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This chapter aims to find an optimal way to hedge foreign exchange exposures on three main currency pairs being the EURUSD, EURGBP and EURJPY. Furthermore, it analyses the risk level of each portfolio together with its kurtosis level. This chapter also looks into the relationship between the EURUSD portfolios and the VIX level.

This study is based on a back-testing analysis over a period of seven years starting in January 2007 and ending in December 2014. Two main Foreign Exchange Premium-Free strategies were structured using the Bloomberg Terminal. These were the ‘At-Expiry Forward Extra’ and the ‘Window Forward Extra’. Portfolios were created using FX options strategies, FX spot and FX forwards. The EURUSD portfolios were also analysed and compared with the VIX level in order to see whether volatility has a direct effect on the outcome of the strategies. The statistical significance of the difference between returns of portfolios was analysed using a paired sample t-test. Finally, the histogram and distribution curve of each portfolio were created and plotted in order to provide a more visual analysis of returns.

It was found that the optimal strategies in all cases were the FX option strategies. The portfolios’ risk was analysed and indicated that optimal portfolios do not necessarily derive the lowest risk. It was also found that with a high VIX level, the forward contract was the most beneficial whilst the option strategy benefited from a low VIX level. When testing for statistical significance between returns of different portfolios, in most cases, the difference in returns between portfolios resulted to be statistically insignificant. Although some similarities were noticed in distribution curves, these differed from the normal distribution. When analysing the kurtosis levels, it is found that such levels differed from that of a normal distribution which has a kurtosis level of 3. Interpretation of such histograms, distribution curves and the kurtosis analysis was explained.

This research applies a static hedging portfolio method derived from Derman, Ergener, and Kani (1995) (henceforth Derman's SHP method) and a new SHP method with European cash-or-nothing binary options developed by Chung, Shih, and Tsai (2013) to price European continuous double barrier (ECDB) options and the rebates of the ECDB options. Our numerical results indicate that the new SHP method outperforms Derman's SHP method in terms of efficiency and effectiveness under all circumstances.

The 2007 BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity Report shows a substantial increase in turnover in foreign exchange and OTC derivatives markets. Turnover in traditional FX markets increased to reach $3.2 trillion. The largest contributor to this 71% increase between April 2004 and April 2007 occurred in FX swaps. It was like a prelude to the financial crisis of 2007–2008 driven by transactions carried out between banks and other financial institutions due to the significance of hedge funds and major engagement of emerging market currencies which have sought new configurations of portfolio diversification worldwide.

Executive stock option grants are intended to remove corporate governance problems by aligning the managers’ interests with those of the outside shareholders. Conventional schemes leave several problems in place. Exotic option structures can resolve these. In this paper, such structures are proposed and tested on the Dow Jones constituents over a 10-year period. These alternative schemes increase the financial rewards to the better performing managers, at no extra cost to the company whilst offering a resolution or mitigation of the identified agency problems No one scheme dominates the others and a portfolio of option types is indicated.

This study analyses the determinants of the value of a portfolio of real options and explores implications for strategic management. It focuses the analysis on four elements: the number of real options in the portfolio, constraints on the number of options that can be exercised, the volatility of underlying assets, and the correlation between underlying assets. These elements are articulated around a trade-off between growth options and switching options and are applied to different strategic situations of technological, market, and macroeconomic uncertainty.

Recent developments in technology and research have brought new innovations into the finance sector. Applying mathematics and computer science into finance has developed a multidisciplinary financial engineering field, where new quantitative and complex financial products are supplied to investors. In this chapter, we describe financial technologies as high-frequency trade; investment vehicles as mutual, exchange-traded, and hedge funds in the finance sector with figures of past 10 years and their impact in international trade volume. Financial derivatives are innovative products where investor may mitigate risk on their domestic and international transactions. The author also discusses cryptocurrencies as an important tool in innovation.

Owing to the fact that the over-the-counter (OTC) market has no organized exchange, the options traded in the OTC market are more likely to be exposed to credit risk, Asian options being one of them. In this chapter we first discuss the pricing of geometric Asian options and the Black–Scholes options model subject to credit risk. We then combine the two models to derive a closed-form formula for pricing a geometric Asian option subject to the credit risk. The numerical analysis reveals that other pricing formulae existing in the literature can cause serious pricing errors when there is a possibility of default in reality.