The history of derivatives is quite colourful and surprisingly a lot longer than most people think. Forward delivery contracts, stating what is to be delivered for a fixed price at a specified place on a specified date, existed in ancient Greece and Rome. Roman emperors entered forward contracts to provide the masses with their supply of Egyptian grain. These contracts were also undertaken between farmers and merchants to eliminate risk arising out of uncertain future prices of grains.
Thus, forward contracts have existed for centuries for hedging price risk. The first organized commodity exchange came into existence in the early 1700’s in Japan. The first formal commodities exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), was formed in 1848 in the US to deal with the problem of ‘credit risk’ and to provide centralised location to negotiate forward contracts. From ‘forward’ trading in commodities emerged the commodity ‘futures’. The first type of futures contract was called ‘to arrive at’.
Trading in futures began on the CBOT in the 1860’s. In 1865, CBOT listed the first ‘exchange traded’ derivatives contract, known as the futures contracts. Futures trading grew out of the need for hedging the price risk involved in many commercial operations. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a spin-off of CBOT, was formed in 1919, though it did exist before in 1874 under the names of ‘Chicago Produce Exchange’ (CPE) and ‘Chicago Egg and Butter Board’ (CEBB). The first financial futures to emerge were the currency in 1972 in the US.
The first foreign currency futures were traded on May 16, 1972, on International Monetary Market (IMM), a division of CME. The currency futures traded on the IMM are the British Pound, the Canadian Dollar, the Japanese Yen, the Swiss Franc, the German Mark, the Australian Dollar, and the Euro dollar. Currency futures were followed soon by interest rate futures. Interest rate futures contracts were traded for the first time on the CBOT on October 20, 1975. Stock index futures and options emerged in 1982.
The first stock index futures contracts were traded on Kansas City Board of Trade on February 24, 1982. The first of the several networks, which offered a trading link between two exchanges, was formed between the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX) and the CME on September 7, 1984. Options are as old as futures. Their history also dates back to ancient Greece and Rome. Options are very popular with speculators in the tulip craze of seventeenth century Holland.
Tulips, the brightly coloured flowers, were a symbol of affluence; owing to a high demand, tulip bulb prices shot up. Dutch growers and dealers traded in tulip bulb options. There was so much speculation that people even mortgaged their homes and businesses. These speculators were wiped out when the tulip craze collapsed in 1637 as there was no mechanism to guarantee the performance of the option terms. The first call and put options were invented by an American financier, Russell Sage, in 1872. These options were traded over the counter.
Agricultural commodities options were traded in the nineteenth century in England and the US. Options on shares were available in the US on the over the counter (OTC) market only until 1973 without much knowledge of valuation. A group of firms known as Put and Call brokers and Dealer’s Association was set up in early 1900’s to provide a mechanism for bringing buyers and sellers together. On April 26, 1973, the Chicago Board options Exchange (CBOE) was set up at CBOT for the purpose of trading stock options.
It was in 1973 again that black, Merton, and Scholes invented the famous Black-Scholes Option Formula. This model helped in assessing the fair price of an option which led to an increased interest in trading of options. With the options markets becoming increasingly popular, the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) began trading in options in 1975. The market for futures and options grew at a rapid pace in the eighties and nineties.
The collapse of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed parties and the introduction of floating rates for currencies in the international financial markets paved the way for development of a number of financial derivatives which served as effective risk management tools to cope with market uncertainties. The CBOT and the CME are two largest financial exchanges in the world on which futures contracts are traded. The CBOT now offers 48 futures and option contracts (with the annual volume at more than 211 million in 2001).
The CBOE is the largest exchange for trading stock options. The CBOE trades options on the S&P 100 and the S&P 500 stock indices. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange is the premier exchange for trading foreign options. The most traded stock indices include S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq 100, and the Nikkei 225. The US indices and the Nikkei 225 trade almost round the clock. The N225 is also traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
