements               optionsclearing.com/risk-management/margins/.               relationship between current and long-run market
                                                may be examined at the places specified                    10 Generally speaking, the implied volatility of an      volatility with proxies that correlate more closely to
                                                in Item IV below. OCC has prepared                      option is a measure of the expected future volatility       certain products carried within the equity asset
                                                                                                        of the value of the option’s annualized standard            class, and (2) applied relevant scale factors to the
                                                summaries, set forth in sections (A), (B),              deviation of the price of the underlying security,          greater of (i) the estimated variance of 1-day return
                                                and (C) below, of the most significant                  index, or future at exercise, which is reflected in the     scenarios or (ii) the historical variance of the daily
                                                aspects of these statements.                            current option premium in the market. Using the             return scenarios of a particular instrument, as a
                                                                                                        Black-Scholes options pricing model, the implied            floor to mitigate procyclicality. See Securities
                                                                                                        volatility is the standard deviation of the                 Exchange Act Release No. 80147 (March 3, 2017),
sradovich on DSK3GMQ082PROD with NOTICES




                                                  3 OCC also has filed an advance notice with the
                                                                                                        underlying asset price necessary to arrive at the           82 FR 13163 (March 9, 2017) (SR–OCC–2017–001)
                                                Commission in connection with the proposed              market price of an option of a given strike, time to        and Securities Exchange Act Release No. 80143
                                                changes. See SR–OCC–2017–811.                           maturity, underlying asset price and given the              (March 2, 2017), 82 FR 13036 (March 8, 2017) (SR–
                                                  4 The use of risk factors in OCC’s margin                                                                         OCC–2017–801).
                                                                                                        current risk-free rate. In effect, the implied volatility
                                                methodology is discussed in more detail in the          is responsible for that portion of the premium that            14 A quality that is positively correlated with the
                                                Background section of Item II below.                    cannot be explained by the then-current intrinsic           overall state of the market is deemed to be
                                                  5 OCC’s By-Laws and Rules can be found on             value (i.e., the difference between the price of the        ‘‘procyclical.’’ For example, procyclicality may be
                                                OCC’s public Web site: http://optionsclearing.com/      underlying and the exercise price of the option) of         evidenced by increasing margin or Clearing Fund
                                                about/publications/bylaws.jsp.                          the option, discounted to reflect its time value.                                                       Continued




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                                                57308                       Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 231 / Monday, December 4, 2017 / Notices

