Spotlight is the leading market intelligence platform for OTC derivatives.

Introduction to Spotlight


Hi, I’m [Kyle Loomis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-loomis), the Founder of [Spotlight](https://spotlight.dev).
I previously worked as a Data Engineer at [dv01](https://www.dv01.co), where I built software to bring transparency to the antiquated and
opaque securitization space. dv01 was acquired in 2022 by Fitch Rating Agency.

After dv01, I realized that the OTC derivatives market was in the same boat as securitizations — antiquated and opaque.
So I partnered with a top commodity dealer to incubate Spotlight, a market intelligence platform for OTC derivatives.
We are illuminating the massive, hidden OTC market by telling the story behind every trade. In an industry filled
with opacity, we provide the clarity you need to navigate the markets with confidence.

We developed proprietary technology to unmask hidden trading data, giving our clients an informational advantage over
their competitors. Our platform helps our clients analyze markets, generate trading ideas, and optimize pricing.

By addressing the issues surrounding transparency, price discovery, and systemic risk, Spotlight aims to redefine the
way derivatives trading is done. [Join us](https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotlight-otc) in reshaping the future of
the OTC derivatives market.


At Spotlight, we're bringing transparency to OTC derivatives markets by telling the story behind every trade. Our market intelligence platform helps our clients analyze markets, generate trading ideas, and optimize pricing.

Spotlight: Bringing Transparency to the OTC Derivatives Market


At [Spotlight](https://spotlight.dev), we're bringing transparency to OTC derivatives markets by telling the story
behind every trade. Our market intelligence platform helps our clients analyze markets, generate trading
ideas, and optimize pricing. Here's why you should partner with us.

# The Problem

* **Lack of Transparency:** OTC markets operate in the shadows, making it difficult for participants to accurately assess market conditions due to the absence of centralized reporting.
* **Decreased Price Discovery:** Without transparent pricing information, inefficiencies and mispricing persist, hindering effective decision-making.
* **Systemic Risk:** The complex and interconnected nature of OTC trading amplifies risks during market stress, contributing to instability and potential crises.

The 2008 mortgage crisis underscored the dangers of opacity in OTC markets. More transparency in the OTC markets prior to 2008 [would have mitigated the damage](https://www.newyorkfed.org/financial-services-and-infrastructure/financial-market-infrastructure-and-reform/over-the-counter-derivatives#:~:text=The%20financial%20crisis%20of%202008,market%20and%20overall%20size%20of) resulting from this crisis.

# The Solution

We developed a novel approach to unmask hidden trading data, giving you insight into a hidden market. Our intuitive web platform gives you access to market insights you can’t find anywhere else.
* **Transparency Redefined:** Spotlight brings clarity to the opaque OTC market, offering transparency into derivatives pricing, market trends, and counterparty behavior.
* **Idea Generation:** With Spotlight, you can discover new product opportunities, helping you to stay up-to-date with what the competition is offering.
* **Risk Management:** By identifying risks early, our clients can proactively mitigate systemic risks and protect their portfolios.

# Why Choose Spotlight

* **Competitive Advantage:** Gain an edge with real-time market data and insights, positioning yourself ahead of the competition.
* **Efficiency:** Our intuitive platform streamlines workflows, saving valuable time on market analysis and research.
* **Profit Maximization:** Leverage our intelligence to identify lucrative opportunities and minimize potential losses, maximizing your returns.
* **Dedicated Support:** Count on our team for personalized support, dashboards, and analytics.

Join [Spotlight](https://spotlight.dev) today and unlock the potential of the OTC Swap Market. Let us be your strategic partner in increasing market transparency, saving you time with research, and gaining an informational advantage over your competitors.


Spotlight improves price discovery for buyers and sellers, enabling more efficient markets. Buyers use Spotlight to glean product pricing, while sellers use Spotlight to maximize margins.

Part I: Optimize Derivatives Pricing with Spotlight


In the opaque world of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, the right information can significantly enhance your
competitive advantage. Spotlight shines a light on these opaque OTC markets, providing insights that empower
derivatives buyers and sellers to optimize pricing and maximize profits.

# Transparency in OTC Derivatives

The OTC derivatives market operates without centralized oversight, allowing for confidential bilateral trades.
This secrecy has historically given swap dealers a competitive edge, enabling them to adjust pricing to their advantage
without any significant external checks. However, this poses challenges in terms of pricing efficiency and market stability.
Spotlight’s market intelligence platform pierces this veil of secrecy, offering detailed trade insights that help
market participants refine their pricing and maximize profits.

# Problem: Effective Pricing

Derivatives sellers are often lacking information that could drastically improve their sales strategies. Importantly,
these sellers lack a deep understanding of:
* **Counterparty Behavior:** Without visibility into the trading patterns, structures, and pricing tactics of counterparties, sellers are at a significant disadvantage.
* **Competitive Landscape:** Knowledge of how competitors are pricing similar derivatives is crucial. Without this information, sellers cannot competitively price their products.

This information gap hinders effective pricing and overall market efficiency.

