Question 2.2.3

Question 2.2.3

Due to idiosyncrasies of the Gas market, on certain times every month there are contracts that are in effect duplicates of each other, from a delivery point of view.

For example, on Fri 24th July, both the “Balance of Month” and “Working days next week” contract quoted on screen will result in delivery of the same commodity – from 27-31st July inclusive.

These are shown as 2 different contracts on the broker screen so have 2 different order books and clients can place orders and trade in either contract.

We would like to check that reports of, for example, 2 orders on 2 different contract IDs would be accepted, even though the details of the two contracts and delivery profiles would in effect be the same.

We can see the test ARIS system accepts this, we just want assurance that you do not think that this violates any rules.

We can see why this may be undesirable as you would not want people making up different contract IDs all of the time, however in this instance the traders see 2 distinct order book on the screen and we feel that it is valid to report in this way, if the order books are separate.


Answer

If there are two different contracts and these are shown as two different contracts on the broker screen, so they have two different order books and the traders see two distinct order books on the screen, these contract should be reported with different IDs.

The fact that on certain times every month there are contracts that are in effect duplicates of each other, from a delivery point of view, it does not mean that they are the same. They are two different contracts with the same delivery profiles (and they may trade at the same price, but traded in two different order books and they should be reported separately.

Updated: 
08/09/2015