                                                OCC imposes a floor on volatility                       updating statistical parameters (e.g.,                 data that is more representative of
                                                estimates for its equity-based products                 parameters concerning correlations or                  current market conditions, thereby
                                                using a 500-day look back period. These                 volatility) for all risk factors that reflect          resulting in more accurate and
                                                monthly updates coupled with the                        the most recent data obtained; (3)                     responsive margin requirements.
                                                dependency of margins on scale factors                  improving the sensitivity and stability                   As described above, OCC currently
                                                and the volatility floor can result in                  of correlation estimates across risk                   obtains price data for all securities on a
                                                imprecise changes in margins charged to                 factors by using de-volatized 16 returns               monthly basis from a third party vendor.
                                                Clearing Members, specifically across                   (but using a 500 day look back period);                After obtaining the monthly price data,
                                                periods of heavy volatility when the                    and (4) improving OCC’s methodology                    additional time is required for OCC to
                                                correlation between the risk factor and                 related to the treatment of defaulting                 process the data prior to installing into
                                                a scale factor fluctuate.                               securities that would result in stable                 OCC’s margin system. As a result,
                                                   OCC’s current methodology for                        and realistic risk estimates for such                  correlations and statistical parameters
                                                estimating covariance and correlations                  securities.17                                          for risk factors at any point in time
                                                between risk factors relies on the same                    The purpose of the proposed changes                 represent back-dated data and therefore
                                                monthly data described above, resulting                 is to enhance OCC’s margin                             may not be representative of the most
                                                in a similar lag time between updates.                  methodology to mitigate the issues                     recent market data. To mitigate pro-
                                                In addition, correlation estimates are                  described above that arise from the                    cyclicality within its margin
                                                based off historical returns series, with               current monthly update and scale factor                methodology in the absence of daily
                                                estimates between a pair of risk factors                approach. Specifically, by introducing                 updates, OCC employs the use of scale-
                                                being highly sensitive to the volatility of             daily (as opposed to monthly) updates                  factors to incorporate day-to-day market
                                                either risk factor in the chosen pair. The              for price data (and thereby allowing for               volatility across all associated asset
                                                current approach therefore results in                   daily updates of statistical parameters in             classes. While the scale factors help to
                                                potentially less stable correlation                     the model) and making other proposed                   reduce procyclicality in the model, the
                                                estimates that may not be representative                model enhancements described herein,                   scale factors do not necessarily capture
                                                of current market conditions.                           the proposed changes are designed to                   the idiosyncratic risks of a given
                                                   Finally, under OCC’s existing margin                 result in more accurate and responsive                 security, which may be different from
                                                methodology, theoretical price scenarios                margin requirements and a model that is                the broad market risk represented by the
                                                for ‘‘defaulting securities’’ 15 are                    more stable and proactive during times                 scale factor.
                                                simulated using uncorrelated return                     of market volatility, with margins that                   OCC proposes to address these issues
                                                scenarios with an average zero return                   are based off of the most recent market                associated with its current margin
                                                and a pre-specified volatility called                   data. In addition, the proposed changes                methodology by eliminating its
                                                ‘‘default variance.’’ The default variance              are intended to improve OCC’s                          dependency on monthly price data,
                                                is estimated as the average of the top 25               approach to estimating covariance and                  which arrives in arrears and requires
                                                percent quantile of the conditional                     correlations between risk factors in an                additional time for OCC to process the
                                                variances of all securities. As a result,               effort to achieve more stable and                      data prior to installing into OCC’s
                                                these default estimates may be impacted                 sensitive correlation estimations and                  margin system through the introduction
                                                by extremely illiquid securities with                   improve OCC’s methodology related to                   of daily updates for price data for equity
                                                discontinuous data. In addition, the                    the treatment of defaulting securities by              products. The introduction of daily
                                                default variance (and the associated                    reducing the impact that illiquid                      price updates would enable OCC’s
                                                scale factors used to scale up volatility)              securities with discontinuous data have                margin methodology to better capture
                                                is also subject to sudden jumps with the                on default variance estimates.                         both market as well idiosyncratic risk by
                                                monthly simulation installations across                    The proposed changes are described                  allowing for daily updates to the
                                                successive months because it is derived                 in further detail below.                               parameters associated with the
                                                from monthly data updates, as opposed                                                                          econometric model (discussed below)
                                                to daily updates, which are prone to                    1. Daily Updates of Price Data                         that capture the risk associated with a
                                                wider fluctuations and are subject to                      OCC proposes to introduce daily                     particular product, and therefore ensure
                                                adjustments using scale factors.                        updates for price data for equity                      that OCC’s margin requirements are
                                                                                                        products, including daily corporate                    based on more current market
                                                Proposed Changes
                                                                                                        action-adjusted returns of equities,                   conditions. As a result, OCC would also
                                                  OCC proposes to modify its margin                     Exchange Traded Funds (‘‘ETFs’’),                      reduce its reliance on the use of scale
                                                methodology by: (1) Obtaining daily                     Exchange Traded Notes (‘‘ETNs’’) and                   factors to incorporate day-to-day market
                                                price data for equity products (including               certain indexes. The daily price data                  volatility, which, as noted above, give
                                                daily corporate action-adjusted returns                 would be obtained from a widely used                   little room to capture the idiosyncratic
                                                of equities where price and thus returns                external vendor, as is the case with the               risk of a given security and which may
                                                of securities are adjusted for any                      current monthly updates. The purpose                   be different from the broad market risk
                                                dividends issued, stock splits, etc.) for               of the proposed change is to ensure that               represented by the scale factor. In
                                                use in the daily estimation of                          OCC’s margin methodology is reliant on                 addition, the processing time between
                                                econometric model parameters; (2)                                                                              receipt of the data and installation into
                                                enhancing its econometric model for                       16 De-volatization is a process of normalizing       the margin system would be reduced as
                                                                                                        historical data with the associated volatility thus    the data review and processing for daily
                                                requirements in times of stressed market conditions     enabling any comparison between different sets of      prices would be incorporated into
                                                and low margin or Clearing Fund requirements            data.
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                                                when markets are calm. Hence, anti-procyclical            17 In addition to the proposed methodology           OCC’s daily price editing process.
                                                features in a model are measures intended to            changes described herein, OCC also would make
                                                prevent risk-based models from fluctuating too
                                                                                                                                                               2. Proposed Enhancements to the
                                                                                                        some clarifying and clean-up changes, unrelated to
                                                drastically in response to changing market              the proposed changes described above, to update its    Econometric Model
                                                conditions.                                             margin methodology to reflect existing practices for      In addition to introducing daily
                                                  15 Within the context of OCC’s margin system,         the daily calibration of seasonal and non-seasonal
                                                securities that do not have enough historical data      energy models and the removal of methodology
                                                                                                                                                               updates for price and corporate action-
                                                for calibration are classified as ‘‘defaulting          language for certain products that are no longer       adjusted returns data, OCC is proposing
                                                securities.’’                                           cleared by OCC.                                        enhancements to its econometric model


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                                                                             Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 231 / Monday, December 4, 2017 / Notices                                                        57309

