PROJECT ON

A STUDY ON “ ARBITRAGE”

SUBMITTED BY

SATYAPRAKASH HARYANI

Seat no. 102

M.Com (Semester-II)

*2012-2013*

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

Dr NEHA GOEL

SUBMITTED TO

UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI

NIRMALA MEMORIAL FOUNDATION COLLEGE OF

COMMERCE AND SCIENCE

90 FEET ROAD, ASHA NAGAR, THAKUR COMPLEX,KANDIVALI (E), MUMBAI-400 101.

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DECLARATION

I, Mr.SATYAPRAKASH HARYANI of M.Com (Master of Commerce,

Semester – II) hereby declare that I have completed the project on

ARBITRAGE in the academic year 2012-2013.

The information submitted is true and original to best of my knowledge.

________________ ________________

Date of Submission. Signature of Student,

(SATYAPRAKASH HARYANI)

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CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project titled as “ARBITRAGE” has been

completed by Mr. SATYAPRAKASH HARYANI of M.Com.

(Semester-II)examination in academic year 2012-2013.

The information submitted is true and original to the best of knowledge.

______________ ______________

(Dr. T. P. Madhu Nair) (Prof. Dr. Neha Goel)

Principal Programme Coordinator

________________ ________________

(Prof. Dr. Neha Goel) External Examiner

Project Guide

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to extend my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Neha Goel for providing

guidance and support during the course of project. She has been a great

help through the making of the project. I would like to thank the

University of Mumbai for giving me the opportunity to work on such a

relevant topic. I would also like to thank the college faculty and the

librarian and the Principal Dr.T.P.Madhu Nair for their help and other

who are indirectly responsible for the completion of this project. In

addition I would like to take this opportunity to thank our M.Com

Coordinator Prof. Dr. Neha Goel for being there always to guide me and

for extending her full support.

Date-

Mumbai _______________

Signature of Student

(SATYAPRAKASH HARYANI)

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In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negativecash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit at zero cost.

In principle and in academic use, an arbitrage is risk-free; in common use, as in statistical arbitrage, it may refer to expected profit, though losses may occur, and in practice, there are always risks in arbitrage, some minor (such as fluctuation of prices decreasing profit margins), some major (such as devaluation of a currency or derivative). In academic use, an arbitrage involves taking advantage of differences in price of a single asset or identical cash-flows; in common use, it is also used to refer to differences between similar assets (relative value or convergence trades), as in merger arbitrage.

People who engage in arbitrage are called arbitrageurs (IPA / ̩ ɑ r b ɨ t r ɑː ̍ ʒ ɜ r / )—such as a bank or brokerage firm. The term is mainly applied to trading in financial instruments, such as bonds, stocks, derivatives, commodities and currencies.

Arbitrage-free

If the market prices do not allow for profitable arbitrage, the prices are said to constitute an arbitrage equilibrium or arbitrage-free market. An arbitrage equilibrium is a precondition for a general economic equilibrium. The assumption that there is no arbitrage is used in quantitative finance to calculate a unique risk neutral price for derivatives.

[edit]Conditions for arbitrage

Arbitrage is possible when one of three conditions is met:

1. The same asset does not trade at the same price on all markets ("the law of one price").

2. Two assets with identical cash flows do not trade at the same price.3. An asset with a known price in the future does not today trade at its future

price discounted at the risk-free interest rate (or, the asset does not have negligible costs of storage; as such, for example, this condition holds for grain but not for securities).

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Arbitrage is not simply the act of buying a product in one market and selling it in another for a higher price at some later time. The transactions must occur simultaneously to avoid exposure to market risk, or the risk that prices may change on one market before both transactions are complete. In practical terms, this is generally possible only with securities and financial products that can be traded electronically, and even then, when each leg of the trade is executed the prices in the market may have moved. Missing one of the legs of the trade (and subsequently having to trade it soon after at a lower price) is called 'execution risk' or more specifically 'leg risk'.[note 1]

In the simplest example, any good sold in one market should sell for the same price in another. Traders may, for example, find that the price of wheat is lower in agricultural regions than in cities, purchase the good, and transport it to another region to sell at a higher price. This type of price arbitrage is the most common, but this simple example ignores the cost of transport, storage, risk, and other factors. "True" arbitrage requires that there be no market risk involved. Where securities are traded on more than one exchange, arbitrage occurs by simultaneously buying in one and selling on the other.

See rational pricing, particularly arbitrage mechanics, for further discussion.

Mathematically it is defined as follows:

 and 

where   and   denotes the portfolio value at time t.

