Alternative methods of weighting

It is generally considered that capitalization weighted indices give the most accurat indication of the collective movement in corporate asset or liability prices. However two alternative methods of weighting the constituents of equity indices are fowl^,‘equally weighted‘ and ‘price weighted‘. In the case of equally weighted indices, a’ equal amount of money is assumed to be invested in each security in the index Changes in the index thus represent changes in the value of the portfolio. Pri weighted indices reflect the average price of the securities in the index and Chang: in the index represent the average price change of the securities in the index. The Dow—Jones and the Major Market Index of the American Stock Exchange (MMI) a. both of the price weighted form. The FT 30 is a geometric average equally weight index. Only the Major Market Index has a futures contract based upon it. Read more »

Posted: June 28th, 2008 under Commodities Futures, Foreign Exchange Futures, Future Management, Futures Contracts, Futures Trading System, Managed Futures, Short Futures, Stock Futures, investment.
Comments: 6

The dramatic growth of equity index futures has been accompanied by the substantial growth of equity index options. These options come in three forms:

1. Options on the spot index itself such as the contract traded in the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange — like the futures, these options are settled in cash, rather than by delivery of the underlying securities. Sometimes both European and American options are traded on the same index.
2. Options on the index futures are American options that call for delivery of an equity index futures contract at expiry.

Read more »

Posted: June 26th, 2008 under Foreign Exchange Futures, Futures Contracts, Futures Index, Futures Market, Futures Options, Stock Market Futures, Swap Futures.
Comments: 6

This section explains two of the many uses of options that rely upon the ability of the option buyer to abandon the option at no extra cost. The first is the purchase of options to insure against a fall in the value of a currency. The second is the hedging of the currency risk in a foreign currency tender.

Purchasing options as a form of insurance

If a US investment manager has strong expectations of a rise in the value of Sterling but wishes to insure against being totally wrong, slightly out-of-the money puts will provide the required insurance. Read more »

Posted: June 21st, 2008 under Commodities Futures, Equity Futures, Foreign Exchange Futures, Future Fund, Future Investing, Futures Options, Futures Prices, Futures Spreads, Futures Trading System, Managed Futures, Stock Futures, Stock Market Futures.
Comments: 5

Average rate currency options are based upon the average exchange rate of the underlying currency as distinct from the exchange rate on a single date — the expiry date.

The advantage of an average rate option is that the volatility of a moving average of a variable is less than the volatility of individual observations of that same variable. With daily observations, and with the volatility levels seen in the currency markets, the volatility of the moving average is in the order of 60% of that of the raw observations. Consequently, the price of an average rate option with a given exercise price will be less than an otherwise identical standard European currency option. Read more »

Posted: June 21st, 2008 under Equity Futures, Future Market Trends, Futures Market, Futures Options, Futures Spreads, S&P Futures, Stock Market Futures, Swap Futures, investment.
Comments: 5

The valuation of interest rate options is currently the most contested area of option- pricing theory. The problem stems from the fact that although there is a reasonable consensus about the nature of the stochastic process of share prices, equity indices and currencies, the movements in interest rates and interest rate dependent instruments are not fully understood and full agreement on the underlying process has yet to be reached.

The stochastic process of interest rates, and therefore the prices of interest rate dependent claims, has proved to be very difficult to model for a number of reasons. Read more »

Posted: June 17th, 2008 under Equity Futures, Future Broker, Futures Contracts, Futures Quotes, Managed Futures, Stock Market Futures, Swap Futures.
Comments: 4

Term structure based option-pricing models

Term structure models of pricing contingent claims have followed one of two approaches. One approach followed by Cox, Ingersoll and Ross (1985) actually model the expected returns from movements in the term structure in order to price the contingent claims. In effect, the term structure becomes endogenous to the pricing of the contingent claim.

