Banking on a fall

Stock markets suffered the first major correction of 2007 in late February. At the same time, market participants were bringing short-selling and volatility strategies to the structured products world. Daniel Sheehan finds out how structured products distributors and investors could actually benefit from market jitters

February saw stock markets suffer their first major fall of 2007 as nervous investors reacted to the downturn in China's equity market. On the first day of the shock, China's stock exchange slumped by 9%, the UK's FTSE 100 was down 2.3% and Wall Street suffered its biggest one-day fall since 2001 as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 500 points. Remarkably, on the same day, two index providers released replica short-selling indexes of their flagship indexes. The Dow Jones Eurostoxx 50 Short