Examples

Suppose that the exchange rates (after taking out the fees for making the exchange) in London are £5 = $10 = ¥1000 and the exchange rates in Tokyo are ¥1000 = $12 = £6. Converting ¥1000 to $12 in Tokyo and converting that $12 into ¥1200 in London, for a profit of ¥200, would be arbitrage. In reality, this "triangle arbitrage" is so simple that it almost never occurs. But more complicated foreign exchange arbitrages, such as the spot-forward arbitrage (see interest rate parity) are much more common.

One example of arbitrage involves the New York Stock Exchange and the Security Futures Exchange OneChicago (OCX). When the price of a stock on the NYSE and its corresponding futures contract on OCX are out of sync, one can buy the less expensive one and sell it to the more expensive market. Because the differences between the prices are likely to be small (and not to last very long), this can be done profitably only with computers examining a large number of prices and automatically exercising a trade when the prices are far

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enough out of balance. The activity of other arbitrageurs can make this risky. Those with the fastest computers and the most expertise take advantage of series of small differences that would not be profitable if taken individually.

Economists use the term "global labor arbitrage" to refer to the tendency of manufacturing jobs to flow towards whichever country has the lowest wages per unit output at present and has reached the minimum requisite level of political and economic development to support industrialization. At present, many such jobs appear to be flowing towards China, though some that require command of English are going to India and the Philippines. In popular terms, this is referred to as offshoring. (Note that "offshoring" is not synonymous with "outsourcing", which means "to subcontract from an outside supplier or source", such as when a business outsources its bookkeeping to an accounting firm. Unlike offshoring, outsourcing always involves subcontracting jobs to a different company, and that company can be in the same country as the outsourcing company.)

Sports arbitrage  – numerous internet bookmakers offer odds on the outcome of the same event. Any given bookmaker will weight their odds so that no one customer can cover all outcomes at a profit against their books. However, in order to remain competitive they must keep margins usually quite low. Different bookmakers may offer different odds on the same outcome of a given event; by taking the best odds offered by each bookmaker, a customer can under some circumstances cover all possible outcomes of the event and lock a small risk-free profit, known as a Dutch book. This profit will typically be between 1% and 5% but can be much higher. One problem with sports arbitrage is that bookmakers sometimes make mistakes and this can lead to an invocation of the 'palpable error' rule, which most bookmakers invoke when they have made a mistake by offering or posting incorrect odds. As bookmakers become more proficient, the odds of making an 'arb' usually last for less than an hour and typically only a few minutes. Furthermore, huge bets on one side of the market also alert the bookies to correct the market.

Exchange-traded fund arbitrage – Exchange Traded Funds allow authorized participants to exchange back and forth between shares in underlying securities held by the fund and shares in the fund itself, rather than allowing the buying and selling of shares in the ETF directly with the fund sponsor. ETFs trade in the open market, with prices set by market demand. An ETF may trade at a premium or discount to the value of the underlying assets. When a significant enough premium appears, an arbitrageur will buy the underlying securities, convert them to shares in the ETF, and sell them in the open market. When a

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discount appears, an arbitrageur will do the reverse. In this way, the arbitrageur makes a low-risk profit, while keeping ETF prices in line with their underlying value.

Some types of hedge funds make use of a modified form of arbitrage to profit. Rather than exploiting price differences between identical assets, they will purchase and sellsecurities, assets and derivatives with similar characteristics, and hedge any significant differences between the two assets. Any difference between the hedged positions represents any remaining risk (such as basis risk) plus profit; the belief is that there remains some difference which, even after hedging most risk, represents pure profit. For example, a fund may see that there is a substantial difference between U.S. dollar debt and local currency debt of a foreign country, and enter into a series of matching trades (including currency swaps) to arbitrage the difference, while simultaneously entering into credit default swaps to protect against country risk and other types of specific risk.

Google uses the term arbitrage to label certain advertisers who litter their website with ads. Google doesn't allow them to advertise with them because the advertiser would be making more to host these ads on their site than Google would be making from the single click.

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Price convergence

Arbitrage has the effect of causing prices in different markets to converge. As a result of arbitrage, the currency exchange rates, the price of commodities, and the price of securities in different markets tend to converge. The speed at which they do so is a measure of market efficiency. Arbitrage tends to reduce price discrimination by encouraging people to buy an item where the price is low and resell it where the price is high (as long as the buyers are not prohibited from reselling and the transaction costs of buying, holding and reselling are small relative to the difference in prices in the different markets).

Arbitrage moves different currencies toward purchasing power parity. As an example, assume that a car purchased in the United States is cheaper than the same car in Canada. Canadians would buy their cars across the border to exploit the arbitrage condition. At the same time, Americans would buy US cars, transport them across the border, then sell them in Canada. Canadians would have to buy American dollars to buy the cars and Americans would have to sell the Canadian dollars they received in exchange. Both actions would increase demand for US dollars and supply of Canadian dollars. As a result, there would be an appreciation of the US currency. This would make US cars more expensive and Canadian cars less so until their prices were similar. On a larger scale, international arbitrage opportunities in commodities, goods, securities and currencies tend to changeexchange rates until the purchasing power is equal.

