{"id":267489,"date":"2025-01-13T18:46:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T18:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imarticus.org\/blog\/?p=267489"},"modified":"2025-01-13T18:46:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T18:46:13","slug":"a-beginners-guide-to-derivative-securities-and-their-uses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imarticus.org\/blog\/a-beginners-guide-to-derivative-securities-and-their-uses\/","title":{"rendered":"A Beginner's Guide to Derivative Securities and Their Uses"},"content":{"rendered":"
Derivative securities are financial instruments whose value derives from an underlying asset such as a stock, a bond, interest rates, a commodity, an index, or even a basket of cryptocurrencies such as spot ether ETFs. These derivatives can be complex financial instruments that subject novice users to increased risk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Often used primarily for three purposes:<\/span><\/p>\n Many derivative instruments include:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Derivative securities are widely used and vary widely in risk, but on the whole, they represent a sound way for a seasoned trader to take on the financial markets.<\/span><\/p>\n Definition for derivatives:<\/span><\/p>\n Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956 defines a derivative as under:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDerivative\u201d includes\u2014<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n (A)<\/i><\/b> a security derived from a debt instrument, share, loan, whether secured or unsecured, risk instrument or contract for differences or any other form of security,<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n (B)<\/i><\/b> a contract which derives its value from the prices, or index of prices, of underlying securities.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n (Source: <\/span><\/i>https:\/\/www.indianemployees.com\/acts-rules\/details\/securities-contracts-regulation-act-1956<\/span><\/i>)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n There are 5 main types of derivative financial instruments<\/span><\/p>\n Options are contracts given to their owners to either buy or sell a security for a particular price either on or before a given date. While a put option allows its owners the right to sell something whereas the call option gives the owners the right to buy something.<\/span><\/p>\n Premium-\u00a0 what an option buyer pays to the option seller for the option contract. Moreover, this premium depends on factors such as:<\/span><\/p>\n Speaking of standardised options, these options are traded through public exchanges like NYSE and Nasdaq, or they can be exchanged privately between parties without the intervention of an exchange in the over-the-counter (OTC) market.<\/span><\/p>\n Well, honestly, if we say different investors use different options for different purposes, they mostly use hedge positions or speculate on future price movements of various securities.<\/span><\/p>\n A futures contract lets the buyer acquire and the seller t sell a specific quantity of a particular security<\/span> - Corn<\/span><\/p>\n - Crude oil<\/span><\/p>\n At a given price, usually the prevailing market price of the security on a specific date is stated in the future. <\/span> Well, one could easily say that the buyer and seller can \"lock in\" the current price of an asset for a date in the future when purchasing a future contract.<\/span><\/p>\n For instance, if an investor feels that oil prices will increase in the next 6 months, he can go ahead and buy a future contract. This will bind him to purchase X number of barrels of crude at today's market price even 6 months from now. Als,o if\u00a0 in case the price of oil does increase, they can either sell the contract to another buyer at a higher premium or wait till the contract's expiry date and take possession of the barrels at the now discounted price.<\/span><\/p>\n While futures most often deal with commodities but the contracts also exist for:<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, futures have standardised terms and trade on public exchanges.<\/span><\/p>\n A forward contract is the same as a future in the fact that it's a type of agreement where two parties agree to purchase\/ sell a particular asset on a specific date for a given price. Forward differs from futures, though; the terms of every such contract are not standardised as the parties involved in negotiating to determine them. Thus, forward contracts are only traded over the counter market and not through the public exchanges.<\/span><\/p>\n Secondly, while futures contracts settle daily and retail traders may buy and resell without taking delivery of the physical commodity up to expiration, forward contracts settle only when delivery occurs. That means a forward contract buyer needs to take delivery of the asset in question, for example, 10,000 pounds of corn. That is why the forward contracts are preferred mostly by the actual producers as well as users of the physical assets.<\/span><\/p>\n A swap is a customised derivative contract by which two parties agree to exchange the payments or cash flows from two assets at a predetermined frequency for an agreed period of time. Such contracts are negotiated privately\u2014generally between businesses and\/or institutional investors rather than individual investors\u2014through the over-the-counter market.<\/span><\/p>\n One payment or cash flow is usually fixed, while the other varies depending on some factor\u2014examples include interest rates, currency exchange rates, stock index values, and commodity prices. The 2 most popular types of swap contracts are: <\/span> Warrants are similar to options, which give the right to buy or sell a security like a stock on or before a specific date called the expiration date at a specific strike price. In contrast, however, with options contracts, the company itself issues stock warrants and represents new shares; thus, if an investor exercises one, the shares they buy from the company add to the company's total outstanding shares, hence diluting the value of all existing shares. The terms of warrants also often run considerably longer than standard options, with many maturing five or even ten years from the date they are originally issued. In addition, contracts which are customised and not standardised are traded over the counter rather than on public exchanges.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n With the IIM Indore <\/span>CFO course<\/span><\/a>, you can become a CFO sooner than you think and gain new-age financial skills. Check out the video:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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Types of derivative securities<\/b><\/h2>\n
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\n<\/span> e.g.<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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\n<\/span>- Fixed-vs-variable interest rate swaps and <\/span>
\n<\/span>- currency swaps<\/span>
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How do derivatives work?\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
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