                                                for calculating statistical parameters for               current approach for forecasting the                      Under the current methodology, OCC
                                                all qualifying risk factors that reflect the             conditional variance for a given risk                     typically uses a two-day horizon to
                                                most recent data obtained (e.g., OCC                     factor does not, however, consider the                    determine its risk exposure to a given
                                                would be able to calculate parameters                    asymmetric volatility phenomenon                          portfolio. This is done by simulating
                                                such as volatility and correlations on a                 observed in financial markets (also                       10,000 theoretical price scenarios for the
                                                daily basis using the new daily price                    called the ‘‘leverage effect’’) where                     two-day horizon using a one-day
                                                data discussed above). Specifically, OCC                 volatility is more sensitive and reactive                 forecast conditional variance, and the
                                                proposes to enhance its econometric                      to market downturns. As a result, OCC                     value at risk and expected shortfall
                                                model by: (i) Introducing daily updates                  proposes to enhance its model by                          components of the margin requirement
                                                for statistical parameters; (ii)                         adding new features (i.e., incorporating                  are then determined from the simulated
                                                introducing features in its econometric                  asymmetry into its forecast volatility)                   profit/loss distributions. These one-day
                                                model that are designed to take into                     designed to allow the conditional                         and two-day returns scenarios are both
                                                account asymmetry in the model used to                   volatility forecast to be more sensitive to               simulated using the one-day forecast
                                                forecast volatility associated with a risk               market downturns and thereby capture                      conditional variance estimate. This
                                                factor; (iii) modifying the statistical                  the most significant dynamics of the                      could lead to a risk factor’s coverage
                                                distribution used to model the returns of                relationship between price and                            differing substantially on volatile
                                                equity prices; (iv) introducing a second-                volatility observed in financial markets.                 trading days. As a result, OCC proposes
                                                day forecast for volatility into the model               OCC believes the proposed                                 to introduce a second-day forecast
                                                to estimate the two-day scenario                         enhancement would result in more                          variance for all equity-based risk factors.
                                                distributions for risk factors; and (v)                  accurate and responsive margin                            The second-day conditional variance
                                                imposing a floor on volatility estimates                 requirements, particularly in market                      forecast would be estimated for each of
                                                using a 10-year look back period.                        downturns.                                                the 10,000 Monte Carlo returns
                                                   These proposed model enhancements                                                                               scenarios, resulting in more accurately
                                                are described in detail below.                           iii. Proposed Change in Statistical
                                                                                                                                                                   estimated two-day scenario
                                                                                                         Distribution
                                                i. Daily Updates for Statistical                                                                                   distributions, and therefore more
                                                                                                            OCC further proposes to change the                     accurate and responsive margin
                                                Parameters                                               statistical distribution used to model the                requirements.
                                                   Under the proposal, the statistical                   returns of equity prices. OCC’s current
                                                parameters for the model would be                        methodology uses a fat tailed                             v. Anti-Procyclical Floor for Volatility
                                                updated on a daily basis using the new                   distribution 21 (the Student’s t-                         Estimates
                                                daily price data obtained by OCC (as                     distribution) to model returns; however,                     Additionally, OCC proposes to modify
                                                described in section 1 above).18 As a                    price scenarios generated using very                      its floor for volatility estimates. OCC
                                                result, OCC would no longer need to                      large log-return scenarios (positive) that                currently imposes a floor on volatility
                                                rely on scale factors to approximate day-                follow this distribution can approach                     estimates for its equity-based products
                                                to-day market volatility for equity-based                infinity and could potentially result in                  using a 500-day look back period. OCC
                                                products. Statistical parameters would                   excessively large price jumps, a known                    proposes to extend this look back period
                                                be calibrated on daily basis, allowing                   limitation of this distribution. OCC                      to 10-years (2520 days) in the enhanced
                                                OCC to calculate more accurate margin                    proposes to move to a more defined                        model and to apply this floor to
                                                requirements that are representative of                  distribution (Standardized Normal                         volatility estimates for other products
                                                the most recent market data.                             Reciprocal Inverse Gaussian or NRIG)                      (excluding implied volatility risk factor
                                                ii. Proposed Enhancements To Capture                     for modeling returns, which OCC                           scenarios). The proposed model
                                                Asymmetry in Conditional Variance                        believes would more appropriately                         described herein is calibrated from
                                                                                                         simulate future returns based on the                      historical data, and as a result, the level
                                                   In addition to the daily update of                    historical price data for the products in                 of the volatilities generated by the
                                                statistical parameters, OCC proposes to                  question (i.e., it has a better ‘‘goodness                model will vary from time to time. OCC
                                                include new features in its econometric                  of fit’’ 22 to the historical data) and                   is therefore proposing to establish a
                                                model that are designed to take into                     allows for more appropriate modeling of                   volatility floor for the model using a 10-
                                                account asymmetry in the conditional                     fat tails. As a result, OCC believes that                 year look back period to reduce the risk
                                                variance process. The econometric                        the proposed change would lead to                         of procyclicality in its margin model.
                                                model currently used in STANS for all                    more consistent treatment of log returns                  OCC believes that using a longer 10-year
                                                risk factors is a GARCH(1,1) with                        both on the upside as well as downside                    look back period will ensure that OCC
                                                Student’s t-distributed innovations of                   of the distribution.                                      captures sufficient historical events/
                                                logarithmic returns,19 which is a                                                                                  market shocks in the calculation of its
                                                relatively straightforward and widely                    iv. Second Day Volatility Forecast                        anti-procyclical floor. The 10-year look
                                                used model to forecast volatility.20 The                   OCC also proposes to introduce a                        back period also is in line with
                                                                                                         second-day forecast for volatility into                   requirements of the European Market
                                                   18 OCC notes that this change would apply to
                                                                                                         the model to estimate the two-day                         Infrastructure Regulation (including
                                                most risk factors with the exception of certain
                                                equity indexes, Treasury securities, and energy
                                                                                                         scenario distributions for risk factors.23                regulations thereunder) 24 concerning
                                                futures products, which are already updated on a                                                                   the calibration of risk factors.
                                                daily basis.                                             ‘‘GARCH variance’’ and the ‘‘sample variance’’ for
                                                   19 The Student’s t distribution is a widely used      a given time series is that the GARCH variance uses       those risk factors, OCC’s existing methodology
                                                statistical distribution to model the historical         the underlying time series data to forecast volatility.   would continue to apply. See supra note 11.
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                                                                                                            21 A data set with a ‘‘fat tail’’ is one in which
                                                logarithmic price returns data of a security that                                                                    24 Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European
                                                allows for the presence of fat tails (aka kurtosis) or   extreme price returns have a higher probability of        Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on
                                                a non-zero conditional fourth moment.                    occurrence than would be the case in a normal             OTC derivatives, central counterparties and trade
                                                   20 See generally Tim Bollerslev, ‘‘Generalized        distribution.                                             repositories. Specifically, the proposed floor would
                                                                                                            22 The goodness of fit of a statistical model
                                                Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity,’’                                                                   be compliant with Article 28 of Commission
                                                Journal of Econometrics, 31(3), 307–327 (1986). The      describes the extent to which observed data match         Delegated Regulation (EU) No. 153/2013 of 19
                                                acronym ‘‘GARCH’’ refers to an econometric model         the values generated by the model.                        December 2012 Supplementing Regulation (EU) No.
                                                that can be used to estimate volatility based on            23 This proposed change would not apply to             648/2012 of the European Parliament and of the
                                                historical data. The general distinction between the     STANS implied volatility scenario risk factors. For                                                  Continued




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                                                57310                       Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 231 / Monday, December 4, 2017 / Notices

