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Fixed-income Relative-value Investing
Fixed-Income Relative-Value Investing (FI-RV) is a hedge fund investment strategy made popular by the failed hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. FI-RV Investors most commonly exploit interest-rate anomalies in the large, liquid markets of North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim. The financial instruments traded include government bonds, interest rate swaps and futures contracts. Investment Strategy Most FI-RV Investors focus on large, long-term mispricings in the global fixed-income markets, capturing relative-value anomalies via multi-product trades. Trades of interest include: Yield Curve Trade LIBOR yield curve using combinations of futures and swaps of varying maturities. Bond vs Bond Identify and trade bonds that are mispriced compared to other very similar bonds. LIBOR vs Bond Take advantage of anomalies in the spread between Bond and Libor Curves. Frequently, these above described anomalies occur when market participants are forced to make non-economic de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hedge Fund
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as short selling, leverage, and derivatives. Financial regulators generally restrict hedge fund marketing to institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and accredited investors. Hedge funds are considered alternative investments. Their ability to use leverage and more complex investment techniques distinguishes them from regulated investment funds available to the retail market, commonly known as mutual funds and ETFs. They are also considered distinct from private equity funds and other similar closed-end funds as hedge funds generally invest in relatively liquid assets and are usually open-ended. This means they typically allow investors to invest and withdraw capital periodically based on the fund's net asset value, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Peseta
The peseta (, ), * ca, pesseta, was the currency of Spain between 1868 and 2002. Along with the French franc, it was also a ''de facto'' currency used in Andorra (which had no national currency with legal tender). Etymology The name of the currency originally comes from ''peceta'', a Catalan diminutive form of the (Catalan) word ''peça'' (lit. ''piece'', i.e. a coin), not from the Spanish ''peso'' (lit. ''weight''). The word ''peseta'' has been known as early as 1737 to colloquially refer to the coin worth 2 ''reales provincial'' or of a peso. Coins denominated in "pesetas" were briefly issued in 1808 in Barcelona under French occupation; see Catalan peseta. Symbol Traditionally, there was never a single symbol or special character for the Spanish peseta. Common abbreviations were "Pta" (plural: "Pts), "Pt", and "Ptas". A common way of representing amounts of pesetas in print was using superior letters: "Pta" and "Pts". Common Spanish models of mechanical type ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arbitrage
In economics and finance, arbitrage (, ) is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets; striking a combination of matching deals to capitalise on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit after transaction costs. For example, an arbitrage opportunity is present when there is the possibility to instantaneously buy something for a low price and sell it for a higher price. In principle and in academic use, an arbitrage is risk-free; in common use, as in statistical arbitrage, it may refer to ''expected'' profit, though losses may occur, and in practice, there are always risks in arbitrage, some minor (such as fluctuation of prices decreasing prof ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volatility (finance)
In finance, volatility (usually denoted by ''σ'') is the degree of variation of a trading price series over time, usually measured by the standard deviation of logarithmic returns. Historic volatility measures a time series of past market prices. Implied volatility looks forward in time, being derived from the market price of a market-traded derivative (in particular, an option). Volatility terminology Volatility as described here refers to the actual volatility, more specifically: * actual current volatility of a financial instrument for a specified period (for example 30 days or 90 days), based on historical prices over the specified period with the last observation the most recent price. * actual historical volatility which refers to the volatility of a financial instrument over a specified period but with the last observation on a date in the past **near synonymous is realized volatility, the square root of the realized variance, in turn calculated using the sum of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Long Term Capital Management
Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM) was a highly-leveraged hedge fund. In 1998, it received a $3.6 billion bailout from a group of 14 banks, in a deal brokered and put together by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. LTCM was founded in 1994 by John Meriwether, the former vice-chairman and head of bond trading at Salomon Brothers. Members of LTCM's board of directors included Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, who three years later in 1997 shared the Nobel Prize in Economics for having developed the Black–Scholes model of financial dynamics.''A financial History of the United States Volume II: 1970–2001'', Jerry W. Markham, Chapter 5: "Bank Consolidation", M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2002 LTCM was initially successful, with annualized returns (after fees) of around 21% in its first year, 43% in its second year and 41% in its third year. However, in 1998 it lost $4.6 billion in less than four months due to a combination of high leverage and exposure to the 1997 Asian fina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relative Value (economics)
In finance, relative value is the attractiveness measured in terms of risk, liquidity, and return of one financial instrument relative to another, or for a given instrument, of one maturity relative to another. The concept arises in economics, business and investment. In hedge funds The use of relative value is a method of determining an asset's value that takes into account the value of similar assets. In contrast, absolute value looks only at an asset's intrinsic value and does not compare it to other assets. Calculations that are used to measure the relative value of stocks include the enterprise ratio and price-to-earnings ratio. Prices Prices of valued items undergo questionable fluctuations. For example, even though housing provides the same utility to the individual over time, and the housing stock is relatively constant or stable, the relative price of housing fluctuates. This holds even more so with stocks, oil and gold. This price volatility appears to occur in cycl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interest Rate Derivative
