Spotlight on auction in €114m Nasdaq clearing blow-up

Four-member auction may have turned 39% margin breach into huge default fund loss

As banks, clearing houses and regulators try to make sense of the €114 million loss at Nasdaq Commodities, suspicion is focusing on the auction through which the clearing house sold off the loss-making positions.

The market move that created the loss was 39% larger than the central counterparty’s margin model was designed to cover, according to data shared by the CCP with members – a relatively small breach – and a Nasdaq spokesperson tells Risk.net the loss-making positions were not large