                                                3. Proposed Enhancements to                             As a result, these default estimates may              RUT Index is a small cap index and is
                                                Correlation Estimates                                   be impacted by extremely illiquid                     hence a natural choice to represent most
                                                   As described above, OCC’s current                    securities with discontinuous data. In                new issues that are small cap and
                                                methodology for estimating covariance                   addition, the default variance (and the               deemed to be a ‘‘defaulting security.’’
                                                and correlations between risk factors                   associated scale factors used to scale up             The default correlation is roughly equal
                                                relies on the same monthly price data                   volatility) is also subject to sudden                 to the median of all positively correlated
                                                feeding the econometric model,                          jumps with the monthly simulation                     securities with the index. Since 90% of
                                                resulting in a similar lag time between                 installations across volatile months. To              the risk factors in OCC systems correlate
                                                updates. In addition, correlation                       mitigate these concerns, OCC proposes                 positively to the RUT index, OCC would
                                                estimates are based off historical returns              to: (i) Use only optionable equity                    only consider those risk factors to
                                                series, with estimates between a pair of                securities to estimate the defaulting                 determine the median. OCC believes
                                                risk factors being highly sensitive to the              variance; (ii) use a shorter time series to           that the median of the correlation
                                                volatility of either risk factors in the                enable calibration of the model for all               distribution has been steady over a
                                                chosen pair. The current approach                       securities; and (iii) simulating default              number of simulations and is therefore
                                                therefore results in correlation estimates              correlations with the driver Russell                  proposing that it replace the current
                                                being sensitive to volatile historical                  2000 index (‘‘RUT’’).                                 methodology of simulating uncorrelated
                                                data.                                                                                                         scenarios, which OCC believes is not a
                                                                                                        i. Proposed Modifications to Securities               realistic approach.
                                                   In order to address these limitations,               and Quantile Used in Estimation
                                                OCC proposes to enhance its                                                                                   Clearing Member Outreach
                                                methodology for calculating correlation                    OCC proposes that only optionable
                                                                                                        equity securities, which are typically                  OCC has discussed the proposed
                                                estimates by moving to a daily process
                                                                                                        more liquid, be considered while                      changes with its Financial Risk
                                                for updating correlations (with a
                                                                                                        estimating the default variance. This                 Advisory Council 27 at a meeting held
                                                minimum of one week’s lag) to ensure
                                                                                                        limitation would eliminate from the                   on October 25, 2016. OCC also provided
                                                Clearing Member account margins are                                                                           general updates to members at OCC
                                                more current and thus more accurate.                    estimation almost all illiquid securities
                                                                                                        with discontinuous data that could                    Roundtable 28 meetings on June 20,
                                                Moreover, OCC proposes to enhance its                                                                         2017, and November 9, 2017. Clearing
                                                approach to modeling correlation                        contribute to high conditional variance
                                                                                                        estimates and thus a high default                     Members expressed interest in seeing
                                                estimates by de-volatizing 25 the returns                                                                     how reactive margin changes would be
                                                series to estimate the correlations.                    variance. In addition, OCC proposes to
                                                                                                        estimate the default variance as the                  under the proposal; however, there were
                                                Under the proposed approach, OCC                                                                              no objections or significant concerns
                                                would first consider the returns excess                 lowest estimate of the top 10% of the
                                                                                                        floored conditional variance across the               expressed regarding the proposed
                                                of the mean (i.e., the average estimated                                                                      changes. OCC will provide at least 30-
                                                from historical data sample) and then                   risk factors. This change in methodology
                                                                                                        is designed to ensure that while the                  days of parallel reporting prior to
                                                further scale them by the corresponding                                                                       implementation so that Clearing
                                                estimated conditional variances. OCC                    estimate is aggressive it is also robust to
                                                                                                        the presence of outliers caused by a few              Members can see the impact of the
                                                believes that by using de-volatized                                                                           proposed changes. In addition, OCC
                                                returns, which is a widely suggested                    extremely volatile securities that
                                                                                                        influence the location parameter of a                 would publish an Information
                                                approach in relevant literature, it would                                                                     Memorandum to all Clearing Members
                                                lead to normalizing returns across a                    distribution. Moreover, as a
                                                                                                                                                              describing the proposed change and will
                                                variety of asset classes and make the                   consequence of the daily updates
                                                                                                                                                              provide additional periodic Information
                                                correlation estimator less sensitive to                 described above, the default variances
                                                                                                                                                              Memoranda updates prior to the
                                                sudden market jumps and therefore                       would change daily and there would be
                                                                                                                                                              implementation date. Additionally, OCC
                                                more stable.                                            no scale factor to amplify the effect of
                                                                                                                                                              would perform targeted and direct
                                                                                                        the variance on risk factor coverage.
                                                4. Defaulting Securities Methodology                                                                          outreach with Clearing Members that
                                                                                                        ii. Proposed Change in Time Series                    would be most impacted by the
                                                   Finally, OCC proposes to enhance its                                                                       proposed changes to the margin
                                                methodology for estimating the                            In addition, OCC proposes to use a
                                                                                                        shorter time series to enable calibration             methodology and OCC would work
                                                defaulting variance in its model. OCC’s                                                                       closely with such Clearing Members to
                                                margin system is dependent on market                    of the model for all securities. Currently,
                                                                                                                                                              coordinate the implementation and
                                                data to determine Clearing Member                       OCC does not calibrate parameters for
                                                                                                                                                              associated funding for such Clearing
                                                margin requirements. Securities that do                 defaulting securities that have historical
                                                not have enough historical data are                     data of less than two years. OCC is
                                                                                                                                                              alternative approach in which the returns are
                                                classified as to be a ‘‘defaulting                      proposing to shorten this time period to              strongly correlated with those of an existing risk
                                                security’’ within OCC systems (e.g., IPO                around 6 months (180 days) to enable                  factor (a ‘‘proxy’’) with a full price history, the
                                                securities). As noted above, within                     calibration of the model for all securities           Margins Methodology allows OCC’s Financial Risk
                                                                                                                                                              Management staff to construct a ‘‘conditional’’
                                                current STANs systems, the theoretical                  within OCC systems. OCC believes that                 simulation to override any default treatment that
                                                price scenarios for defaulting securities               this shorter time series is sufficient to             would have otherwise been applied to the
                                                are simulated using uncorrelated return                 produce stable calibrated parameters.                 defaulting security.
                                                                                                                                                                 27 The Financial Risk Advisory Council is a
                                                scenarios with a zero mean and a                        iii. Proposed Default Correlation                     working group consisting of representatives of
                                                default variance, with the default                                                                            Clearing Members and exchanges formed by OCC to
                                                variance being estimated as the average                   Finally, OCC proposes that returns                  review and comment on various risk management
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                                                of the top 25 percent quantile of the                   scenarios for defaulting securities,                  proposals.
                                                conditional variances of all securities.                securities with insufficient historical                  28 The OCC Roundtable was established to bring

