Credit Default Swaps - Pricing, Valuation and Investment Applications


Book Description

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 67%, University of Westminster (Westminster Business School), course: Financial Derivatives, language: English, abstract: "A credit default swap (CDS) is a bilateral agreement designed explicitly to shift credit risk between two parties. In a CDS, one party (protection buyer) pays a periodic fee to another party (protection seller) in return for compensation for default (or similar credit event) by a reference entity". Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are by far the most popular credit derivatives and have proven to be the most successful financial innovation. The structure of CDS is somewhat similar to the insurance policy. The market of CDS has heavily expanded and is traded in Over-The-Counter (OTC) market. This essay will briefly address the structure and the market of CDS, outlining its common products usage by some large institutions. Following the review of financial structure and pricing of CDS. And finally, this essay will also evaluate the risk management and investment applications of such products.




Credit Default Swaps


Book Description

Credit Default Swaps: A Survey is the most comprehensive review of all major research domains involving credit default swaps (CDS). CDS have been growing in importance in the global financial markets. However, their role has been hotly debated, in industry and academia, particularly since the credit crisis of 2007-2009. The authors review the extant literature on CDS that has accumulated over the past two decades and divide the survey into seven topics after providing a broad overview in the introduction. The second section traces the historical development of CDS markets and provides an introduction to CDS contract definitions and conventions. The third section discusses the pricing of CDS, from the perspective of no-arbitrage principles, structural, and reduced-form credit risk models. It also summarizes the literature on the determinants of CDS spreads, with a focus on the role of fundamental credit risk factors, liquidity and counterparty risk. The fourth section discusses how the development of the CDS market has affected the characteristics of the bond and equity markets, with an emphasis on market efficiency, price discovery, information flow, and liquidity. Attention is also paid to the CDS-bond basis, the wedge between the pricing of the CDS and its reference bond, and the mispricing between the CDS and the equity market. The fifth section examines the effect of CDS trading on firms' credit and bankruptcy risk, and how it affects corporate financial policy, including bond issuance, capital structure, liquidity management, and corporate governance. The sixth section analyzes how CDS impact the economic incentives of financial intermediaries. The seventh section reviews the growing literature on sovereign CDS and highlights the major differences between the sovereign and corporate CDS markets. The eighth section discusses CDS indices, especially the role of synthetic CDS index products backed by residential mortgage-backed securities during the financial crisis. The authors close with our suggestions for promising future research directions on CDS contracts and markets.




Trading the Fixed Income, Inflation and Credit Markets


Book Description

Trading the Fixed Income, Inflation and Credit Markets is a comprehensive guide to the most popular strategies that are used in the wholesale financial markets, answering the question: what is the optimal way to express a view on expected market movements? This relatively unique approach to relative value highlights the pricing links between the different products and how these relationships can be used as the basis for a number of trading strategies. The book begins by looking at the main derivative products and their pricing interrelationships. It shows that within any asset class there are mathematical relationships that tie together four key building blocks: cash products, forwards/futures, swaps and options. The nature of these interrelationships means that there may be a variety of different ways in which a particular strategy can be expressed. It then moves on to relative value within a fixed income context and looks at strategies that build on the pricing relationships between products as well as those that focus on how to identify the optimal way to express a view on the movement of the yield curve. It concludes by taking the main themes of relative value and showing how they can be applied within other asset classes. Although the main focus is fixed income the book does cover multiple asset classes including credit and inflation. Written from a practitioner's perspective, the book illustrates how the products are used by including many worked examples and a number of screenshots to ensure that the content is as practical and applied as possible.




Derivative Securities


Book Description

Accessible and intuitive, Derivative Securities offers advanced undergraduates, MBA students, and executives the theory and practical tools needed to price and hedge derivatives in the professional marketplace. Written by two of the foremost derivative pricing experts in the world, this text makes the theory and practice of pricing and hedging derivative securities accessible without watering down the material. Presentation is complete yet avoids advanced mathematics. Equal coverage is given to options pricing theory and futures pricing theory, and cutting-edge derivatives research is incorporated throughout. Derivatives pricing software is bound with each text.




Trading and Pricing Financial Derivatives


Book Description

Trading and Pricing Financial Derivatives is an introduction to the world of futures, options, and swaps. Investors who are interested in deepening their knowledge of derivatives of all kinds will find this book to be an invaluable resource. The book is also useful in a very applied course on derivative trading. The authors delve into the history of options pricing; simple strategies of options trading; binomial tree valuation; Black-Scholes option valuation; option sensitivities; risk management and interest rate swaps in this immensely informative yet easy to comprehend work. Using their vast working experience in the financial markets at international investment banks and hedge funds since the late 1990s and teaching derivatives and investment courses at the Master's level, Patrick Boyle and Jesse McDougall put forth their knowledge and expertise in clearly explained concepts. This book does not presuppose advanced mathematical knowledge, though it is presented for completeness for those that may benefit from it, and is designed for a general audience, suitable for beginners through to those with intermediate knowledge of the subject.




Securities Valuation


Book Description

"This textbook for introductory and intermediate graduate and undergraduate courses in finance and mathematical finance explains equity government securities, equity and bond options, corporate bonds, mortgage-backed securities, CMOS, and other securities. It emphasizes the thinking process, and finance as a skill in solving practical problems. Part of a series of finance textbooks, each designed for one semester." -- Publisher.




Fixed-Income Securities and Derivatives Handbook


Book Description

The definitive guide to fixed-come securities-revised to reflect today's dynamic financial environment The Second Edition of the Fixed-Income Securities and Derivatives Handbook offers a completely updated and revised look at an important area of today's financial world. In addition to providing an accessible description of the main elements of the debt market, concentrating on the instruments used and their applications, this edition takes into account the effect of the recent financial crisis on fixed income securities and derivatives. As timely as it is timeless, the Second Edition of the Fixed-Income Securities and Derivatives Handbook includes a wealth of new material on such topics as covered and convertible bonds, swaps, synthetic securitization, and bond portfolio management, as well as discussions regarding new regulatory twists and the evolving derivatives market. Offers a more detailed look at the basic principles of securitization and an updated chapter on collateralized debt obligations Covers bond mathematics, pricing and yield analytics, and term structure models Includes a new chapter on credit analysis and the different metrics used to measure bond-relative value Contains illustrative case studies and real-world examples of the topics touched upon throughout the book Written in a straightforward and accessible style, Moorad Choudhry's new book offers the ideal mix of practical tips and academic theory within this important field.




Capital Market Instruments


Book Description

Revised and updated guide to some of the most important issues in the capital markets today, with an emphasis on fixed-income instruments. Fundamental concepts in equity market analysis, foreign exchange and money markets are also covered to provide a comprehensive overview. Analysis and valuation techniques are given for practical application.




The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report


Book Description

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.




Completing the Market: Generating Shadow CDS Spreads by Machine Learning


Book Description

We compared the predictive performance of a series of machine learning and traditional methods for monthly CDS spreads, using firms’ accounting-based, market-based and macroeconomics variables for a time period of 2006 to 2016. We find that ensemble machine learning methods (Bagging, Gradient Boosting and Random Forest) strongly outperform other estimators, and Bagging particularly stands out in terms of accuracy. Traditional credit risk models using OLS techniques have the lowest out-of-sample prediction accuracy. The results suggest that the non-linear machine learning methods, especially the ensemble methods, add considerable value to existent credit risk prediction accuracy and enable CDS shadow pricing for companies missing those securities.