Financial Derivatives

Financial markets are, by nature, extremely volatile and hence the risk factor is an important concern for financial agents. To reduce this risk, the concept of derivatives comes into the picture.
Derivatives are products whose values are derived from one or more basic variables called bases. These bases can be underlying assets (for example forex, equity, hire-purchase agreement, HB Loan agreement etc), bases or reference rates.
The need for a derivatives market
The derivatives market performs a number of economic functions:
1. They help in transferring risks from risk averse people to risk oriented people
2. They help in the discovery of future as well as current prices
3. They catalyze entrepreneurial activity
4. They increase the volume traded in markets because of participation of risk averse people in greater numbers
5. They increase savings and investment in the long run
The players in Derivatives markets:
• Hedgers use futures or options markets to reduce or eliminate the risk associated with price of an asset.
• Speculators use futures and options contracts to get extra leverage in betting on future movements in the price of an asset. They can increase both the potential gains and potential losses by usage of derivatives in a speculative venture.
• Arbitrageurs are in business to take advantage of a discrepancy between prices in two different markets. If, for example, they see the futures price of an asset getting out of line with the cash price, they will take offsetting positions in the two markets to lock in a profit.
Types of Derivatives:
Forwards: A forward contract is a customized contract between two entities, where settlement takes place on a specific date in the future at today’s pre-agreed price.
Futures: A futures contract is an agreement between two parties to buy or sell an asset at a certain time in the future at a certain price. Futures contracts are special types of forward contracts in the sense that the former are standardized exchange-traded contracts
Options: Options are of two types - calls and puts. Calls give the buyer the right but not the obligation to buy a given quantity of the underlying asset, at a given price on or before a given future date. Puts give the buyer the right, but not the obligation to sell a given quantity of the underlying asset at a given price on or before a given date.
Warrants: Options generally have lives of upto one year, the majority of options traded on options exchanges having a maximum maturity of nine months. Longer-dated options are called warrants and are generally traded over-the-counter.
LEAPS: The acronym LEAPS means Long-Term Equity Anticipation Securities. These are options having a maturity of upto three years.
Baskets: Basket options are options on portfolios of underlying assets. The underlying asset is usually a moving average or a basket of assets. Equity index options are a form of basket options.
Swaps: Swaps are private agreements between two parties to exchange cash flows in the future according to a prearranged formula. They can be regarded as portfolios of forward contracts. The two commonly used swaps are :
• Interest rate swaps: These entail swapping only the interest related cash flows between the parties in the same currency.
• Currency swaps: These entail swapping both principal and interest between the parties, with the cashflows in one direction being in a different currency than those in the opposite direction.
Swaptions: Swaptions are options to buy or sell a swap that will become operative at the expiry of the options. Thus a swaption is an option on a forward swap. Rather than have calls and puts, the swaptions market has receiver swaptions and payer swaptions. A receiver swaption is an option to receive fixed and pay floating. A payer swaption is an option to pay fixed and receive floating.