Derivatives

What are derivatives?

A financial instrument, traded on or off an exchange, the price of which is directly dependent upon (i.e., "derived from") the value of one or more underlying securities, equity indices, debt instruments, commodities, other derivative instruments, or any agreed upon pricing index or arrangement (e.g., the movement over time of the Consumer Price Index or freight rates). Derivatives involve the trading of rights or obligations based on the underlying product, but do not directly transfer property. They are used to hedge risk or to exchange a floating rate of return for fixed rate of return. Derivatives include futures, options, and swaps. For example, futures contracts are derivatives of the physical contract and options on futures are derivatives of futures contracts. (Source: CFTC)

Derivatives are financial instruments whose performance is derived, at least in part, from the performance of an underlying asset, security or index. For example, a stock option is a derivative because its value changes in relation to the price movement of the underlying stock. (Source: SEC)

In finance, a derivative is a financial instrument derived from some other asset; rather than trade or exchange the asset itself, market participants enter into an agreement to exchange money, assets or some other value at some future date based on the underlying asset. A simple example is a futures contract: an agreement to exchange the underlying asset (or equivalent cash flows) at a future date. The exact terms of the derivative (the payments between the counterparties) depend on, but may or may not exactly correspond to, the behaviour or performance of the underlying asset.

There are many types of financial instruments that are grouped under the term derivatives, but options/futures and swaps are among the most common. Options are contracts where one party agrees to pay a fee to another for the right (but not the obligation) to buy something from or sell something to the other. For example, a person worried that the price of his Microsoft stock may go down before he plans to sell it may pay a fee to another person (the writer of a put option) who agrees to buy the stock from him at the strike price. The person in this example is using an option to manage the risk that his stock may go down, while the writer of the put option may be using the option as a way to benefit from the increase in the stock price and the fee income. In contrast to a put option, a call option gives the buyer of the option the right to purchase the underlying asset at a later date and at the specified strike price.

Later, contracts known as swaps appeared, where one party agrees to swap cash flows with another. For example, a business may have a fixed-rate loan, while another business may have a variable-rate loan; each of the businesses would prefer to have the other type of loan. Rather than cancel their existing loans (if this is possible, it may be expensive), the two businesses can achieve the same effect by agreeing to "swap" cash flows: the first pays the second based on a floating-rate loan, and the second pays the first based on a fixed-rate loan (in practice, the two will net out the amounts owing). By swapping the cash flow, each has "converted" one type of loan into another.

Derivatives can be based on different types of assets such as commodities, equities or bonds, interest rates, exchange rates, or indices (such as a stock market index, consumer price index (CPI) — see inflation derivatives — or even an index of weather conditions). Their performance can determine both the amount and the timing of the payoffs. The main use of derivatives is to either remove risk or take on risk depending if one were a hedger or a speculator. The diverse range of potential underlying assets and payoff alternatives leads to a huge range of derivatives contracts available to be traded in the market. The main types of derivatives are futures, forwards, options and swaps. In today's uncertain world, derivatives are increasingly being used to protect assets from drastic fluctuations and at the same time they are being re-engineered to cover all kinds of risk and with this the growth of the derivatives market continues.

Types of derivatives

Broadly speaking there are two distinct groups of derivative contracts, which are distinguished by the way that they are traded in market:

• Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives are contracts that are traded (and privately negotiated) directly between two parties, without going through an exchange or other intermediary. Products such as swaps, forward rate agreements, and exotic options are almost always traded in this way. The OTC derivatives market is huge. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the total outstanding notional amount is USD 298 trillion (as of 2005).

• Exchange-traded derivatives are those derivatives products that are traded via Derivatives exchanges. A derivatives exchange acts as an intermediary to all transactions, and takes Initial margin from both sides of the trade to act as a guarantee. The world's largest[2] derivatives exchanges (by number of transactions) are the Korea Exchange (which lists KOSPI Index Futures & Options), Eurex (which lists a wide range of European products such as interest rate & index products), Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade. According to BIS, the combined turnover in the world's derivatives exchanges totalled USD 344 trillion during Q4 2005.

Common contract types

There are three major classes of derivatives:

• Futures/Forwards, which are contracts to buy or sell an asset at a specified future date.
• Options, which are contracts that give the buyer the right (but not the obligation) to buy or sell an asset at a specified future date.
• Swaps, where the two parties agree to exchange cash flows.

(Source: Wikipedia)