In reality, most assets exhibit some difference between countries. These, transaction costs, taxes, and other costs provide an impediment to this kind of arbitrage. Similarly, arbitrage affects the difference in interest rates paid on government bonds issued by the various countries, given the expected depreciations in the currencies relative to each other (see interest rate parity).

[edit]Risks

Arbitrage transactions in modern securities markets involve fairly low day-to-day risks, but can face extremely high risk in rare situations, particularly financial crises, and can lead to bankruptcy. Formally, arbitrage transactions have negative skew – prices can get a small amount closer (but often no closer than 0), while they can get very far apart. The day-to-day risks are generally small because the transactions involve small differences in price, so an execution failure will generally cause a small loss (unless the trade is very big or the price moves rapidly). The rare case risks are extremely high because these small price

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differences are converted to large profits via leverage (borrowed money), and in the rare event of a large price move, this may yield a large loss.

The main day-to-day risk is that part of the transaction fails – execution risk. The main rare risks are counterparty risk and liquidity risk – that a counterparty to a large transaction or many transactions fails to pay, or that one is required to post margin and does not have the money to do so.

In the academic literature, the idea that seemingly very low risk arbitrage trades might not be fully exploited because of these risk factors and other considerations is often referred to as limits to arbitrage.[1][2][3]

[edit]Execution risk

Generally it is impossible to close two or three transactions at the same instant; therefore, there is the possibility that when one part of the deal is closed, a quick shift in prices makes it impossible to close the other at a profitable price. However, this is not necessarily the case. Many exchanges and inter-dealer brokers allow multi legged trades (e.g. basis block trades on LIFFE).

Competition in the marketplace can also create risks during arbitrage transactions. As an example, if one was trying to profit from a price discrepancy between IBM on the NYSE and IBM on the London Stock Exchange, they may purchase a large number of shares on the NYSE and find that they cannot simultaneously sell on the LSE. This leaves the arbitrageur in an unhedged risk position.

In the 1980s, risk arbitrage was common. In this form of speculation, one trades a security that is clearly undervalued or overvalued, when it is seen that the wrong valuation is about to be corrected by events. The standard example is the stock of a company, undervalued in the stock market, which is about to be the object of a takeover bid; the price of the takeover will more truly reflect the value of the company, giving a large profit to those who bought at the current price—if the merger goes through as predicted. Traditionally, arbitrage transactions in the securities markets involve high speed, high volume and low risk. At some moment a price difference exists, and the problem is to execute two or three balancing transactions while the difference persists (that is, before the other arbitrageurs act). When the transaction involves a delay of weeks or months, as above, it may entail considerable risk if borrowed money is used to magnify the reward through leverage. One way of reducing the risk is through the illegal use of inside information, and in fact risk arbitrage with regard to leveraged buyouts was associated with some of the famous financial scandals of the 1980s such as those involving Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.

[edit]Mismatch

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For more details on this topic, see Convergence trade.

Another risk occurs if the items being bought and sold are not identical and the arbitrage is conducted under the assumption that the prices of the items are correlated or predictable; this is more narrowly referred to as a convergence trade. In the extreme case this is merger arbitrage, described below. In comparison to the classical quick arbitrage transaction, such an operation can produce disastrous losses.

[edit]Counterparty risk

As arbitrages generally involve future movements of cash, they are subject to counterparty risk: if a counterparty fails to fulfill their side of a transaction. This is a serious problem if one has either a single trade or many related trades with a single counterparty, whose failure thus poses a threat, or in the event of a financial crisis when many counterparties fail. This hazard is serious because of the large quantities one must trade in order to make a profit on small price differences.

For example, if one purchases many risky bonds, then hedges them with CDSes, profiting from the difference between the bond spread and the CDS premium, in a financial crisis the bonds may default and the CDS writer/seller may itself fail, due to the stress of the crisis, causing the arbitrageur to face steep losses.

Liquidity risk

“ Markets can remain irrational far longer than you or I can remain solvent. ”

—John Maynard Keynes

Arbitrage trades are necessarily synthetic, leveraged trades, as they involve a short position. If the assets used are not identical (so a price divergence makes the trade temporarily lose money), or the margin treatment is not identical, and the trader is accordingly required to post margin (faces a margin call), the trader may run out of capital (if they run out of cash and cannot borrow more) and go bankrupt even though the trades may be expected to ultimately make money. In effect, arbitrage traders synthesize a put option on their ability to finance themselves.[4]

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Prices may diverge during a financial crisis, often termed a "flight to quality"; these are precisely the times when it is hardest for leveraged investors to raise capital (due to overall capital constraints), and thus they will lack capital precisely when they need it most.[4]

[edit]Types of arbitrage

[edit]Merger arbitrage

Also called risk arbitrage, merger arbitrage generally consists of buying the stock of a company that is the target of a takeover while shorting the stock of the acquiring company.

