RPX Sees Trading Volume Exceed One Billion Dollars

Well, that didn’t take long. In under one year, trading volume in the newly-formed Residential Property Index — known simply as the RPX by most industry participants — has passed the one billion dollar threshold. According to Radar Logic, Inc., the analytics firm whose data backs the RPX, flows represent positive two-way activity, and market participation thus far includes a variety of end users. The RPX bagan trading in late September of last year. Perhaps the largest set of end users include a growing number of distressed mortgage asset investors that have adopted the RPX as a hedge against their investments into sub-performing and non-performing mortgage loans. Nearly every major hedge fund that Housing Wire has spoken to has utilized RPX trades as a hedge, we’ve found over the past six months. “In light of what has been happening on Wall Street and the housing market over the past 6 months, we view this level of activity as very encouraging,” said Michael Feder, president and CEO of Radar Logic. “With all the obvious distractions facing traders and their customers, having reached this milestone so quickly is evidence of RPX’s relevance to and interest in the capital markets. Activity in both swaps and forwards continues to grow among both traders and end users.” Radar Logic, a real estate data and analytics company, calculates and publishes what it calls the Radar Logic Daily Prices; these prices are normalized to price per square foot and released daily for key housing markets on a rolling 60-day basis. The daily prices serve as the basis of the RPX market, allowing financial market makers to invest in real estate values without owning physical assets — for those that do own physical assets, investing via the RPX can serve as an effective hedge. For more information, visit http://www.radarlogic.com.