                                                                                                        data, be simulated using a default                    Clearing Members, exchanges and OCC together to
                                                                                                                                                              discuss industry and operational issues. It is
                                                Council with regard to Regulatory Technical             correlation with the driver RUT.26 The                comprised of representatives of the senior OCC
                                                Standards on Requirements for Central                                                                         staff, participant exchanges and Clearing Members,
                                                Counterparties (the ‘‘Regulatory Technical                26 OCC notes that, in certain limited               representing the diversity of OCC’s membership in
                                                Standards’’).                                           circumstances where there are reasonable grounds      industry segments, OCC-cleared volume, business
                                                  25 See supra note 16.                                 backed by the existing return history to support an   type, operational structure and geography.



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                                                                            Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 231 / Monday, December 4, 2017 / Notices                                              57311

                                                Members resulting from the proposed                     Moreover, the proposed changes would                     the model (e.g., parameters concerning
                                                change.29                                               introduce a second-day volatility                        volatility and correlation). These
                                                                                                        forecast into the model to provide for                   changes would be supported by a
                                                (2) Statutory Basis
                                                                                                        more accurate and timely estimations of                  number of other risk-based
                                                   OCC believes that the proposed rule                  its two-day scenario distributions. OCC                  enhancements to OCC’s econometric
                                                change is consistent with Section 17A of                also proposes to enhance its                             model designed to: (i) More
                                                the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as                 econometric model by establishing a                      appropriately account for asymmetry in
                                                amended (the ‘‘Act’’),30 and the rules                  volatility floor using a 10-year look back               conditional variance; (ii) more
                                                thereunder applicable to OCC. Section                   period to reduce procyclicality in the                   appropriately model the statistical
                                                17A(b)(3)(F) of Act 31 requires that the                margin model. OCC believes the                           distribution of price returns; (iii)
                                                rules of a clearing agency be designed to               proposed changes would result in more                    provide for an anti-procyclical floor for
                                                assure the safeguarding of securities and               accurate and responsive margin                           volatility estimates based on a 10-year
                                                funds which are in the custody or                       requirements and a model that is more                    look back period; and (iv) more
                                                control of the clearing agency or for                   stable and proactive during times of                     accurately model second-day volatility
                                                which it is responsible. OCC believes                   market volatility, with risk charges that                forecasts. Moreover, the proposed
                                                the propose rule change would enhance                   are based off of most recent market data.                changes would improve OCC’s approach
                                                its margin methodology in a manner                         In addition, the proposed rule change                 to estimating covariance and
                                                designed to safeguard the securities and                is intended to improve OCC’s approach                    correlations between risk factors in an
                                                funds in its custody or control for the                 to estimating covariance and                             effort to achieve more stable and
                                                reasons set forth below.                                correlations between risk factors in an                  sensitive correlation estimations and
                                                   As noted above, OCC’s current margin                 effort to achieve more stable and                        improve OCC’s methodology related to
                                                methodology relies on monthly price                     sensitive correlation estimations and                    the treatment of defaulting securities by
                                                data being obtained from a third party                  improve OCC’s methodology related to                     reducing the impact that illiquid
                                                vendor. This data arrives monthly in                    the treatment of defaulting securities by                securities with discontinuous data have
                                                arrears and requires additional time for                reducing the impact that illiquid                        on default variance estimates.
                                                OCC to process the data prior to                        securities with discontinuous data have
                                                installing into OCC’s margin system. As                                                                             OCC would use the risk-based model
                                                                                                        on default variance estimates.
                                                a result, correlations and statistical                     The proposed methodology changes                      enhancements described herein to
                                                parameters for risk factors at any point                would be used by OCC to calculate                        measure its credit exposures to its
                                                in time represent back-dated data and                   margin requirements designed to limit                    participants on a daily basis and
                                                therefore may not be representative of                  its credit exposures to participants, and                determine margin requirements based
                                                the most recent market data. To mitigate                OCC uses the margin it collects from a                   on such calculations. The proposed
                                                procyclicality within its margin                        defaulting Clearing Member to protect                    enhancements concerning daily price
                                                methodology in the absence of daily                     other Clearing Members from losses that                  updates, daily updates of statistical
                                                updates, OCC employs a scale factor                     may result from such a default. As a                     parameters, and to more appropriately
                                                approach to incorporate day-to-day                      result, OCC believes the proposed rule                   account for asymmetry in conditional
                                                market volatility across all associated                 changed is designed to assure the                        variance would result in more accurate
                                                asset classes throughout.32 For the                     safeguarding of securities and funds in                  and responsive margin requirements
                                                reasons noted above, these monthly                      its custody or control in accordance                     and a model that is more stable and
                                                updates coupled with the dependency                     with Section 17A(b)(3)(F) of the Act.33                  proactive during times of market
                                                of margins on scale factors can result in                  Rules 17Ad–22(b)(1) and (2) 34 require                volatility, with margin charges that are
                                                imprecise changes in margins charged to                 that a registered clearing agency that                   based off of the most recent market data.
                                                Clearing Members, specifically across                   performs central counterparty services                   In addition, the proposed modifications
                                                periods of heavy volatility.                            establish, implement, maintain and                       to extend the look back period for
                                                   OCC proposes to enhance its margin                   enforce written policies and procedures                  determining volatility estimates for
                                                methodology to introduce daily updates                  reasonably designed to, in part: (1)                     equity-based products from 500 days to
                                                for equity price data, thereby allowing                 Measure its credit exposures to its                      10 years will help to ensure that OCC
                                                for daily updates of statistical                        participants at least once a day and limit               captures sufficient historical events/
                                                parameters in its margin model for most                 its exposures to potential losses from                   market shocks in the calculation of its
                                                risk factors. In addition, the proposed                 defaults by its participants under                       anti-procyclical floor. Additionally, the
                                                changes would introduce features to the                 normal market conditions so that the                     proposed changes would enhance OCC’s
                                                model to better account for the                         operations of the clearing agency would                  margin methodology for calculating
                                                asymmetric volatility phenomenon                        not be disrupted and non-defaulting                      correlation estimates by moving to a
                                                observed in financial markets and allow                 participants would not be exposed to                     daily process for updating correlations
                                                for conditional volatility forecast to be               losses that they cannot anticipate or                    (with a minimum of one week’s lag) so
                                                more sensitive to market downturns.                     control and (2) use margin requirements                  that Clearing Member account margins
                                                The proposed changes would also                         to limit its credit exposures to                         are more current and thus more accurate
                                                introduce a new statistical distribution                participants under normal market                         and using de-volatized returns to
                                                for modeling equity price returns that                  conditions and use risk-based models                     normalize returns across a variety of
                                                OCC believes would have a better                        and parameters to set margin                             asset classes and make the correlation
                                                goodness of fit and would more                          requirements.                                            estimator less sensitive to sudden
                                                appropriately account for fait tails.                                                                            market jumps and therefore more stable.
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                                                                                                           As noted above, the proposed changes
                                                                                                        would introduce the use of daily price                   Finally, the proposed changes to OCC’s
                                                  29 Specifically, OCC will discuss with those
                                                                                                        updates into OCC’s margin                                methodology for the treatment of
                                                Clearing Members how they plan to satisfy any                                                                    defaulting securities is designed to
                                                increase in their margin requirements associated        methodology, which allows for daily
                                                with the proposed change.                               updates to the statistical parameters in                 result in stable and realistic risk
                                                  30 15 U.S.C. 78q–1.                                                                                            estimates for such securities The
                                                  31 15 U.S.C. 78q–1(b)(3)(F).                            33 Id.                                                 proposed changes are therefore designed
                                                  32 See supra note 13 and accompanying text.             34 17    CFR 240.17Ad–22(b)(1) and (2).                to ensure that OCC sets margin


