At the close of today, the VIX finished at 11.23%, so on the surface everything seems to be calm and normal. However, the low VIX is making some investors nervous. Why is the VIX so low? In this post Dani Burger , Cecile Vannucci , and Liz McCormick cited some reasons …

At the beginning of the year, as the markets reached new highs, investors became more complacent. Early this month, Rupert Hargreaves noted: Investors have plowed billions into stocks over the past few months while the generally positive sentiment within markets has helped pull central banks back into the shadows. Central …

About a year ago, the financial world witnessed another  “Lehman moment”. It was the “near collapse” of Deutsche Bank (DB).  The financial press quickly pointed out the main reason for DB’s plunging stock price. John Glover wrote Yield-starved investors bought $102 billion of the contingent convertible bonds, securities created to …

As a firm with emphasis on risk management, we always advise our clients to hedge their portfolios in order to reduce the PnL volatilities. However, recently Metlife, the largest insurer in the US, was hit by a $3.2 billion loss in derivatives that were used to hedge the rising interest …

What is a convertible bond? A convertible bond (or preferred share) is a hybrid security, part debt and part equity. Its valuation is derived from both the level of interest rates and the price of the underlying equity. Several convertible bond pricing approaches are available to value these complex hybrid …

Less than a year from now, the banks will have to introduce the IFRS 9 Impairment, and it will have a substantial financial impact on them.  However, it is not just banks that will be affected by this new accounting  standard, non-financial corporations, for example commodity firms, will be impacted …