Quantlib FuturesRateHelper triggers not a valid IMM date error

Question

I'm beginning to use QuantLib with Python SWIG, and trying to build a EUR yield curve.

I face this error which frankly I don't understand; I looked at the code of bool IMM::isIMMdate in imm.cpp and that date shouldn't pose a problem. Other dates may cause trouble because some days are < to 15 and in imm.cpp apparently a future whose expiry date is < 15 isn't a IMM date - well, but still in that case 19th Dec 2016 it should be OK, it's a Euribor future.

   this = _QuantLib.new_FuturesRateHelper(*args)
   RuntimeError: December 19th, 2016 is not a valid IMM date

Here is my piece of code that triggers the error:

print('futures: {}'.format(futures))

It outputs:

futures: {Date(19,12,2016): 100.01, Date(13,6,2016): 100.04, Date(19,9,2016): 100.035, Date(14,3,2016): 100.045, Date(14,12,2015): 100.035, Date(18,9,2017): 99.905, Date(13,3,2017): 99.985, Date(19,6,2017): 99.95}


futuresHelpers = [ql.FuturesRateHelper(ql.QuoteHandle(futures[d]),
                                       d, months,
                                       calendar, ql.ModifiedFollowing,
                                       True, dayCounter,
                                       ql.QuoteHandle(ql.SimpleQuote(0.0)))
                  for d in futures.keys()]

Answer 1

I think the check is correct.

From wikipeida: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMM_dates

The IMM dates are the four quarterly dates of each year which most futures contracts and option contracts use as their scheduled maturity date or termination date. The dates are the third Wednesday of March, June, September and December (i.e., between the 15th and 21st, whichever such day is a Wednesday), and IMM stands for the International Monetary Market.

So you have a couple of options:

1) use a correct date

2) modify that method so that it always returns true, rebuild quantlib, re-run swig to build the python bindings and go to town.