Usually the market price of the target company is less than the price offered by the acquiring company. The spread between these two prices depends mainly on the probability and the timing of the takeover being completed as well as the prevailing level of interest rates.

The bet in a merger arbitrage is that such a spread will eventually be zero, if and when the takeover is completed. The risk is that the deal "breaks" and the spread massively widens.

[edit]Municipal bond arbitrage

Also called municipal bond relative value arbitrage, municipal arbitrage, or just muni arb, this hedge fund strategy involves one of two approaches.

Generally, managers seek relative value opportunities by being both long and short municipal bonds with a duration-neutral book. The relative value trades may be between different issuers, different bonds issued by the same entity, or capital structure trades referencing the same asset (in the case of revenue bonds). Managers aim to capture the inefficiencies arising from the heavy participation of non-economic investors (i.e., high income "buy and hold" investors seeking tax-exempt income) as well as the "crossover buying" arising from corporations' or individuals' changing income tax situations (i.e., insurers switching their munis for corporates after a large loss as they can capture a higher after-tax yield by offsetting the taxable corporate income with underwriting losses). There are additional inefficiencies arising from the highly fragmented nature of the municipal bond market which has two million outstanding issues and 50,000 issuers in contrast to the Treasury market which has 400 issues and a single issuer.

Second, managers construct leveraged portfolios of AAA- or AA-rated tax-exempt municipal bonds with the duration risk hedged by shorting the appropriate ratio of taxable corporate bonds. These corporate equivalents are typically interest rate swaps referencing Libor or SIFMA [1]  [2]. The arbitrage manifests itself in the

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form of a relatively cheap longer maturity municipal bond, which is a municipal bond that yields significantly more than 65% of a corresponding taxable corporate bond. The steeper slope of the municipalyield curve allows participants to collect more after-tax income from the municipal bond portfolio than is spent on the interest rate swap; the carry is greater than the hedge expense. Positive, tax-free carry from muni arb can reach into the double digits. The bet in this municipal bond arbitrage is that, over a longer period of time, two similar instruments—municipal bonds and interest rate swaps—will correlate with each other; they are both very high quality credits, have the same maturity and are denominated in U.S. dollars. Credit risk and duration risk are largely eliminated in this strategy. However, basis risk arises from use of an imperfect hedge, which results in significant, but range-bound principal volatility. The end goal is to limit this principal volatility, eliminating its relevance over time as the high, consistent, tax-free cash flow accumulates. Since the inefficiency is related to government tax policy, and hence is structural in nature, it has not been arbitraged away.

Note, however, that many municipal bonds are callable, and that this imposes substantial additional risks to the strategy.

Convertible bond arbitrage

A convertible bond is a bond that an investor can return to the issuing company in exchange for a predetermined number of shares in the company.

A convertible bond can be thought of as a corporate bond with a stock call option attached to it.

The price of a convertible bond is sensitive to three major factors:

interest rate . When rates move higher, the bond part of a convertible bond tends to move lower, but the call option part of a convertible bond moves higher (and the aggregate tends to move lower).

stock price. When the price of the stock the bond is convertible into moves higher, the price of the bond tends to rise.

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credit spread . If the creditworthiness of the issuer deteriorates (e.g. rating downgrade) and its credit spread widens, the bond price tends to move lower, but, in many cases, the call option part of the convertible bond moves higher (since credit spread correlates with volatility).

Given the complexity of the calculations involved and the convoluted structure that a convertible bond can have, an arbitrageur often relies on sophisticated quantitative models in order to identify bonds that are trading cheap versus their theoretical value.

Convertible arbitrage consists of buying a convertible bond and hedging two of the three factors in order to gain exposure to the third factor at a very attractive price.

For instance an arbitrageur would first buy a convertible bond, then sell fixed income securities or interest rate futures (to hedge the interest rate exposure) and buy some credit protection (to hedge the risk of credit deterioration). Eventually what he'd be left with is something similar to a call option on the underlying stock, acquired at a very low price. He could then make money either selling some of the more expensive options that are openly traded in the market or delta hedging his exposure to the underlying shares.