The second approach followed by Ho and Lee (1986), Heath, Jarrow and Morton (1989), Black, Derman and Toy (1990) and Hull and White (1990) utilizes the volatilities of the various sectors of the term structure to derive a probability distribution of an arbitrage-free binomial, trinomial or multinomial lattice of the term structure. From this lattice, contingent claims are priced. These models all have one thing in common: they allow for the whole-term structure to be stochastic instead of the price of a single underlying instrument or a single interest rate. The whole-term structure is represented at each node of the binomial, trinomial or even multinomiaf lattice. Read more »

Posted: June 15th, 2008 under Currency Futures, Future Fund, Future Management, Future Trading, Futures Index, Futures Market, Futures Prices, Futures Spreads, Futures Trader, Futures Trading System, Managed Futures, S&P Futures, Stock Futures, investment.
Comments: 3

Bonds with equity warrants attached

Recently it has been popular among Japanese corporations to issue eurobonds with equity warrants attached. Their popularity has stemmed partly from the strength of the Tokyo stock market, the warrants giving an equity kicker to bond investors.

These warrants are usually detached from the bonds after issue, and traded separately. Bonds with warrants attached are different from convertible bonds because the warrants are long-term options which when exercised require new cash, not existing bonds, to be exchanged for the new equity. At the time of issue, the bonds constitute a portfolio consisting of one bond and one long-term option on the equity of the issuer. After the time of issue, and when the warrants have been stripped, the bonds are valued as straight bonds. Read more »

Posted: June 15th, 2008 under Future Trading, Futures Options, Futures Quotes, Stock Market Futures, Swap Futures, investment.
Comments: 4

However, this theory of the development of the swaps market assumes that the financial markets remain informationally inefficient and that the benefits of comparative advantage are not arbitraged away. There is no doubt that in the early days of the interest rate and currency swaps markets it was possible to locate such inefficiencies that resulted in generous benefits to both parties, but in the years since the market’s inception the benefits have to some extent been reduced by arbitrage, yet the market still grows dramatically.

Thus there must be some other reason, or reasons, for the existence of the swaps market as the comparative advantage theory assumes that some markets persistently underprice credit risk relative to other markets. Three alternative reasons for the market’s existence can be postulated. Read more »

Posted: June 14th, 2008 under Currency Futures, Foreign Exchange Futures, Future Exchange, Future Investing, Future Management, Future Trading, Interest Rate Futures, Managed Futures, Stock Futures, Stock Market Futures, Swap Futures.
Comments: 4

Direct Participation Programs

The next level up in size and complexity is direct participation programs, or DPPs. You may think of them as tax shelters or limited partnerships (LPs). They are constructed to pass through all of their income, gains, losses, and tax benefits to their owners. The partnership itself pays no taxes because the partners accept liability. Gas-oil exploration and real estate development are common LPs.

Unlike those big sisters, the commodity trading limited partnership is not a tax shelter. It is structured to provide limited liability to investors. The syndicator is the CTA or a CPO, and usually the general partner as well. These can be public or private. Private LPs are usually formed by a small group of wealthy investors, while public LPs attract large numbers of small ($2,000 to $5,000 minimum) investors. The latter requires a full-fledged prospectus and is more stringently watched by federal regulators. Both must be registered with the SEC. Read more »

Posted: March 2nd, 2008 under Corn Futures, Crude Oil Futures, Future Fund, Future Management, Future Trading, Futures, Futures Contracts, Futures Market, Futures Prices, Interest Rate Futures, Managed Futures, S&P Futures, Stock Market Futures, market.
Comments: 4

The principal marketing objective for CTAs, unless very large or very well- known, is to be included as a money manager within multi-manager funds. The most important element in the successful attainment of this objective is performance listing and it is incumbent on a CTA to spend a considerable part of the marketing effort in making sure that as many international services as possible carry his or her figures. The critical value of such services (such as Managed Account Reports, or LaPorte) is two-fold. First they are the key distributors of performance information and as such are followed by so-called `Hot Money’. Second they provide subscribers with an easy opportunity to make comparisons between CTAs. Read more »

Posted: February 16th, 2008 under Stock Futures.
Comments: 4