Futures contract

About: Futures contract is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 22406 publications have been published within this topic receiving 420340 citations.

Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives

Abstract: Contents: Introduction. Futures Markets and the Use of Futures for Hedging. Forward and Futures Prices. Interest Rate Futures. Swaps. Options Markets. Properties of Stock Option Prices. Trading Strategies Involving Options. Introduction to Binomial Trees. Model of the Behavior of Stock Prices. The Black-Scholes Analysis. Options on Stock Indices, Currencies, and Futures Contracts. General Approach to Pricing Derivatives. The Management of Market Risk. Numerical Procedures. Interest Rate Derivatives and the Use of Black's Model. Interest Rate Derivatives and Models of the Yield Curve. Exotic Options. Alternatives to Black-Scholes for Option Pricing. Credit Risk and Regulatory Capital. Review of Key Concepts.

The Limits of Arbitrage

Abstract: Textbook arbitrage in financial markets requires no capital and entails no risk. In reality, almost all arbitrage requires capital, and is typically risky. Moreover, professional arbitrage is conducted by a relatively small number of highly specialized investors using other people's capital. Such professional arbitrage has a number of interesting implications for security pricing, including the possibility that arbitrage becomes ineffective in extreme circumstances, when prices diverge far from fundamental values. The model also suggests where anomalies in financial markets are likely to appear, and why arbitrage fails to eliminate them. ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL concepts in finance is arbitrage, defined as "the simultaneous purchase and sale of the same, or essentially similar, security in two different markets for advantageously different prices" (Sharpe and Alexander (1990)). Theoretically speaking, such arbitrage requires no capital and entails no risk. When an arbitrageur buys a cheaper security and sells a more expensive one, his net future cash flows are zero for sure, and he gets his profits up front. Arbitrage plays a critical role in the analysis of securities markets, because its effect is to bring prices to fundamental values and to keep markets efficient. For this reason, it is extremely important to understand how well this textbook description of arbitrage approximates reality. This article argues that the textbook description does not describe realistic arbitrage trades, and, moreover, the discrepancies become particularly important when arbitrageurs manage other people's money. Even the simplest realistic arbitrages are more complex than the textbook definition suggests. Consider the simple case of two Bund futures contracts to deliver DM250,000 in face value of German bonds at time T, one traded in London on LIFFE and the other in Frankfurt on DTB. Suppose for the moment, counter factually, that these contracts are exactly the same. Suppose finally that at some point in time t the first contract sells for DM240,000 and the second for DM245,000. An arbitrageur in this situation would sell a futures contract in Frankfurt and buy one in London, recognizing that at time T he is perfectly hedged. To do so, at time t, he would have to put up some good faith money, namely DM3,000 in London and DM3,500 in Frankfurt, leading to a

A subordinated stochastic process model with finite variance for speculative prices

Abstract: S. Bochner's concept of a subordinate stochastic process is proposed as a model for speculative price series. A general class of finite-variance distributions for price changes is described, and a member of this class, the lognormal-normal, is tested against previously proposed distributions for speculative price differences. It is shown with both discrete Bayes' tests and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests that finite-variance distributions subordinate to the normal fit cotton futures price data better than members of the stable family.

An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets

Abstract: In An Engine, Not a Camera, Donald MacKenzie argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental ways. These new, Nobel Prize-winning theories, based on elegant mathematical models of markets, were not simply external analyses but intrinsic parts of economic processes. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, MacKenzie says that economic models are an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts. More than that, the emergence of an authoritative theory of financial markets altered those markets fundamentally. For example, in 1970, there was almost no trading in financial derivatives such as "futures." By June of 2004, derivatives contracts totaling $273 trillion were outstanding worldwide. MacKenzie suggests that this growth could never have happened without the development of theories that gave derivatives legitimacy and explained their complexities. MacKenzie examines the role played by finance theory in the two most serious crises to hit the world's financial markets in recent years: the stock market crash of 1987 and the market turmoil that engulfed the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. He also looks at finance theory that is somewhat beyond the mainstream -- chaos theorist Benoit Mandelbrot's model of "wild" randomness. MacKenzie's pioneering work in the social studies of finance will interest anyone who wants to understand how America's financial markets have grown into their current form.