In finance, an interest rate derivative (IRD) is a derivative whose payments are determined through calculation techniques where the underlying benchmark product is an interest rate, or set of different interest rates. There are a multitude of different interest rate indices that can be used in this definition. IRDs are popular with all financial market participants given the need for almost any area of finance to either hedge or speculate on the movement of interest rates. Modeling of interest rate derivatives is usually done on a time-dependent multi-dimensional Lattice ("tree") or using specialized simulation models. Both are calibrated to the underlying risk drivers, usually domestic or foreign short rates and foreign exchange market rates, and incorporate delivery- and day count conventions. The Heath–Jarrow–Morton framework is often used instead of short rates. Types The most basic subclassification of interest rate derivatives (IRDs) is to define linear and non- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fed Funds Rate
In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions (banks and credit unions) lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight on an uncollateralized basis. Reserve balances are amounts held at the Federal Reserve to maintain depository institutions' reserve requirements. Institutions with surplus balances in their accounts lend those balances to institutions in need of larger balances. The federal funds rate is an important benchmark in financial markets. The effective federal funds rate (EFFR) is calculated as the effective median interest rate of overnight federal funds transactions during the previous business day. It is published daily by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The federal funds target range is determined by a meeting of the members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) which normally occurs eight times a year about seven weeks apart. The committee may also hold additional meetings an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Monetary Union
The economic and monetary union (EMU) of the European Union is a group of policies aimed at converging the economies of member states of the European Union at three stages. There are three stages of the EMU, each of which consists of progressively closer economic integration. Only once a state participates in the third stage it is permitted to adopt the euro as its official currency. As such, the third stage is largely synonymous with the eurozone. The euro convergence criteria are the set of requirements that needs to be fulfilled in order for a country to be approved to participate in the third stage. An important element of this is participation for a minimum of two years in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism ("ERM II"), in which candidate currencies demonstrate economic convergence by maintaining limited deviation from their target rate against the euro. The EMU policies cover all European Union member states. All new EU member states must commit to partici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portuguese Escudo
The Portuguese escudo was the currency of Portugal from May 22nd 1911 until the introduction of the euro on January 1st 2002. The escudo was subdivided into 100 . The word derives from the scutum shield. Amounts in escudos were written as with the as the decimal separator (for example: means , means ). Because of the conversion rate of 1,000 = , three decimal places were initially used ( = ). History The currency replaced by the escudo in 1911 was denominated in Portuguese reals (plural: ) and worth 1,000 . The was equivalent to 2.0539 grams fine gold from 1688 to 1800, and 1.62585 g from 1854 to 1891. Gold worth 1.6 (or ; not to be confused with the 20th-century currency) were issued from 1722 to 1800 in denominations of , 1, 2, 4 and 8 . The escudo (gold) was again introduced on 22 May 1911, after the 1910 Republican revolution, to replace the real at the rate of 1,000 to 1 . The term (thousand ) remained a colloquial synonym of up to the 1990s. One million ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Drachma
The drachma ( el, δραχμή , ; pl. ''drachmae'' or ''drachmas'') was the currency used in Greece during several periods in its history: # An ancient Greek currency unit issued by many Greek city states during a period of ten centuries, from the Archaic period throughout the Classical period, the Hellenistic period up to the Roman period under Greek Imperial Coinage. # Three modern Greek currencies, the first introduced in 1832 by the Greek King Otto () and the last replaced by the euro in 2001 (at the rate of 340.75 drachmae to the euro). The euro did not begin circulating until 2001 but the exchange rate was fixed on 19 June 2000, with legal introduction of the euro taking place in January 2002. It was also a small unit of weight.. Ancient drachma The name ''drachma'' is derived from the verb (, "(I) grasp"). It is believed that the same word with the meaning of "handful" or "handle" is found in Linear B tablets of the Mycenean Pylos. Initially a drachma wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irish Punt
The pound ( Irish: ) was the currency of the Republic of Ireland until 2002. Its ISO 4217 code was IEP, and the symbol was £ (or IR£ for distinction). The Irish pound was replaced by the euro on 1 January 1999. Euro currency did not begin circulation until the beginning of 2002. First pound The earliest Irish coinage was introduced in the late 10th century, with an £sd system of one pound divided into twenty shillings, each of twelve silver pence. Parity with sterling was established by King John around 1210, so that Irish silver could move freely into the English economy and help to finance his wars in France. However, from 1460, Irish coins were minted with a different silver content than those of England, so that the values of the two currencies diverged. During the Williamite War of 1689–1691, King James II, no longer reigning in England and Scotland, issued an emergency base-metal coinage known as gun money. In 1701, the relationship between the Irish pound and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
