# Tag Info

17

I like to present to you a slightly different approach: Historically, only one single yield curve was derived from different instruments, such as OIS, deposit rates, or swap rates. However, market practice nowadays is to derive multiple swap curves, optimally one for each rate tenor. This idea goes against the idea of one fully-consistent zero coupon curve, ...

10

Garabedian, Typically, the "swap curve" refers to an x-y chart of par swap rates plotted against their time to maturity. This is typically called the "par swap curve." Your second question, "how it relates to the zero curve," is very complex in the post-crisis world. I think it's helpful to start the discussion with a government bond yield curve to ...

8

Firstly, understand that the 1y Libor is not useful here; the swap is 2 6-month periods, which will each fix on 6m Libor. These days, the *ibor fixings at different tenors are essentially separate, and 0x6 & 6x12 do not compound up to 0x12. So we have 6m fixing at 0.63006%, and a 1y swap at 0.645% mid. To do this properly, we would need a discounting ...

7

Var and vol swaps are very similar products, with the leverage (convexity) being the biggest theoretical difference, yes. In the actual market however they are very different. After the 2008 debacle var swaps in the single stock space are not too common, whereas single stock vol swaps are regularly quoted. One interesting perspective is trading one versus ...

7

There are two parts to your question and I'd like to answer them separately. Curve Construction On a daily basis, you can observe prices on a large variety of instruments, whose prices are driven by news and trading flows. Based on market prices of these instruments, there are a number of ways to create discount curves/forward curves. At a very high level ...

7

I guess it depends on what they're referring to... The traditional swap curve (LIBOR-based) is certainly not risk free, as evidenced by the experience of the financial crisis and the resulting migration to OIS discounting. The OIS curve (which is a kind of swap curve...) is now the standard risk-free curve. The Treasury yield curve is not favored, because ...

6

(In addition to the answers of Freddy and Phil H): With "modern" multi-curve setups: You have to distinguish between discount curves (which describe todays value of the a future fixed payoff (e.g. a zero coupon bond)) and forward curve, which describe the expectation (in a specific sense) of future interest rate fixings. Swaps pay LIBOR rates and are ...

6

First of all it is not clear what exactly you mean by right number, you definitely do not adjust forward swap rate. You probably mean adjusting euro dollar futures contract rates so that you can later use these values to fit the swap/forward libor curve. Reason for adjustment is simple. If you are short ED futures and rates go higher futures price drops ...

5

The short answer is that Libor swap rates come from the market. They represent a series of cashflows in the future whose value is determined by the fixing, which the market participants have their own valuations of. Since the actual cash flows are now discounted using a separate funding curve, the swap prices embed both a prediction of future fixings and a ...

5

To elaborate on Freddy's answer: These days you need to maintain a separate funding (usually OIS) curve to your Libor* type curves. Once you have this discounting curve, you can calculate from Libor instrument market data what the market estimations of that Libor are: 3m instruments like Interest Rate Futures, IRS with a 3m float leg, 3m FRAs can be used to ...

5

Derman et al has a long note on this from 1999. Variance swaps are actually the more natural choice. It has nothing to do with leverage. From the linked article: Although options market participants talk of volatility, it is variance, or volatility squared, that has more fundamental theoretical significance. This is so because the correct way to ...

5

As you know both var swap & vol swap are traded on vol. The difference comes in convexity. Although variance swap payoffs are linear with variance they are convex with volatility. Because of the convexity, a variance swap will always outperform a contract linear in volatility of the same strike. This convexity is the reason that variance swaps strikes ...

5

Assume you have an USD-EUR Cross Currency Swap (3M-FloatUSD+SpreadUSD vs 3M-FloatEUR+SpreadEUR) (spread on USD side is usually zero), collateralized by USD-OIS (Fed Fund) I assume you know the USD-OIS discount curve, then you know the discount curve for USD cash flows. I further assume that you know the USD-3M forwards collateralized w.r.t. USD-OIS (from ...

5

I have a little more informations, so let me share it with you. Even though I think that the frameworks I presented in my question are both corrects (i.e. aribtrage free), it happens to be the case that the market seems to have more "structure". Here is a methodology that allows to retreive market quotes and which is the same as BBG (which is the best ...

5

There are several ways to understand how to price a swap. One way is to see it as a sum of Forward Rate Agreements that you can price individually. This is more or less what Probilitator explained. A simpler way imho is this: if you are receiver of floatting leg the value of the swap at $t\leq T_0$ $$Swap_t = Leg_{Float,t} - Leg_{Fixed,t}$$ I think ...

5

Why does USD based security valuation have to give a thing about what London Banks think? Your question is based on false premises: the USD Libor is not determined by polling London based banks as you seem to believe, but banks on the London money market. The difference is important, as there are—of course—banks which are not based in London and active ...

