Now IRFs in Indian Market

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) jointly agreed on enabling exchange-traded interest rate futures (IRF) this week. Interest rate futures are derivative contracts which have an interest bearing security as the underlying instrument. The introduction of this instrument will help banks, insurance companies, bond houses and provident funds manage risks arising from interest rate fluctuations in their fixed income portfolios. Foreign portfolio investors have been allowed to tradeand banks have been allowed to participate in IRFs, but limits have been put in place to keep their influence under check.

This is the second attempt to introduce IRFs. IRFs were launched over five years ago by the NSE, but did not take off due to deficiencies in product design and banks not being allowed to trade in these products. The new IRFs are based on the yield-to-maturity (YTM) curve, which is used daily by traders for their calculations. To start with, futures contracts will be based on the 10-year government bond, with a semi-annual coupon of 7%. There would be quarterly contracts worth Rs 2 lakh crore per contract. Limits have been placed on gross-open positions of clients across all contracts at 6% of the total open interest or Rs 300 crore, whichever is higher.

Source:ET

Credit Default Swap

Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are fast becoming the dominant vehicle for trading credit risk.Two parties enter into an agreement whereby one party pays the other a fixed periodic coupon for the specified life of the agreement. The other party makes no payments unless a specified credit event occurs. Credit events are typically defined to include a material default, bankruptcy or debt restructuring for a specified reference asset. If such a credit event occurs, the party makes a payment to the first party, and the swap then terminates. The size of the payment is usually linked to the decline in the reference asset's market value following the credit event.

In other words it is a specific kind of counterparty agreement which allows the transfer of third party credit risk from one party to the other. One party in the swap is a lender and faces credit risk from a third party, and the counterparty in the credit default swap agrees to insure this risk in exchange of regular periodic payments.If the third party defaults, the party providing insurance will have to purchase from the insured party the defaulted asset. In turn, the insurer pays the insured the remaining interest on the debt, as well as the principal.


CDS contracts have been compared with insurance, because the buyer pays a premium and, in return, receives a sum of money .However, there are a number of differences between CDS and insurance, for example:The buyer of a CDS does not need to own the underlying security or other form of credit exposure; in fact the buyer does not even have to suffer a loss from the default event.In contrast, to purchase insurance, the insured is generally expected to have an insurable interest such as owning a debt.Moreover, unlike insurance, CDS are unregulated

TRAILING STOP LOSS

A complex stop-loss order in which the stop is set at some fixed percentage below the market price. If the market price rises, the stop loss price rises proportionately, but if the stock price falls, the stop loss price doesn't change.

This technique allows an investor to set a limit on the maximum possible loss without setting a limit on the maximum possible gain. It does this without requiring to pay attention to the investment on an ongoing basis.A trailing stop helps protect profits while providing downside protection.

Mechanism of Trailing loss order:

An investor decides to buy into a bull market with the possibility of losses covered by a stop loss. A prudent investor will exit the market once the perceived price is achieved losing on the chance to make any money out of the gains over and above his target. But the idea of the trailing loss order is to raise the exit barrier in the direction of trade instead of setting an absolute value on the rise. A trader using a trailing stop loss would still be hanging on to trading buy waiting for newer highs to be conquered, while the investor with the target selling would have exit the market rally by then.

When the market rises, the trailing stop loss also rises in proportion with the market, leading to escalated stop loss level. But when the market declines, the trailing stop loss doesn’t decline in line with the market. So the profits are protected under such orders. The losses are limited to the extent of the stop loss value.