Corpania Ideas

CAVEAT! I'm an amateur philosopher and idea-generator. I am NOT an investment professional. Don't take any of my advice before consulting with an attorney and also a duly licensed authority on finance. Seriously, this my personal blog of random ideas only for entertainment purposes. Don't be an idiot.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

My solution to the "Incalculable Derivatives" Accounting Problem!

I just solved the "Incalculable Derivatives" Accounting Problem!

When a well-known, well-respected "Whale" (Casino term for a big gambler) shows up in Vegas he often gets to gamble on credit extended by the Casino. But there is a maximum he can bet on credit before the casino will demand a wire-transfer payment. The casino decides what amount the whale is good for on-credit and beyond that it's no more Mr.Nice Guy. If only Wall Street were so wise!

Here's my solution - Government/SEC should mandate that ALL future derivatives have a "maximum value".

e.g. a Call Option could then be a right to buy a given security at a certain strike price (as normal) but the change would be that the right can be exercised no more than X amount "in the money" (where X is an extremely big number). So Google stock is trading at $550 a share and this extreme derivative call option (for a single share) has a strike price of $10,000 with an expiration date of 3 months from now. Because it is so "out of the money" it trades for $0.01 and some bank is selling millions of these options because it's so utterly sure Google won't rise above it. Without my idea, if Google goes to $20,000 per share just before expiration then each option that the bank sold for $0.01 it will now have to pay out at $10,000. Consequently, if the bank sold millions it would be "on the hook" for tens of billions in losses. But with my idea, X could be "ten thousand times the original price of the derivative". So any investment in a derivative could get a 10,000 ROI but no more. In that specific Google hypothetical example the X number is "10,000" which is multiplied by the price "$0.01" which would equal $100. So when the option was exercised the strike price would "reset" to $100 less than the current price (which would then be $19,900).

For over 99.999% of derivatives, well over 99.999% of the time, this wouldn't make a difference to either party (buyer or seller) because X would be such an extremely big number. And for when the markets go crazy, there is a maximum loss/gain that would limit absurd swings that serve no value to the economy. Consequently, all future "toxic assets" would have a known upside & downside for much more effective accounting!

When one bank wants to write uncovered calls (or any "naked" derivatives) it would have to list publicly (to the rest of the market) what its maximum downside pay-out would be. Then we wouldn't have the problem of "incalculable derivatives". And hopefully, that would lead to more judicious investing.

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