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                                                57312                          Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 231 / Monday, December 4, 2017 / Notices

                                                requirements, using risk-based models                        Moreover, the proposed changes                         (C) Clearing Agency’s Statement on
                                                and parameters, that would serve to                        would introduce daily updates for price                  Comments on the Proposed Rule
                                                limit OCC’s exposures to potential                         data for equity products, including daily                Change Received from Members,
                                                losses from defaults by its participants                   corporate action-adjusted returns of                     Participants or Others
                                                under normal market conditions so that                     equities, ETFs, ETNs, and certain                          Written comments on the proposed
                                                the operations of OCC would not be                         indexes. This daily price data would be                  rule change were not and are not
                                                disrupted and non-defaulting                               obtained from a widely used and                          intended to be solicited with respect to
                                                participants would not be exposed to                       reliable industry vendor. In this way,                   the proposed rule change and none have
                                                losses that they cannot anticipate or                      the proposed changes would ensure that                   been received. OCC will notify the
                                                control. Accordingly, OCC believes the                                                                              Commission of any written comments
                                                                                                           OCC uses reliable sources of timely
                                                proposed changes are consistent with                                                                                received by OCC.
                                                                                                           price data in its margin methodology,
                                                Rules 17Ad–22(b)(1) and (2).35
                                                   Rule 17Ad–22(e)(6) 36 further requires                  which better reflect current market                      III. Date of Effectiveness of the
                                                OCC to establish, implement, maintain                      conditions than the current monthly                      Proposed Rule Change and Timing for
                                                and enforce written policies and                           updates, thereby resulting in more                       Commission Action
                                                procedures reasonably designed to cover                    accurate and responsive margin
                                                                                                                                                                       Within 45 days of the date of
                                                its credit exposures to its participants by                requirements.
                                                                                                                                                                    publication of this notice in the Federal
                                                establishing a risk-based margin system                      For these reasons, OCC believes that                   Register or within such longer period
                                                that, among other things: (i) Considers,                   the proposed changes are consistent                      up to 90 days (i) as the Commission may
                                                and produces margin levels                                 with Rule 17Ad–22(e)(6).37                               designate if it finds such longer period
                                                commensurate with, the risks and                                                                                    to be appropriate and publishes its
                                                particular attributes of each relevant                       The proposed rule changes are not
                                                                                                           inconsistent with the existing rules of                  reasons for so finding or (ii) as to which
                                                product, portfolio, and market; (ii)                                                                                the self-regulatory organization
                                                calculates margin sufficient to cover its                  OCC, including any other rules
                                                                                                           proposed to be amended.                                  consents, the Commission will:
                                                potential future exposure to participants                                                                              (A) By order approve or disapprove
                                                in the interval between the last margin                    (B) Clearing Agency’s Statement on                       the proposed rule change, or
                                                collection and the close out of positions                  Burden on Competition                                       (B) institute proceedings to determine
                                                following a participant default; and (iii)                                                                          whether the proposed rule change
                                                uses reliable sources of timely price data                    Section 17A(b)(3)(I) requires that the                should be disapproved.
                                                and uses procedures and sound                              rules of a clearing agency do not impose
                                                valuation models for addressing                            any burden on competition not                            IV. Solicitation of Comments
                                                circumstances in which pricing data are                    necessary or appropriate in furtherance                    Interested persons are invited to
                                                not readily available or reliable.                         of the purposes of Act.38 OCC does not                   submit written data, views and
                                                   As described in detail above, the                                                                                arguments concerning the foregoing,
                                                                                                           believe that the proposed rule change
                                                proposed changes are designed to                                                                                    including whether the proposed rule
                                                                                                           would impose any burden on
                                                ensure that, among other things, OCC’s                                                                              change is consistent with the Act.
                                                margin methodology: (i) More                               competition. The proposed risk model
                                                                                                           enhancements would apply to all                          Comments may be submitted by any of
                                                appropriately accounts for asymmetry in                                                                             the following methods:
                                                conditional variance; (ii) more                            Clearing Members equally. While OCC
                                                appropriately models the statistical                       expects that margin requirements may                     Electronic Comments
                                                distribution of price returns, (iii) more                  see slight reductions in the aggregate,                    • Use the Commission’s Internet
                                                accurately models second-day volatility                    the individual impact of the proposed                    comment form (http://www.sec.gov/
                                                forecasts; (iv) improves OCC’s approach                    changes will be mixed and depend on                      rules/sro.shtml); or
                                                to estimating covariance and                               market conditions and the composition                      • Send an email to rule-comments@
                                                correlations between risk factors to                       of the portfolio in question. The                        sec.gov. Please include File Number SR–
                                                provide for stable and sensitive                           proposed rule change is primarily                        OCC–2017–022 on the subject line.
                                                correlation estimations; and (v)                           designed to allow OCC to determine
                                                improves OCC’s methodology related to                                                                               Paper Comments
                                                                                                           margin requirements that more
                                                the treatment of defaulting securities by                  accurately represent the risk presented                    • Send paper comments in triplicate
                                                reducing the impact that illiquid                          by its cleared products and that are                     to Secretary, Securities and Exchange
                                                securities with discontinuous data have                    more responsive to changes in volatility                 Commission, 100 F Street NE.,
                                                on default variance estimates. These                       or overall market conditions. OCC does                   Washington, DC 20549–1090.
                                                methodology enhancements would be                                                                                   All submissions should refer to File
                                                                                                           not believe that the proposed rule
                                                used to calculate daily margin                                                                                      Number SR–OCC–2017–022. This file
                                                                                                           change would unfairly inhibit access to
                                                requirements for OCC’s Clearing                                                                                     number should be included on the
                                                                                                           OCC’s services or disadvantage or favor                  subject line if email is used. To help the
                                                Members. In this way, the proposed
                                                                                                           any particular user in relationship to                   Commission process and review your
                                                changes are designed to consider, and
                                                                                                           another user. Accordingly, OCC believes                  comments more efficiently, please use
                                                produce margin levels commensurate
                                                with, the risks and particular attributes                  that any competitive impact would be                     only one method. The Commission will
                                                of each relevant product, portfolio, and                   necessary and appropriate in                             post all comments on the Commission’s
                                                market and to calculate margin                             furtherance of the safeguarding of                       Internet Web site (http://www.sec.gov/
                                                                                                           securities and funds which are in the                    rules/sro.shtml). Copies of the
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                                                sufficient to cover its potential future
                                                exposure to participants in the interval                   custody or control of OCC or for which                   submission, all subsequent
                                                between the last margin collection and                     it is responsible, and in general, the                   amendments, all written statements
                                                the close out of positions following a                     protection of investors and the public                   with respect to the proposed rule
                                                participant default.                                       interest.                                                change that are filed with the
                                                                                                                                                                    Commission, and all written
                                                  35 Id.                                                     37 Id.                                                 communications relating to the
                                                  36 17    CFR 240.17Ad–2(e)(6).                             38 15    U.S.C. 78q–1(b)(3)(I).                        proposed rule change between the


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                                                                            Federal Register / Vol. 82, No. 231 / Monday, December 4, 2017 / Notices                                                     57313

