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Detailed Glossary
Detailed Glossary
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Portfolio | ||
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A group of trades Detail Trading organizations group trades in order to simplify position management, risk reporting and settlement. By grouping trades that have a common or complementary purpose, traders can focus on the performance of the portfolio as a whole, rather than the individual trades that make it up Note the similarity to a trading book | ||
Settlement | ||
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The Business Process or Capability covering the payments relating to trading activities. It includes agreeing payments, making them, and ensuring that payments are received at the correct times Detail Settlement includes: We also referred to the concept of financial and physical settlement of trades
We need to be careful to recognize the legal definition of settlement of a physical trade:
Most other parts of energy trading businesses identify the term settlement with cash settlement (or payment) | ||
Shape | ||
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Shape is a term, mainly used in Power Trading to describe a non-continuous delivery over a delivery period For example a UK power trade may have a delivery period of a month and have peak shape, which specifies that the power will be delivered over a time period of 07:00 - 23:00 each day of the Month Detail Typical shapes include
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Position | ||
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All physically settled derivatives imply either an obligation to deliver, or take delivery of, a commodity at a location at some time in the future The obligation to deliver a commodity is called a short position of that commodity at that location and time in the future The obligation to take delivery of a commodity is called a long position of that commodity at that location and time in the future Detail Traders sum the position of a set of trades to know their net position across that group of trades - usually called a portfolio, a book or a strategy. This is known as the traded, or trader, position Traders take a long position if they believe the value of the commodity at the time of delivery will be greater than the contract, or strike, price Traders take a short position if they believe the value of the commodity at the time of delivery will be less than the contract, or strike, price. Taking a short position is sometimes known as shorting Each time a trade is executed the trader's net position changes. Most traders update their net position as each trade is executed | ||
Broker | ||
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A broker acts as an intermediary in the trading process
Most energy execution brokers operate a trading platform, that allow Orders to be submitted on a variety of standardized trading Products or Instruments.
When Orders are matched then a trade is executed, and the parties making the matched Bid and Offer are each notified that a trade has been executed.
Detail
There are three types of brokers commonly involved in energy trading:
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Realization | ||
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The p&l of trades (and cash flows) is described as:
Detail Most trades involve delivery at some point in the future Because the value of the commodity to be delivered is not known before the delivery, the value needs to be estimated or calculated from market data. For forwards and futures and other linear trade types the value may be estimated by a simple mark to market calculation For options and other non-linear trades the value may be calculated using the Black 76 method (derived from the earlier Black-Scholes method) We say the trade's value (its p&l) is unrealized because it is not yet known for certain, and is therefore a cause of market risk Once delivery has taken place, we know (or don't care about) the delivered value, the value of he trade is known and no longer varies. In effect the p&l is locked in, there is no more market risk associated with this trade and the p&l is said to be realized The p&l of a trade (or cash flow) moves from unrealized to realized when one or more of the following conditions has been met
Realization is the set of business rules that defines when p&l moves from unrealized to realized based on:
Realization is subjective: different organizations may have different business rules to determine realization | ||
Theta | ||
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The value of options varies with time, in general the uncertainty in the price of the underlier reduces as the moment of exercise approaches. Theta is the measure of how much the value of a trade, or set of trades, varies with time Detail Theta is one of the Greeks that measure sensitivity of the value of a trade or portfolio to the passage of time Like most Greeks, except Delta, it is zero for linear trades (trades with no optionality)
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Accrual | ||
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A known future cash flow that has not been invoiced Detail This term is a perfectly standard accounting term. Accruals commence at the time of delivery and continue until an invoice is raised, or an invoice is received For continuously delivered commodities (gas and power), accruals build up over the delivery month, day by day, and continue until an invoice is generated or received early the next month Accruals are posted to the General Ledger, and are reversed out when an invoice is posted Unrealized P&L is not accrued - only delivered (and therefore usually realized) P&L is accrued | ||
APAR | ||
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Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivable Anything relating to these two departments, that is:
Often used to refer to invoices and invoiced cash flows Detail In general the Master Agreement of a trade determines the agreed invoicing cycle and dates A typical invoicing cycle would be to invoice a month's worth of delivery on the 5th day of the following month Our organization must raise invoices, and may raise shadow invoices or purchase orders to match against invoices received from our counterparties Once sent, an invoice cannot be deleted or just ignored, but it can be reversed by issuing a credit note. A credit note reverses part of, or a whole invoice Equally a debit note may be raised to reverse part of, or all of, a shadow invoice or purchase order. This should match a credit note that our counterparty will send to us The set of invoices, shadow invoices and purchase orders, credit notes and debit notes, and the cash flows held in them may be collectively referred to as APAR | ||
Exposure | ||
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Exposure is the sensitivity of the value of a trade, or a portfolio, to some market variable A single trade may have Exposure to multiple market variables, and we measure the Exposure to each variable separately. In general there is an Exposure to each independent market variable that determines the value of the trade Detail Consider a simple Physical fixed price Forward delivering in a year's time There is an Exposure to the commodity underlier, let's say a Coal value The Exposure is the shift in value of the trade with each unit shift in the price (or value) of the underlier So a trade to buy 100 tonnes of coal might shift by $1 per tonne, for each shift of $1 per tonne in the price of coal, the 100 tonnes Exposure is 100 100 whats? Let's look at the units. We want the shift in price = 100 tonnes * $1 per tonne = $100, per unit shift in the price of coal = $100 / $1 / tonne = 100 tonnes So the Exposure has units of the underlier! If you've looked at the definition of Delta you will have seen that Delta is properly the change in value per unit of the trade per change in value per unit of the underlier So we get the important formula Exposure = Position * Delta A trade may have multiple deltas and multiple Exposures - our simple Forward deal may not be as simple as we think:
Exposures are additive - they can be summed across a set of trades or portfolios Deltas are not additive - because they are dimensionless ratios | ||