Dark Energy Consulting
Current course
Participants
General
Detailed Glossary
Detailed Glossary
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | ALL
A |
---|
Accrual | ||
---|---|---|
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 | ||
---|---|---|
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 | ||
Arbitrage | ||
---|---|---|
The difference in cost of achieving the same outcome through different means Detail This is easiest explained as an example: To buy a particular new car in the UK costs £27,000 The identical UK-spec car costs £22,000 in Belgium It will cost you about £1,000 to have it shipped to the UK, plus another £1,000 costs for delivery, any inspections, your time to manage all this etc. Cost of buying the car in the UK = £27,000 Total cost of buying the car in Belgium and having it delivered to your home = £24,000 There is an arbitrage opportunity of £3,000 In general, in a liquid market, with minimal market constraints, traders will exploit any arbitrage, and the arbitrage values should all tend to zero In our example if everyone chose to buy the car in Belgium: the price would probably go up in Belgium because of the higher demand the cost of shipping might go up (because of demand and the realization it's valuable) the price of the car in the UK would probably fall (because they weren't selling any) When the market acts to reduce arbitrage to insignificant values then we describe this as arbitrage-free Arbitrage-free is a powerful method in many valuation tools: it implies we can value an Instrument or trade by looking at alternative ways of achieving the same outcome For example the value of an oil forward contract in six months time, should not be significantly different to the spot price of oil, plus all of the costs of storing that oil for six months | ||
Asset | ||
---|---|---|
In energy trading terms an asset is something an organization owns that can physically provide, transform or move an energy commodity, such as a gas field, a power station, or a refinery Detail In trading terms many assets that transform or help to move a commodity are in effect an option on a spread:
Long term supply contracts are also sometimes referred to as an asset | ||
Auto Trade Capture | ||
---|---|---|
Auto Trade Capture is a capability in most trading organizations (and many have an application called ATC) that allows trades executed on an electronic trading platform (usually exchange or broker) to be automatically downloaded to our organization's ETRM Detail ATC usually works by accessing an Instance of Trayport GlobalVision which is a proprietary product. Trayport provide broker trading platforms to most common Energy Trading Brokers and some Exchanges, and also acts as an interface to many Exchanges running their own trading platforms Trades executed on compatible platforms may be accessed as XML and mapped into the local ETRM It is normal for trades to be entered into the ETRM in a status that requires a trader to "validate" or "approve" the trade as having been executed Trades may also be received from other platforms, often in the form of FIX format messages Most ATC systems consist of:
| ||
B |
---|
Balance of Month | ||
---|---|---|
A type of contract in which the delivery period is the remainder of the current month Detail Widely used in gas trading a Balance of Month contract (BoM) can vary from 30 days down to a few days depending on the day traded Balance of Month contracts often have separate contract codes and settlement prices for each day of the month that they are traded | ||
Baseload | ||
---|---|---|
Term used in power (electricity) trading and operations to describe continuous delivery (24 hours a day, 365 days a year) Detail Baseload is the most basic type of power profile Baseload may refer to generation - nuclear power plants provide excellent baseload generation - but cannot easily be switched on or off so are no use for other profiles Baseload may refer to trading - a contract for delivery in 2024 may usually traded as Baseload, Peak or Offpeak Peak and offpeak are related profiles that (as their names suggest) deliver during the set of hours that are defined as peak (e.g. 07:00 - 19:00) or offpeak (e.g. 19:00 - 07:00 the next day) in general Baseload = Peak + Offpeak which is to say if we sell the same volume Peak and Offpeak for the same period then we have effectively sold Baseload If we buy Baseload and sell Offpeak, then we have effectively bought Peak | ||
Basket | ||
---|---|---|
Bid | ||
---|---|---|
A Bid is a type of Order; a trader bids to buy a product or commodity at the Bid price Detail The trader bids to buy a product at a particular price Bids are normally submitted to a Broker or an Exchange If a bid is matched by a subsequent offer by another party, then a trade is executed If the bid matches an already quoted offer then a match is made and a trade is executed See also Offer
| ||
Blotter | ||
---|---|---|
A Blotter is a traditional term for a form on which trade details are recorded by a trader as trades are executed Detail Original blotters were pre-printed forms with a row for each trade, in which the trader wrote by hand the trade details in defined columns Traders often use a spreadsheet to capture trade details as a form of electronic blotter Trade details from blotters are either subsequently re-keyed into a trade record system (ETRM), or may be electronically uploaded into an ETRM Many ETRMs have trade blotters built into them to allow trades to be recorded directly as they are executed Deal ticket is a similar term for a pre-printed form on which trade details are recorded. Typically a blotter allows one trade per line to be recorded, whereas a deal ticket - designed for more complex trades - usually has one trade per page
| ||