[edit]Depository receipts

A depositary receipt is a security that is offered as a "tracking stock" on another foreign market. For instance a Chinese company wishing to raise more money may issue a depository receipt on the New York Stock Exchange, as the amount of capital on the local exchanges is limited. These securities, known as ADRs (American Depositary Receipt) or GDRs (Global Depositary Receipt) depending on where they are issued, are typically considered "foreign" and therefore trade at a lower value when first released. Many ADR's are exchangeable into the original security (known as fungibility) and actually have the same value. In this case there is a spread between the perceived value and real value, which can be extracted. Other ADR's that are not exchangeable often have much larger spreads. Since the ADR is trading at a value lower than what it is worth, one can purchase the ADR and expect to make money as its value converges on the original. However there is a chance that the original stock will fall in value too, so by shorting it one can hedge that risk.

[edit]Dual-listed companies

A dual-listed company (DLC) structure involves two companies incorporated in different countries contractually agreeing to operate their businesses as if they were

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a single enterprise, while retaining their separate legal identity and existing stock exchange listings. In integrated and efficient financial markets, stock prices of the twin pair should move in lockstep. In practice, DLC share prices exhibit large deviations from theoretical parity. Arbitrage positions in DLCs can be set up by obtaining a long position in the relatively underpriced part of the DLC and a short position in the relatively overpriced part. Such arbitrage strategies start paying off as soon as the relative prices of the two DLC stocks converge toward theoretical parity. However, since there is no identifiable date at which DLC prices will converge, arbitrage positions sometimes have to be kept open for considerable periods of time. In the meantime, the price gap might widen. In these situations, arbitrageurs may receive margin calls, after which they would most likely be forced to liquidate part of the position at a highly unfavorable moment and suffer a loss. Arbitrage in DLCs may be profitable, but is also very risky.[5][6]

A good illustration of the risk of DLC arbitrage is the position in Royal Dutch Shell—which had a DLC structure until 2005—by the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management(LTCM, see also the discussion below). Lowenstein (2000) [7] describes that LTCM established an arbitrage position in Royal Dutch Shell in the summer of 1997, when Royal Dutch traded at an 8 to 10 percent premium. In total $2.3 billion was invested, half of which long in Shell and the other half short in Royal Dutch (Lowenstein, p. 99). In the autumn of 1998 large defaults on Russian debt created significant losses for the hedge fund and LTCM had to unwind several positions. Lowenstein reports that the premium of Royal Dutch had increased to about 22 percent and LTCM had to close the position and incur a loss. According to Lowenstein (p. 234), LTCM lost $286 million in equity pairs trading and more than half of this loss is accounted for by the Royal Dutch Shell trade.

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Private to public equities

The market prices for privately held companies are typically viewed from a return on investment perspective (such as 25%), whilst publicly held and or exchange listed companies trade on a Price to earnings ratio (P/E) (such as a P/E of 10, which equates to a 10% ROI). Thus, if a publicly traded company specialises in the acquisition of privately held companies, from a per-share perspective there is a gain with every acquisition that falls within these guidelines. Exempli gratia, Berkshire-Hathaway. A hedge fund that is an example of this type of arbitrage is Greenridge Capital, which acts as an angel investor retaining equity in private companies which are in the process of becoming publicly traded, buying in the private market and later selling in the public market. Private to public equities arbitrage is a term which can arguably be applied to investment banking in general. Private markets to public markets differences may also help explain the overnight windfall gains enjoyed by principals of companies that just did an initial public offering (IPO).

[edit]Regulatory arbitrage

For more details on this topic, see Jurisdictional arbitrage.

Regulatory arbitrage is where a regulated institution takes advantage of the difference between its real (or economic) risk and the regulatory position. For example, if a bank, operating under the Basel I accord, has to hold 8% capital against default risk, but the real risk of default is lower, it is profitable to securitise the loan, removing the low risk loan from its portfolio. On the other hand, if the real risk is higher than the regulatory risk then it is profitable to make that loan and hold on to it, provided it is priced appropriately.

This process can increase the overall riskiness of institutions under a risk insensitive regulatory regime, as described by Alan Greenspan in his October 1998 speech on The Role of Capital in Optimal Banking Supervision and Regulation.

Regulatory Arbitrage was used for the first time in 2005 when it was applied by Scott V. Simpson, a partner at law firm Skadden, Arps, to refer to a new defence tactic in hostile mergers and acquisitions where differing takeover regimes in deals involving multi-jurisdictions are exploited to the advantage of a target company under threat.

In economics, regulatory arbitrage (sometimes, tax arbitrage) may be used to refer to situations when a company can choose a nominal place of business with a regulatory, legal or tax regime with lower costs. For example, an insurance company may choose to locate in Bermuda due to preferential tax

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rates and policies for insurance companies. This can occur particularly where the business transaction has no obvious physical location: in the case of many financial products, it may be unclear "where" the transaction occurs.

Regulatory arbitrage can include restructuring a bank by outsourcing services such as IT. The outsourcing company takes over the installations, buying out the bank's assets and charges a periodic service fee back to the bank. This frees up cashflow usable for new lending by the bank. The bank will have higher IT costs, but counts on the multiplier effect ofmoney creation and the interest rate spread to make it a profitable exercise.

Example: Suppose the bank sells its IT installations for 40 million USD. With a reserve ratio of 10%, the bank can create 400 million USD in additional loans (there is a time lag, and the bank has to expect to recover the loaned money back into its books). The bank can often lend (and securitize the loan) to the IT services company to cover the acquisition cost of the IT installations. This can be at preferential rates, as the sole client using the IT installation is the bank. If the bank can generate 5% interest margin on the 400 million of new loans, the bank will increase interest revenues by 20 million. The IT services company is free to leverage their balance sheet as aggressively as they and their banker agree to. This is the reason behind the trend towards outsourcing in the financial sector. Without this money creation benefit, it is actually more expensive to outsource the IT operations as the outsourcing adds a layer of management and increases overhead.

[edit]Telecom arbitrage

Main article: International telecommunications routes

Telecom arbitrage companies allow phone users to make international calls for free through certain access numbers. Such services are offered in the United Kingdom; the telecommunication arbitrage companies get paid an interconnect charge by the UK mobile networks and then buy international routes at a lower cost. The calls are seen as free by the UK contract mobile phone customers since they are using up their allocated monthly minutes rather than paying for additional calls.

Such services were previously offered in the United States by companies such as FuturePhone.com.[8] These services would operate in rural telephone exchanges, primarily in small towns in the state of Iowa. In these areas, the local telephone carriers are allowed to charge a high "termination fee" to the caller's carrier in order to fund the cost of providing service to the small and sparsely populated areas that they serve. However, FuturePhone (as well as other similar services) ceased operations upon legal challenges from AT&T and other service providers.[9]

Statistical arbitrage

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Main article: Statistical arbitrage

Statistical arbitrage is an imbalance in expected nominal values. A casino has a statistical arbitrage in every game of chance that it offers—referred to as the house advantage, house edge, vigorish or house vigorish.

The debacle of Long-Term Capital Management

Main article: Long-Term Capital Management

Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) lost 4.6 billion U.S. dollars in fixed income arbitrage in September 1998. LTCM had attempted to make money on the price difference between different bonds. For example, it would sell U.S. Treasury securities and buy Italian bond futures. The concept was that because Italian bond futures had a less liquid market, in the short term Italian bond futures would have a higher return than U.S. bonds, but in the long term, the prices would converge. Because the difference was small, a large amount of money had to be borrowed to make the buying and selling profitable.

The downfall in this system began on August 17, 1998, when Russia defaulted on its ruble debt and domestic dollar debt. Because the markets were already nervous due to theAsian financial crisis, investors began selling non-U.S. treasury debt and buying U.S. treasuries, which were considered a safe investment. As a result the price on US treasuries began to increase and the return began decreasing because there were many buyers, and the return (yield) on other bonds began to increase because there were many sellers (i.e. the price of those bonds fell). This caused the difference between the prices of U.S. treasuries and other bonds to increase, rather than to decrease as LTCM was expecting. Eventually this caused LTCM to fold, and their creditors had to arrange a bail-out. More controversially, officials of the Federal Reserve assisted in the negotiations that led to this bail-out, on the grounds that so many companies and deals were intertwined with LTCM that if LTCM actually failed, they would as well, causing a collapse in confidence in the economic system. Thus LTCM failed as a fixed income arbitrage fund, although it is unclear what sort of profit was realized by the banks that bailed LTCM out.

Etymology

"Arbitrage" is a French word and denotes a decision by an arbitrator or arbitration tribunal. (In modern French, "arbitre" usually means referee or umpire.) In the sense used here it is first defined in 1704 by Mathieu de la Porte in his treatise "La science des négocians et teneurs de livres" as a consideration of different exchange

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rates to recognize the most profitable places of issuance and settlement for a bill of exchange ("L'arbitrage est une combinaison que l’on fait de plusieurs changes, pour connoitre [connaître, in modern spelling] quelle place est plus avantageuse pour tirer et remettre".)[10]

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Arbitrage betting

Betting arbitrage, miraclebets, surebets, sports arbitraging is a particular case of arbitrage arising on betting markets due to either bookmakers' different opinions on event outcomes or plain errors. By placing one bet per each outcome with different betting companies, the bettor can make a profit, regardless of the outcome under ideal circumstances. In the bettors' slang an arbitrage is often referred to as an arb; people who use arbitrage are called arbers. A typical arb is around 2 percent, often less; however 4-5 percent are occasionally seen and during some special events they might reach 20 percent. Arbitrage betting involves relatively large sums of money (stakes are bigger than in normal betting), due to large sums of money required to generate a decent profit. It is usually detected faster by bookmakers. Arbitrage betting is almost always insufficiently profitable due to detection, hackers, unreliable betting websites, limiting of stakes, and the use of high percentage arb's to con arbitrage bettors into giving security details.

Bookmakers generally disapprove of arbers, and restrict or close the accounts of those who they suspect of engaging in arbitrage betting. Although arbitrage betting has existed since the beginnings of bookmaking, the rise of the Internet, odds-comparison websites and betting exchanges have enabled the practice to be easier to perform. On the other hand, these changes also made it easier for bookmakers to keep their odds in line with the market.

The best way of generating profit, which has been established in Britain via sports arbitrage, consists of highly experienced 'key men' employing others to place bets on their behalf, so as to avoid detection and increase accessibility to retail

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bookmakers. This allows the financiers or key arbers to stay at a computer to keep track of market movement.

Arbing is an extremely fast-paced process and successful arbing requires lots of time, experience, dedication and discipline.

There are a number of potential arbitrage deals. Below is an explanation of some of them including formulas and risks associated with these arbitrage deals. The table below introduces a number of variables that will be used to formalise the arbitrage models.

Variable ExplanationStake in outcome 1Stake in outcome 2Odds for outcome 1Odds for outcome 2Return if outcome 1 occursReturn if outcome 2 occurs

[edit]Arbitrage using bookmakers

This type of arbitrage takes advantage of different odds offered by different bookmakers. Assume the following situation:

We consider an event with 2 possible outcomes (e.g. a tennis match - either Federer wins or Henman wins), the idea can be generalized to events with more outcomes, but we use this as an example.

The 2 bookmakers have different ideas of who has the best chances of winning. They offer the following Fixed-odds gambling on the outcomes of the event

Bookmaker 1 Bookmaker2Outcome 1 1.25 1.43Outcome 2 3.9 2.85

For an individual bookmaker, the sum of the inverse of all outcomes of an event will always be greater than 1.   and 

The bookmaker's return rate is  , which is the amount the bookmaker earns on offering bets at some event. Bookmaker 1 will in this example expect to earn 5.34% on bets on the tennis game. Usually these gaps will be in the order 8 - 12%.

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The idea is to find odds at different bookmakers, where the sum of the inverse of all the outcomes are below 1. Meaning that the bookmakers disagree on the chances of the outcomes. This discrepancy can be used to obtain a profit.

For instance if one places a bet on outcome 1 at bookmaker 2 and outcome 2 at bookmaker 1:

Placing a bet of $100 on outcome 1 with bookmaker 2 and a bet of   on outcome 2 at bookmaker 1 would ensure the bettor a profit.

In case outcome 1 comes out, one could collect   from bookmaker 2. In case outcome 2 comes out, one could collect   from bookmaker 1. One would have invested $136.67, but have collected $143, a profit of $6.33 (4.6%) no matter the outcome of the event.

So for 2 odds   and  , where  . If one wishes to place stake   at outcome 1, then one should place   at outcome 2, to even out the odds, and receive the same return no matter the outcome of the event.

Or in other words, if there are two outcomes, a 2/1 and a 3/1, by covering the 2/1 with $500 and the 3/1 with $333, one is guaranteed to win $1000 at a cost of $833, giving a 20% profit. More often profits exists around the 4% mark or less.

Reducing the risk of human error is vital being that the mathematical formula is sound and only external factors add "risk". Numerous online arbitrage calculator tools exist to help bettors get the math right. For example, arb calculators can handle calculations for both book arbitrage (back/back or lay/lay) and back/lay arbitrage opportunities on an intra-exchange or inter-exchange basis, and is free.

NOTE For arbs involving three outcomes (e.g. WIN, LOSE and DRAW) having the odds   for Outcome 1,   for outcome 2 and   for outcome 3 with there respective bids being  ,   and   and sum of the bids being B.

The amount required to bet on each possibility in order to ensure profit can be calculated by

[edit]Back-lay sports arbitrage

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Betting exchanges such as Smarkets have opened up a new range of arbitrage possibilities since on the exchanges it is possible to lay (i.e. to bet against) as well as to back an outcome. Arbitrage using only the back or lay side might occur on betting exchanges. It is in principle the same as the arbitrage using different bookmakers. Arbitrage using back and lay side is possible if a lay bet on one exchange provides shorter odds than a back bet on another exchange or bookmaker. However, the commission charged by the bookmakers and exchanges must be included into calculations.

Back-lay sports arbitrage is often called scalping or trading. Scalping is not actually arbitrage, but short term trading. In the context of sports arbitrage betting a scalping trader or scalper looks to make lots of small profits, which in time can add up. In theory a trader could turn a small investment into large profits by re-investing his earlier profits into future bets so as to generate exponential growth. Scalping relies on liquidity in the markets and that the odds will fluctuate around a mean point. A key advantage to scalping on one exchange is that most exchanges charge commission only on the net winnings in a particular event, thus ensuring that even the smallest favorable difference in the odds will guarantee some profit.

