Structured products
US investors still sensitive to counterparty risk
Counterparty risk remains a dominant theme for US investors, who are keen to analyse issuer credit ratings and credit default swap levels before buying a structured product. Richard Jory asks senior US industry figures how attitudes to counterparty…
Market snapshot
Tim Mortimer of Future Value Consultants reviews the product preferences in the US and UK structured products markets
Conservatism still reigns in wake of crisis
The private banking division of Credit Suisse is still seeing the impact of the financial crisis on its investors’ requirements. Fixed-income structured products remain popular but the low interest rate environment is still affecting the types of…
Volatility fears increase after May whiplash
Equity markets suffered a whiplash effect before and after the second weekend of May, with the Eurostoxx 50 dropping 4.26% on Friday, May 7, only to bounce back by 10.35% the following Monday.
Half the loss
JP Morgan launched a two-year structured product based on property, homebuilding and financial institutions not long before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Capital was, of course, lost, but the cost would have been far greater on a direct investment
Barrier remains intact
The 50% barrier in the Investec Capital Protected FTSE 100 Income Plan 1 has remained in place since the launch of the product last year. Those opting for monthly or quarterly payments will have received their coupons, and the same looks likely for those…
Trade of the month: Secondary pricing and fair value
As with any competitive market, fee levels are influenced to a large degree by the market, since a product cannot normally hide high fees and appear competitive.
Balancing correlation
Credit Suisse is offering US investors a 5.5-year structured product that is based on a basket that is balanced by the inclusion of the iShares Barclays Tips Bond Fund ETF. As well as proving to have low volatility, the fund is not correlated to the…
Product performance
Based on the FTSE 100, this month FVC compares the virtues of three products structures common to the UK market that link to the FTSE 100
FVC Custom Indexes
In Europe, the income index is the best performer over the past six years when compared with the accelerated and protected variants. Not so in Japan, where the accelerated index tops the trio of indexes as best performing. In both regions, the protected…
Rising to the technology challenge
The structured product market is staggering to its feet after the financial crisis dealt it a near fatal blow. Simple payout structures, shorter terms and capital protection kept the market alive, then investors looked to structures with payouts linked…
Driving in reverse
Despite The Wall Street Journal lambasting equity-linked reverse convertibles as ‘dangerous investments’ and a chorus of bad press culminating in regulatory fines, the products continue to attract capital from the US retail sector. Joti Mangat asks how…
Doing it for the Kid
If someone could create a short form document of three or four pages that could alert retail investors to the proceeds and pitfalls of a structured product, then regulators could relax, investors could do their own simple risk-reward analysis and product…
Hybrid structures tempt investors
Volatile and uncertain markets have got investors thinking about diversified exposures to multiple asset classes both as yield generating opportunities and portfolio hedges. Hybrid structures, which blend discrete asset exposures into one pay-off, are…
Funds find favour
Funds are the structure of choice this year, as the exchange-traded funds business grows and structured product houses look for fund solutions. But the fund industry has its limitations, not least because of the complexity of structuring and the expense…
Advisers Asset Management ahead of the game
US distributor Advisors Asset Management made the right call in choosing principal protection over reverse convertibles before the economic storm, and is now seeing a push towards equity, income and interest-rate products.
Scrambling for yield
The rebound of credit markets in 2009 enabled product providers to decrease risk as well as offer higher yields to investors in the Americas, using techniques such as multipliers or digital payoffs. The result is an increase in the number of deals,…
Editorial: ETFs are not derivatives
There are very few certainties in the financial markets, particularly when you are dealing in derivatives, but one truth that will always affect structured products is that exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are not derivatives. Newswires sometimes write…
Structured Products Asia Awards 2010: Call for entries
The interviews for the annual Structured Products awards for Asia will start in August, with submissions in the categories below to be delivered to the editorial team by Monday July 19.
Americas Report: Back from the breech
The structured products market in the US has been through some lows in the past year. The shock sometimes was so great that the lifeblood of the market, the reverse convertible, was withdrawn completely. It was pointless flogging a product that required…