5

It is incorrect to use 1m euribor or O/N euribor in a 6m Euribor forward curve. You should only use instruments based on 6M euribor, such as 1x7 FRA, 6x12 FRA or swaps v 6m Euribor, as you have done in your second example. The actual 6m euribor fixing itself can be thought of as a 0x6 FRA out of spot. Before the financial crisis basis between different ...

4

CMS adjustments in single curve context can be roughly explained if you consider a CMS swaplet by the fact that there is a single payment at the CMS rate at a single date and not on the whole strip of the underlying CMS tenor schedule. So if you are trying to hedge a CMS swaplet with the corresponding swap of CMS tenor length (with correct naïve nominal ...

4

The risk implied by Euribor or EONIA (or their swaps) is for lending to another prime rated bank. These rate indexes represent where contributor banks are offering funds to each other in the interbank market. Contributing banks are mostly rated P-1 (Moody’s) or A-1 (S&P). You wouldn’t use these rates for govt discount curves because the risk doesn’t ...

4

A swap does not require a model because its price can be derived from the yield curve without any assumptions about how the yield curve may move in the future. The PFE however is an indication of by how much the swap's mark-to-market may move between now and a moment in the future. It is of course influenced by how volatile rates are. The more volatile ...

4

Discounting in "post-crunch finance" depends on collateral agreements, e.g. CSA. For fully collateralized transactions you discount off the curve corresponding to the rate you receive on collateral. For non-collateralized or partially collateralized transactions it's more tricky and it's not something I can explain in a short answer, have a look on the ...

4

To explain it I will need some preliminaries. A forward starting payer swap (or receiver swap of the floating leg) is an instrument where the holder pays fixed and receives floating at some predetermined points in time in the future. (The payment/exhange dates of fixed and floating could differ - e.g. the fixed leg is paid annualy and the floating is paid ...

4

@Arrigo's answers are quite good; I'll try to beef up his points a bit more. Yield curves should be constructed using instruments of similar credit risks. If you're building a US Treasury yield curve, then you should use Treasury bills, notes, and bonds (although lots of people actually exclude Treasury bills because of market segmentation concerns). On ...

4

There is no contradiction. If the strike of the floor and cap are both equal to the swap rate, and all accrual/payment frequencies, etc. are the same, then put-call partiy implies $$C_{t}-F_{t}=S_{t},$$ where $C_{t},F_{t},S_{t}$ are the values of the cap, floor and swap instruments at time $t$. Since the (theoretical Black-Scholes) volatility is ...

3

The two are not equivalent, because of the cross-currency basis spread (CCBS), which became a risk factor in itself sice 2007, and does depend on term. This practically leeds to a difference in your constantly-assumed notionals (the notional is not constant anymore). What it happens is that you assume having a constant notional cross-currency swap that ...

3

Not sure I understand your question. If I have a fixed stream of payments it has some value $V_{fixed}$ I can always solve for a spread to LIBOR by simply adding the spread $S$ to my calculated stream of LIBOR. That is the value of the LIBOR + spread leg is $$V_{LIBOR}(S) = \sum_{n=1}^{N} D(t_{n}) \alpha(t_{n-1},t_{n}) [L(t_{n-1},t_{n}) + S]$$ where ...

3

You should take a look at the example from Hull's book. Assume that the 6-month, 12-month, 18-month zero rates are 4%, 4.5%, and 4.8%, respectively. Suppose we know that the 2-year swap rate is 5%, which implies that a bond with a semiannual coupon of 5% per annum sells for par: 2.5 e^{-0.04 \bullet 0.5} + 2.5 e^{-0.045 \bullet 1.0} + 2.5 e^{-0.048 ...

3

CDS provides protection against default. So when a firm is unable to pay the coupon (and there are few more scenarios where firms default) CDS is triggered. After default the liability holders have first claim on the firm's assets. If the assets are less than loan (say 60% of loan amount) then recovery can only be 60%. if these are risky assets and there ...

3

The essence of discounting is that now is less risky than later. So a contract to deliver £1 in 1 year is more risky than one to deliver £1 tomorrow, (the counterparty could suffer a credit event) so it is worth less. Discount factors multiply; if I know that £1 at 1y is worth £0.98 today, and £1 at 2y is worth £0.98 at 1y (i.e. equal rates for both ...

3

Swaps are used for hedging purposes against directional rates movements (insurance companies hold loads of fixed income instruments and are thus hugely exposed to overall rate levels, depending on holding period and portfolio turnover) and to insure against inflation (insurance firms receive fixed premium payments), to target portfolio duration This ...

Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible