22
votes
Accepted
Negative price of oil
The negative price that was all over the news was the front contract for WTI (West Texas Intermediate) futures that went to -40 and had a last trade date of 21.04.2020, so today.
This movement was ...
- 5,835
13
votes
Accepted
Convexity Adjustment for Futures
We assume that, under the probability measure $Q$,
\begin{align*}
dS_t &= S_t\big(r_t dt + \sigma dW_s(t)\big),\\
dr_t &= -k\, r_t dt + \alpha dW_r(t),\tag{1}
\end{align*}
where $d\langle W_s(...
- 21.2k
12
votes
Accepted
Why are FRA/futures convexity adjustments necessary?
This has been posted a few times now, so I will invest the time on a full response.
FRA / Futures convexity has nothing to do with profits/losses being immediately recognised on the future through ...
- 11.2k
11
votes
Accepted
Bond ETF vs Bond Future for longer term holding
This is a surprisingly complicated question that encompasses many moving parts. Without knowing exactly what your objectives are, it's a bit difficult to offer concrete advice, so I'll provide some ...
- 11.8k
11
votes
Accepted
How to make a trading universe of liquid futures contracts
Systematically finding most liquid futures instruments
Can we put together a better list than the academic articles?
Yes! The lists in existing publications [1, 2] are great, but fall slightly short ...
- 2,657
10
votes
Accepted
Large trend-followers: why use futures rather than ETFs?
Leverage: futures usually require much lower margin than their ETF counterparts. For example /ES (E-mini S&P 500 futures) requires about \$4K overnight maintenance margin per contract (may vary by ...
- 124
10
votes
Price of bond future, given a specific interest rate?
Treasury bond futures are surprisingly complicated - this is an attempt at a short explanation, it will obviously gloss over some details, but hopefully gives you a flavour of how they are priced.
...
- 5,931
10
votes
Accepted
Determine the carry of a treasury bond futures contract?
Based on the your comments, I believe the issue lies with what you consider to be "carry." The reality is that there's no consensus. So let's take mini steps.
We'll start with what rates guys ...
- 11.8k
10
votes
Accepted
When would open interest equal trading volume?
Futures are in "zero net supply", or "for every long there is a short", which means that at any time there are investors who are long a certain number of contracts and other investors who are short an ...
- 9,402
10
votes
Setting the record straight on contango and backwardation in futures markets
Both charts are right in their own way.
The second chart shows the shape of the Curve of Futures Prices at a point in time (for ex: today at 10am). In Contango far away futures contracts are priced ...
- 11.6k
9
votes
Accepted
How is this probability (45%) of Fed raising rates 3 times in 2017 calculated from Fed Funds market?
Using the following data from 12/18/16:
Jan 2017 Fed funds futures =9936,
Jan 2018 Fed Funds futures =9877
implies that 99.36-98.77 = 59bp of hikes are built in for 2017.
IF you assume the only two ...
- 17.5k
9
votes
Accepted
What is the appropriate benchmark for a Long/Short VIX futures strategy?
If your strategy truly has no directional bias, then the benchmark should be cash (ie whatever you would earn using the capital in your trading account and taking no risk).
- 5,931
8
votes
Accepted
Why not just be long VIX and wait for the next volatile period?
Put simply, VIX is a spot index (fair value to a variance swap on SPX of constant maturity) that you cannot own as a security. Market participants create futures for you to trade. Futures trade higher ...
- 171
7
votes
Accepted
How to trade interest rate futures calendar spread?
Trading bond futures calendar spread is actually a very involved exercise, with many moving parts. But first things first, recall that bond futures price is approximately:
$$ F = \text{spot price} - \...
- 11.8k
7
votes
Delta One Trading business
Delta one trading desks provide synthetic exposure to their clients.
OK, so what does that mean? Delta One desks give their clients exposure to a product (stock index, ETF, or even a single stock) ...
- 2,653
7
votes
Accepted
ICE futures settlement prices change with zero volume and zero OI
These contracts follow standard ICE procedures for calculating settlement prices, which can be found in section 2.4.6 of this document.
A high-level overview of the procedure is --
An 'anchor' expiry ...
- 5,931
6
votes
CME gold futures, do expiries follow any rule?
The rules are pretty straightforward. I keep this rulebook on my office computer as a reference but it can be found on the CME website in the NYMEX area I believe. Below is straight from the ...
- 4,358
6
votes
Accepted
Why are stock index futures not used to forecast how much the stock market will rise, given that interest rates futures are used for this purpose?
Interest rate futures enable you to build an interest rate projection curve which you can think of as representing the risk neutral expectation of rates in the future, therefore providing you with a "...
- 5,692
6
votes
Why are stock index futures not used to forecast how much the stock market will rise, given that interest rates futures are used for this purpose?
I would put it slightly differently. For Stock index futures , the 2019 contract has the same underlying stocks as the spot index. Therefore the futures price can be simply calculated as spot price ...
- 17.5k
6
votes
Accepted
What is the formula for calculating fair value of currency futures?
$$F = Spot \times e^{(\text{local interest rate} - \text{foreign interest rate}) \times T}$$
where $Spot$ = AUD per dollars.
$T$ is the time to maturity of the contract (in years). So for example ...
- 176
6
votes
Accepted
Group name for currencies, equities and other financial products
The most universal name that any "currency (pair)", "equities" or "futures" falls under is either a product or an instrument.
In some ways I prefer product because you can have 2 exchanges allowing ...
- 5,260
6
votes
What is the appropriate benchmark for a Long/Short VIX futures strategy?
You could compare it, over the historical period of interest, to 1000 randomly generated VIX strategies which are:
Flat on 60 Percent of days (randomly chosen days)
Long VIX futures on 20% of days
...
- 11.6k
6
votes
Questions on options cost of carry, and relationship to futures cost of carry
I think it's best if we go through the various terms that appear in your question and explain them one-by-one.
Derivative price: intuitively, a derivative price is what it costs to "create it&...
- 6,308
6
votes
Questions on options cost of carry, and relationship to futures cost of carry
Both answers already address the gist of the question. I decided to add (quite) some details because I think there is some confusion from the OP. It is not the future that has carry costs or benefits ...
- 9,359
5
votes
Why is the VIX futures market usually in a state of contango?
The fact VIX has a very large contango (right now a % carry of 10%/month) has to do with rational risk premium. The net supply of stocks is 1, so on net investors are long the stock market. They want ...
- 51
5
votes
Accepted
Is futures contracts data only reported for business days?
Usually end-of-day prices refer to settlement prices; they are not the last price at which the instrument was trading during that business day. Settlement prices are important because they are the ...
- 11.2k
5
votes
Why does buying future options require margin?
This page explains why you need a margin: http://www.cmegroup.com/education/a-primer-on-margining-styles-for-options.html
Improvements:
Futures options, as well as futures margins, are governed by ...
- 1,860
5
votes
why does index futures swing more than index?
The empirical relationship between the futures price $F$ and the spot price $S$ is
$$
F = S e^{b\tau}
$$
where $\tau$ is the time to expiry, and $b$ is the empirical basis, i.e. the number that ...
- 5,931
5
votes
Convergence of Spot and Futures prices
The trend of convergence is also due to arbitrageurs.
Prior to maturity, when the spot is higher than futures, arbitrageurs would short the underlying asset and long futures contracts. This in ...
- 173
5
votes
Accepted
How does one calculate the Libor future contract price?
The quoting convention must be explained somewhere in your book.
For Eurodollar futures, this convention is 100 - yield, 92 means the yield is 8% per annum, so for one quarter you need to divide this ...
- 2,908
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