                                                Commission and any person, other than                   I. Self-Regulatory Organization’s                     regulation of Trading Permit Holder
                                                those that may be withheld from the                     Statement of the Terms of Substance of                (‘‘TPH’’) customer options business,
                                                public in accordance with the                           the Proposed Rule Change                              including performing routine
                                                provisions of 5 U.S.C. 552, will be                        The Exchange proposes to amend its                 surveillances, investigations,
                                                available for Web site viewing and                      Fees Schedule relating to the Options                 examinations, financial monitoring, as
                                                printing in the Commission’s Public                     Regulator Fee (‘‘ORF’’).                              well as policy, rulemaking, interpretive
                                                Reference Room, 100 F Street NE.,                          The text of the proposed rule change               and enforcement activities.6 The
                                                Washington, DC 20549, on official                       is also available on the Exchange’s Web               Exchange believes that revenue
                                                business days between the hours of                      site (http://www.cboe.com/AboutCBOE/                  generated from the ORF, when
                                                10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Copies of such                 CBOELegalRegulatoryHome.aspx), at                     combined with all of the Exchange’s
                                                filing also will be available for                       the Exchange’s Office of the Secretary,               other regulatory fees and fines, will
                                                inspection and copying at the principal                 and at the Commission’s Public                        cover a material portion, but not all, of
                                                office of OCC and on OCC’s Web site at                  Reference Room.                                       the Exchange’s regulatory costs.
                                                https://www.theocc.com/about/                                                                                    The Exchange monitors the amount of
                                                publications/bylaws.jsp.                                II. Self-Regulatory Organization’s                    revenue collected from the ORF to
                                                   All comments received will be posted                 Statement of the Purpose of, and                      ensure that it, in combination with its
                                                without change. Persons submitting                      Statutory Basis for, the Proposed Rule                other regulatory fees and fines, does not
                                                comments are cautioned that we do not                   Change                                                exceed the Exchange’s total regulatory
                                                redact or edit personal identifying                        In its filing with the Commission, the             costs. The Exchange monitors its
                                                information from comment submissions.                   Exchange included statements                          regulatory costs and revenues at a
                                                You should submit only information                      concerning the purpose of and basis for               minimum on a semi-annual basis. If the
                                                that you wish to make available                         the proposed rule change and discussed                Exchange determines regulatory
                                                publicly. All submissions should refer                  any comments it received on the                       revenues exceed or are insufficient to
                                                to File Number SR–OCC–2017–022 and                      proposed rule change. The text of these               cover a material portion of its regulatory
                                                should be submitted on or before                        statements may be examined at the                     costs, the Exchange will adjust the ORF
                                                December 26, 2017.                                      places specified in Item IV below. The                by submitting a fee change filing to the
                                                  For the Commission, by the Division of                Exchange has prepared summaries, set                  Commission. The Exchange notifies
                                                Trading and Markets, pursuant to delegated              forth in sections A, B, and C below, of               TPHs of adjustments to the ORF via
                                                Authority.39                                            the most significant aspects of such                  regulatory circular. The Exchange
                                                Eduardo A. Aleman,                                      statements.                                           endeavors to provide TPHs with such
                                                Assistant Secretary.                                                                                          notice at least 30 calendar days prior to
                                                                                                        A. Self-Regulatory Organization’s
                                                                                                                                                              the effective date of the change.
                                                [FR Doc. 2017–25989 Filed 12–1–17; 8:45 am]             Statement of the Purpose of, and the
                                                                                                        Statutory Basis for, the Proposed Rule                   Under the Exchange’s current process,
                                                BILLING CODE 8011–01–P
                                                                                                        Change                                                the ORF is assessed to TPHs and
                                                                                                                                                              collected indirectly from TPHs through
                                                SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE                                 1. Purpose                                            their clearing firms by OCC on behalf of
                                                COMMISSION                                                 The Exchange proposes to amend its                 the Exchange. The following scenarios
                                                                                                        Fees Schedule to clarify how the ORF is               reflect how the ORF is currently
                                                                                                        assessed and collected.3                              assessed and collected (these apply
                                                [Release No. 34–82164; File No. SR–CBOE–
                                                2017–074]
                                                                                                                                                              regardless if the transaction is executed
                                                                                                        Background                                            on the Exchange or on an away
                                                Self-Regulatory Organizations; Cboe                        The ORF was established in October                 exchange):
                                                Exchange, Inc.; Notice of Filing and                    2008 as a replacement of Registered                      1. If a TPH is the executing clearing
                                                Immediate Effectiveness of a Proposed                   Representative fees.4 The ORF is                      firm on a transaction (‘‘Executing
                                                Rule Change Clarifying How the                          assessed by the Exchange to each                      Clearing Firm’’), the ORF is assessed to
                                                Options Regulatory Fee is Assessed                      Trading Permit Holder for options                     and collected from that TPH by OCC on
                                                and Collected                                           transactions executed or cleared by the               behalf of the Exchange.
                                                                                                        Trading Permit Holder that are cleared                   2. If a TPH is the Executing Clearing
                                                November 28, 2017.                                      by The Options Clearing Corporation                   Firm and the transaction is ‘‘given up’’
                                                   Pursuant to Section 19(b)(1) of the                  (‘‘OCC’’) in the customer range (i.e.,                to a different TPH that clears the
                                                Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the                    transactions that clear in a customer                 transaction (‘‘Clearing Give-up’’), the
                                                ‘‘Act’’),1 and Rule 19b–4 thereunder,2                  account at OCC) regardless of the                     ORF is assessed to the Executing
                                                notice is hereby given that on November                 exchange on which the transaction                     Clearing Firm (the ORF is the obligation
                                                17, 2017, Cboe Exchange, Inc. (the                      occurs.5                                              of the Executing Clearing Firm). The
                                                ‘‘Exchange’’ or ‘‘Cboe Options’’) filed                    The ORF is designed to recover a                   ORF is collected from the Clearing Give-
                                                with the Securities and Exchange                        material portion of the costs to the                  up.
                                                Commission (the ‘‘Commission’’) the                     Exchange of the supervision and                          3. If the Executing Clearing Firm is a
                                                proposed rule change as described in                                                                          non-TPH and the Clearing Give-up is a
                                                Items I, II, and III below, which Items                    3 The Exchange initially filed the proposed rule
                                                                                                                                                              TPH, the ORF is assessed to and
                                                have been prepared by the Exchange.                     changes on November 16, 2017 (SR–CBOE–2017–
                                                                                                        073). On November 17, 2017 the Exchange               collected from the Clearing Give-up.
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                                                The Commission is publishing this                       withdrew SR–CBOE–2017–073 and then
                                                notice to solicit comments on the                       subsequently submitted this filing (SR–CBOE–             6 The Exchange notes that its regulatory
                                                proposed rule change from interested                    2017–074).                                            responsibilities with respect to TPH compliance
                                                                                                           4 See Securities Exchange Act Release No. 58817
                                                persons.                                                                                                      with options sales practice rules have largely been
                                                                                                        (October 20, 2008), 73 FR 63744 (October 27, 2008)    allocated to FINRA under a 17d–2 agreement. The
                                                                                                        (the ‘‘Original ORF Filing’’).                        ORF is not designed to cover the cost of that options
                                                  39 17 CFR 200.30–3(a)(12).                               5 The ORF also applies to customer-range           sales practice regulation. See Securities Exchange
                                                  1 15 U.S.C. 78s(b)(1).                                transactions executed during Extended Trading         Act Release No. 76309 (October 29, 2015), 80 FR
                                                  2 17 CFR 240.19b–4.                                   Hours as defined in Cboe Options Rule 1.1(rrr).       68361 (November 4, 2015).



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Document Created: 2017-12-02 00:40:18
Document Modified: 2017-12-02 00:40:18
CategoryRegulatory Information
CollectionFederal Register
sudoc ClassAE 2.7:
GS 4.107:
AE 2.106:
PublisherOffice of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration
SectionNotices
FR Citation82 FR 57306 

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