# Solution: Strategic Pricing Optimization

Spotlight dismantles these barriers by providing comprehensive market visibility:
* **Visibility into Lost Trades:** Understand when and why trades were lost to competitors – often due to less aggressive pricing – and adjust strategies accordingly.
* **Margin Adjustment:** Analyze competitors’ pricing and margins to ensure you are not leaving money on the table or pricing yourself out of the market.

# Who Benefits?

Our platform is designed for derivatives buyers and sellers. By providing them with a detailed overview of the
market, including actions and strategies of their competitors, we enable them to make informed decisions that lead to
improved sales and profitability.

# How It Works

Spotlight enables users to search through the full universe of trades to find relevant products. Using this
information, users can adjust their pricing strategies based on current market data and trends.

<img src="/static/images/spotlight-data-search.png" alt="Spotlight data search." className="rounded-2xl border-zinc-700 border"/>

# Conclusion: Your Strategic Partner in Derivatives Pricing

Spotlight is more than a platform; it's a strategic partner in navigating the complexities of the OTC derivatives
market. By equipping clients with essential market insights, we enhance pricing strategies, increase margins, and
secure more profitable operations. Join us at Spotlight and transform your approach to OTC derivatives, leveraging
information as your most powerful asset.


Spotlight assists in discovering new product opportunities by analyzing market activity, enabling users to generate innovative trading ideas that outperform the competition.

Part II: Generate Trading Ideas with Spotlight


In the OTC derivatives market, innovative trading ideas are crucial for risk mitigation and profit maximization. However, the inherent opacity of these markets forces firms to develop strategies to stay ahead. Spotlight’s market intelligence platform pierces this opacity, offering buyers and sellers insights into competitors' trading structures and strategies. With Spotlight you can get a bird’s eye view of the market, enabling you to generate innovative trading ideas that outperform the competition.

# Generate Trading Ideas

## Identify Market Gaps
Spotlight helps you identify gaps in your product offerings by analyzing competitors’ trade structures and market activities. This enables you to offer more relevant products, ultimately increasing revenues.

## Improve Hedging
Spotlight provides insights into how competitors hedge risk, showcasing structures like swap strips and options strategies. This visibility allows you to effectively position trades and improve risk management.

## Analyze Trends
Spotlight delivers detailed insights into market trends, helping you to anticipate market shifts, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and stay ahead of the competition.

# Conclusion
Spotlight provides a comprehensive view of the OTC derivatives market. Whether it’s identifying market gaps, improving hedging strategies, or analyzing trends, Spotlight empowers you with the information needed to gain an edge.

Leverage Spotlight as your strategic partner in the OTC derivatives space. Together, we can help you navigate the complexities of this traditionally opaque market.


Spotlight empowers users to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Whether it’s showcasing the biggest movers or detecting unusual activity, our powerful analytics show where money is flowing.

Part III: Analyze OTC Markets with Spotlight


In the last two posts, we covered how Spotlight helps market participants [optimize pricing](/articles/optimize-derivatives-pricing)
and [generate trading ideas](/articles/generate-trading-ideas) for OTC derivatives. These posts highlighted various use
cases to help buyers and sellers become more efficient and increase sales revenue. Spotlight also helps managers
and executives analyze OTC markets to get a high-level understanding of the landscape.

# Analyzing the OTC Markets

Futures markets support a range of products, but they fall short on many fronts:

* **Smaller trading size:** The futures market is better suited for smaller trades while larger block trades are traded over-the-counter to avoid moving the market.
* **Lack of anonymity:** Trading through an exchange provides immediate visibility for all market participants, making it more difficult to mask strategies, especially for large block trades.
* **Limited product selection:** Exchanges fail to support bespoke products and instruments.

Market participants turn to OTC markets to bypass these shortcomings. But trading over-the-counter is a double edged
sword – the inherent opacity of OTC markets makes it difficult to perform analysis. Participants are left to
extrapolate movements in OTC markets based on futures markets.

This is where Spotlight comes in. Spotlight not only captures all of the uncleared OTC trades, but also provides
users with analytical tools, giving them a new way to analyze OTC markets.

## Market Trends
It’s important to understand where money is flowing so you can focus efforts on the most valuable segments. Spotlight provides market intelligence tools to help you understand market trends. Whether it’s an overview of biggest movers, comparison of activity by expiration date, or change in total notional value traded, Spotlight’s tools give you detailed insights that can supercharge your work.

## Market Share Analysis
While it’s easy to know your market share in exchange traded markets, it’s difficult to pinpoint in OTC markets.
Markets are fragmented, there is no central reporting authority, and the data available is often erroneous or masked.

Spotlight’s proprietary models clean up and unmask data so you can see how dealers are trading. We provide analytical
tools to aggregate data, such as trade volumes on specific markets and products, enabling you to understand your
market share and how much risk you are taking on.

# Conclusion

Spotlight delivers detailed insights into market trends, helping you to understand risk, capitalize on
emerging opportunities, and stay ahead of the competition.

Join us at Spotlight and improve your approach to analyzing the OTC markets, leveraging information as your most powerful asset.


Learn how Spotlight presents a clear and comprehensive view of the OTC derivatives market.

