What does "bespoke" mean in this context?

Solution 1:

The dictionary gives an interesting meaning of "bespoke":

"custom or custom-made, made to order," of goods, as distinguished from ready-made

So, "bespoke" used this way means "made to order", and the instruments were custom-made. This can be seen by the later phrase:

JPMorgan was paid $19m to structure and market the Squared CDO alone

Solution 2:

OP must be American (or at least not British, though I don't know about Australian usage, for example). He's aware of the original (now pretty much archaic) meaning of bespoke, but not the modern meaning of custom-made - which I must admit seems to more UK than US usage.

Bespoke Tailors, for example, would be familiar to most Brits. A bit oxymoronic, perhaps, but it distinguishes them from tailors who only sell 'off-the-peg' suits (with perhaps minor alterations available, such as adjusting trouser length).

You'll also find Bespoke Shoes, Interior Design, and Software, and a few others in the UK, where usage seems to be increasing over recent decades (there was hardly any software to be 'bespoke' before about 1980, and what did exist then was almost always bespoke in any case, so the adjective was redundant). Software notwithstanding, the word does have somewhat 'genteel' archaic connotations.

Note that this UK usage only occurs with the past participle (of bespeak). Neither the tailor nor the customer can bespeak a suit for example.

The 'original' sense (as the past participle of can indeed mean to indicate, as OP says. But only at a stretch, and really just plain old speak of does that anyway. Again, that bespoke usage is archaic/poetic in the UK.

If anyone does use the word in any of the older senses apart from indicate, it's likely to mean something like ask for in advance, as given in my link.