The year 2000 started the evolution of the German market for Structured Products with incorporated Hedge Fund exposures. This paper provides an extensive commentary on this fast growing segment. Our analysis suggests that the market for existing products is affected by significant heterogeneity....

Loss Given Default (LGD) is a major element for pricing credits and bonds. As there has been a substantial amount of research during the last years, this paper aims to give an overview. Initially, defaults and recovery definitions for credits and the differences to bonds are discussed. A survey...

In den letzten Jahren hat eine intensive Entwicklung von Kreditderivaten begonnen.Im Kern soll hiermit die Möglichkeit geschaffen werden, das Adressenrisiko einer Transaktion von ihrem Marktrisiko zu separieren und es damit einzeln handelbar, aber insbesondere auch hedgebar zu machen. Die...

Some traders estimate precipitation derivatives to have a potential which increases even that of temperature derivatives. Precipitation derivatives can be used both for hedging and marketing purposes for a diverse number of possible end users. However, the complex way of measuring precipitation,...

Merger and acquisition activities can have a strong impact on the capital structure of the companies involved and therefore on the value of debt. This paper discusses the role of covenants within debt contracts. Using the Real Option approach to quantify the implications of covenants on the...

This paper shows that Economic Value Added (EVA) can be used to optimize the performance of european share investements. Investing in the top third relative EVA performers, leads to a significant outperformance. This is true for market and sektor investments. The best results were found for...

Underlyings of weather derivatives in Europe tend to be average temperature compared to heating (cooling) day in the USA because of a smaller volatility in temperature. The derivatives are priced using as burn analysis. Using a gas utility company, hedging techniques are shown using temperature...

The paper examines the key drivers of gold investment. Since 2000 the gold price has risen drastically, making gold an interesting add-on to a portfolio. As gold futures have negative roll returns, gold pool accounts are characterized by high credit risk and physical possession of gold means...

Behavioral finance theory is used for the foreign exchange market to show, that the profit of a typical trader is mainly due to the higher number of correct positions. Using behavioral finance the amount of loss trades is larger than 60%, however the individual gains are larger than the losses...