Browsing: Decline in oil markets

By Terry Adembesa, Chief Officer, Derivatives Market, Nairobi Securities Exchange

A derivative contract is an agreement to engage in a commercial transaction in which the delivery of an asset is set for the future, while the price and various specifications of the contract are agreed at the time of contract initiation. These markets originated from burgeoning oil and grain markets. In the agricultural markets, these created a need for a farmer to secure a price at one point in time, store the grain, and deliver it at a later point in time.

Despite these markets initially being dominated by agricultural commodities, globally there has been a proliferation of other financial instruments such as currencies, bonds, and stock indices. Although the commodity derivatives markets include very active contracts in oil and precious metals, financial derivatives have remained the most traded instruments in the global derivatives markets.

Types of derivatives include forward …