Dayton Outar’s Reviews > Financial Times Guide to Banking, The > Status Update

Woo! I may have to return to this material to re-learn futures, swaps, hedges and options.

I may have to read another book to learn details about a CDO (Collateral Debt Obligation) and a synthetic CDO.

A derivative instrument is an asset whose performance is based on (derived from) the behaviour of the value of an underlying asset (usually referred to simply as the ‘underlying’). The most common underlyings include commodities, shares, bonds, share indices, currencies and interest rates. Derivatives are contracts which give the right to buy or sell a quantity of the underlying.

Just learnt about convertible bonds

Bond ratings are very interesting

Skimmed through some chapters of Part 2. Skipped some in Part 2. Mostly history. I'm not interested in history right now.

Chapter 12 was very interesting because of the origins of various types of mutual funds

Aha! So credit unions and 'partna plans' are basically mutual funds

Skimmed through Chapter 11