Bond Portfolio Duration and the Flaw of Averages While a fund’s duration is useful, investors need to understand where the bonds sit on the yield curve to understand its impact. PrintCommentRecommend (3) By Thomas Boccellari | 04-22-15 | 06:00 AM | Email Article Interest-rate sensitivity, credit risk, and exposure to the yield curve are three of the biggest factors that […]

Barriers and Volatility Team Latte July 06, 2005 An interesting observation was made recently by one of our trader friends. He is a commodities options trader in one of the banks in the City and he has recently witnessed extreme non-linearity in the volatility of oil options. In the last few months the volume in […]

What volatility to use for pricing Barrier Options Team Latte Dec 06, 2007 Recent high volatilities in the equity markets may have unsettled many a barrier option traders and investors holding structured products with knock-out and knock-in options. Volatility behaves in a non-linear way for barrier options. As the high actual (realized) volatilities start to […]

On the back of a strong nonfarm payrolls number and a 5.5% unemployment rate U.S. markets sold off on Friday. Good news was once again bad news. The reasoning was that the Fed might start raising interest rates in June rather than September or even 2016 and that such an action would have a negative […]

How Much Influence Does The Fed Have? By Tim KeefeAAA |  The term monetary policy refers to the actions taken by a central bank to influence the price of credit to promote national economic goals. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 gave the Federal Reserve responsibility for setting monetary policy. The Act […]

Evaluating Bond Funds: Keeping It Simple By Investopedia StaffAAA |  Are you overwhelmed by the amount of information there is to analyze when evaluating a bond fund? Knowing what information is most important can be confusing regardless of whether you are looking at a research service like Morningstar or a mutual fund company’s website/prospectus. We’ll […]

Most investors care about future interest rates, but none more than bondholders. If you are considering a bond or bond fund investment, you must ask yourself whether you think interest rates will rise in the future. If the answer is yes then you probably want to avoid long-term maturity bonds or at least shorten the […]

Bond prices serve as a benchmark for many things, including interest rates, forecasts of future economic activity and future interest rates, and perhaps most importantly, they’re a smart component of a well managed and diversified investment portfolio. Understanding bond prices and yields can help any investor in any market, including equities. In this article we’ll […]