A Technical Overview of Spotlight


In the secretive world of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, precise and up-to-date information is not merely an
advantage—it's a necessity. Spotlight has revolutionized this secret market by providing essential insights that enable
derivatives buyers and sellers to anticipate market trends, develop innovative trading ideas, and secure competitive
deals.

# Spotlight's Competitive Edge

Spotlight is unique in its comprehensive approach to data coverage, being the only platform that captures all
uncleared OTC trades executed by US swap dealers. This exclusive access allows Spotlight to clean, transform,
and deliver a dataset that is indispensable for sales and trading professionals. Our platform not only facilitates
in-depth analysis but also allows users to navigate the entire universe of transactions, offering sophisticated
reports on the swap market’s dynamics.

## Use Cases

### Analyze Markets

Spotlight empowers users to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Whether it’s showcasing the biggest movers or detecting unusual activity, our powerful analytics show where money is flowing.

### Generate Trading Ideas

Spotlight assists in discovering new product opportunities by analyzing market activity, enabling users to generate innovative trading ideas that outperform the competition.

### Optimize Pricing

* **Visibility into Lost Trades:** By examining the specifics of lost trades, users can understand and refine pricing strategies to win more sales.
* **Margin Adjustment:** Insights into competitor pricing enable users to adjust their margins effectively, ensuring they remain competitive without sacrificing potential profits.

# Data

Our primary data comes from CFTC Part 43 trade submissions to major US Swap Data Repositories, including CME, DTCC, and ICE.
We enhance this raw data by leveraging other data and specifications:
* CFTC Part 43 Technical Specifications
* ISDA OTC Derivatives Taxonomies
* Market Identifier Codes
* Other Market Data and Specifications

## Challenges with Data Quality

The data sourced from SDRs often contain inaccuracies and intentional obfuscations, particularly with product details
designed to conceal trade specifications. These challenges require sophisticated solutions to decode and interpret accurately.

## Transformation Process

Our data transformation process is meticulous and multi-layered:
* **Standardization:** We standardize data by renaming and aligning columns for uniformity.
* **Normalization:** We clean erroneous values and map product attributes for consistency and accuracy across datasets.
* **Unmasking:** We reveal obscured product details by cross-referencing with other datasets, adding depth and precision to our analysis.

## Results

The outcome is a meticulously curated dataset that presents a clear and comprehensive view of all uncleared OTC
trades. This includes new trades as well as modifications, novations, and cancellations, detailed with contract
specifications, dates, products, sub-products, underlying assets, prices, volumes, terms, and much more.

# Summary

Spotlight is not just a data provider; it is a strategic partner for anyone navigating the complex waters of
the OTC derivatives market. By transforming raw data into valuable insights, we equip our clients with the tools
they need to optimize pricing, enhance margins, and ultimately drive more profitable trading strategies.
Join us at Spotlight, and turn information into your most powerful competitive advantage in the OTC derivatives market.


Spotlight's reporting functionality gives users the ability to drill down into specific markets to understand how and why the OTC landscape is changing.

Introducing Spotlight Reports


In the last few posts, we covered how spotlight helps buyers and sellers [analyze markets](/articles/analyze-markets),
[optimize pricing](/articles/optimize-derivatives-pricing), and
[generate trading ideas](/articles/generate-trading-ideas) for OTC derivatives. Let’s dive deeper into the Spotlight
platform and show how our tools aid in market analysis.

Spotlight controls every step of the data process, including sourcing, transforming, and unmasking data, as well as
providing custom-built tools to filter and aggregate the data. We believe that telling the story behind every trade is
vital to gaining an edge in sales and trading, which is why we work closely with our clients to build powerful analytical tools.

A core part of our Spotlight application is the **Reports** page. Our reporting functionality gives users the ability to
drill down into specific markets to understand _how_ and _why_ the OTC landscape is changing. We recently published a
pre-canned chart which shows the number of trades by execution month and tenor. This chart helps users understand the
seasonality in hedging activity for specific markets.

To use this chart, start by filtering on product, sub-product or underlying asset to zoom into a specific market.
Next, select relevant instruments, and finally choose a suitable date range. The chart below filters on corn swaps
traded over the past year.

<img src="/static/images/corn-swaps-by-execution-month-and-tenor.png" alt="Corn Swaps by Execution Month and Tenor" className="rounded-2xl border-zinc-700 border"/>

By selecting instrument tenor equal to 1 year, you can start to see the seasonality of hedging activity in corn
markets, showing that hedging picks up around the planting season during April through June.

<img src="/static/images/corn-swaps-by-execution-month-and-tenor-1y.png" alt="1Y Corn Swaps by Execution Month and Tenor" className="rounded-2xl border-zinc-700 border"/>

Spotlight is working closely with market leaders to build the best platform for analyzing the OTC derivatives market.
Join [Spotlight](/demo) in reshaping the future of the OTC derivatives market.


The Market Intelligence Platform for
OTC Derivatives

Analyze markets, generate trading ideas, and optimize pricing with Spotlight.

The Market Intelligence Platform for OTC Derivatives

Analyze markets, generate trading ideas, and optimize pricing with Spotlight.

The Market Intelligence Platform for
OTC Derivatives