Having read some of the articles in the Financial Pipeline's Derivatives
section, you may be looking for additional sources of information online about
derivatives. The Internet provides a tremendous amount of information about
financial risk management and derivative instruments that complements the
information on the Financial Pipeline. Increasingly, individuals can find
resources online that were previously available only to sophisticated bank
traders and fund managers. One good starting-off point is the links section of the Victory Risk Management Consulting www.victoryrisk.com page. Most of the
links to which this article refers are listed on that page. The Victory links
are updated frequently.
News and Information about Financial Markets
At the beginning of every trading day (or trading cycle for individuals who
position investments at different intervals), the first thing that an investor,
trader, risk manager or fund manager must do is to check the latest, timeliest
developments in overnight markets, including the news.
There are different levels of information available to us on the Internet
ranging from the quick news bites that might suit spot traders or day traders
to in-depth analysis of key market developments.
For quick news bites, the best sources are the sites maintained by some of
the major financial news organizations:
 These have headlines of the major
overnight news stories, in some cases providing a brief synopsis of the content
of the individual story. These stories are more oriented towards the
macro-economic developments in overnight markets including release of economic
statistics in foreign countries, the performance of foreign capital markets,
political developments abroad and general market-related news.
The problem with the Internet is the amount of information that needs to be
sifted. One very quick and easy analysis that I like of the developments in
overnight markets and the identification of the key issues in today's markets
is Marc Chandler's commentary on TheStreet.com www.thestreet.com.
Most newspapers have web sites at which individuals can peruse headline
stories. While these stories may not be as current as news junkies and day
traders would like, they do indicate some of the local flavour to the news.
For Canadian news, there are two national newspapers,
The National Post www.nationalpost.com and
The Globe And Mail www.theglobeandmail.com.
Internationally,
The New York Times www.nytimes.com,
The South China Morning Post www.scmp.com,
The Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com and, most
notably,
The Financial Times www.ft.com are all
excellent resources.
Issues in Financial Risk Management
Earlier articles referred to developments in risk measurement. The
undisputed leader when it comes to risk measurement methodology has to be J.P.
Morgan's spinoff company RiskMetrics www.riskmetrics.com. Not only does the
RiskMetrics web site provide all the information necessary for obtaining an
understanding of the RiskMetrics methodology but there are also chat rooms for
discussing its application and, of more direct interest to readers of the
Financial Pipeline, online education in derivatives and financial risk
management.
For people who have further interest in Value-at-Risk, Barry Schachters web site www.gloriamundi.org gives a very good
overview of the academic research. It is also a gateway to VaR-related sites.
Other sources online include organizations such as:
The Global Association of Risk Professionals is an Internet-based
organization of individuals involved in all aspects of financial risk
management, most of whom use derivatives or oversee derivatives in the context
of their daily working lives. The GARP chat room is unique in that you will
find comments, questions and answers from individuals spanning the continuum of
knowledge and experience.
Other Sites of Interest
NumaWeb www.numa.com is an excellent resource for information about derivatives on
the Internet. It has online calculators, references to employment opportunities
and links to other derivatives resources.
Conclusion
These are all useful places to start. After going through these web sites,
the user will have a good idea of the kinds of information they require and the
networking effects of the Internet will introduce them to more relevant links.
Article by Chand Sooran, Principal Victory
Risk Management Consulting, Inc.
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