[edit]Bonus sports arbitrage

Many bookmakers offer first time users a signup bonus in the range $10 – $200 for depositing an initial amount. They typically demand that this amount is wagered a number of times before the bonus can be withdrawn. Bonus sport arbitraging is a form of sports arbitraging where you hedge or back your bets as usual, but since you received the bonus, a small loss can be allowed on each wager (2-5%), which comes off your profit. In this way the bookmakers wagering demand can be met and the initial deposit and sign up bonus can be withdrawn with little loss.

The advantage over usual betting arbitrage is that it is a lot easier to find bets with an acceptable loss, instead of an actual profit. Since most bookmakers offer these bonuses this can potentially be exploited to harvest the sign up bonuses.

Making money:

By signing up to various bookmakers, it's possible to turn these 'free' bets into cash fairly quickly, and either making a small arbitrage, or in the majority of cases, making a small loss on each bet, or trade. However, it is relatively time consuming to find close matched bets or arbs, which is where an arb / close matched bet service is useful. Additionally as many bookies require a certain turnover of the bonus amount, matching money from different bookies against each other enables

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the player to in effect quickly "play free" the money of the losing bookie and in effect transfer it to the winning bookie. By in this way avoiding most of the turnover requirements the player can usually expect a 70-80 return on investment.

Drawbacks:

As well as spending time physically matching odds from various bet sites to exchanges, the other draw back with bonus bagging / arb trading in this sense is that often the free bets are 'non-stake returned'. This effectively reduces the odds, in decimal format, by 1. Therefore, in order to reduce 'losses' on the free bet, it is necessary to place a bet with high odds, so that the percentage difference of the decrease in odds is minimised.

[edit]Arbitrage in practice

While often claimed to be "risk-free", this is only true if an arb is successfully completed; in reality, there are several threats to this:

Disappearance of arb: Arbs in online sports markets have a median lifetime of around 15 minutes,[1] after which the difference in odds underpinning them vanishes through betting activity. Without rapid alerting (Surebet Monitor services or software) and action, it is possible to fail to make all the "legs" of the arb before it vanishes, thus transforming it from a risk-free arb into a conventional bet with the usual risks involved. High street bookmakers however, offer their odds days in advance and rarely change them once they've been set. These arbs can have a lifetime of several hours.

Hackers: Due to the large amount of accounts that have to be created and managed (containing personal details like eMail, name, address, eWallet, credit card info etc.), arbitrage traders are highly susceptible to cyber fraud, such as bank account theft. While making deposits is usually made easy and quick, making withdrawals always requires proof of identity in the form of passport/driver license, copies of which need to be shared with the bookies via fax/email or even postal mail, which causes additional identity theft risks. It is estimated that at least 20%-30% of all arbitrage bettors fall victim to some form of cyber crime. Traders are often attracted to high odds comparison sites that yield high percentage profits per stake(5-30%), this is often used by hackers to lure a high number of arbitrage bettors that then place large sums of money on these arb's, only to lose all of the profit and even entire savings in bank accounts to hackers or untrustworthy websites, which may further use the gathered data to sell personal data to criminals.

Making errors: In the excitement of the action and due to the high number of bets placed, it is not uncommon to make a mistake (like traders on financial markets).

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For example the appropriate stakes may be incorrectly calculated, or be placed on the wrong "legs" of the arb, locking in a loss, or there may be inadequate funds in one of the accounts to complete the arb. Those errors might temporarily have an important impact. In the long term, the benefit will depend on the odds. For example one could actually make more money by placing the "wrong" bet where the outcome happens to be beneficial, though not justified by the arbitrage calculation. However, this stroke of luck being repeated is unlikely, assuming the bookies have calculated the odds so they make a profit. Furthermore, bookie websites and bet placement interfaces differ with all bookies, so that arbers need to be familiar with different web interfaces. In some sports different bookmakers deal with outcomes in different ways; e.g. player withdrawal due to injury in tennis, treatment of overtime in ice hockey, meaning that both "legs" can lose. Matching terms for all bookmakers is time consuming.

Detection: There are only very few bookies who openly tolerate arbing (such as for example pinnaclesports.com). Many bookmakers may now be using shared security servers in order to pinpoint people suspected of arbitrage betting, they can simply limit stakes to make arbing unprofitable and even close accounts without honouring a bet that was placed. Loss of deposited money into a bookmaker could occur. This usually leads to unprofitable arbing as the most successful bookmakers are so adept at identifying arbitrage bettors, without these countermeasure the gambling industry would not be able to generate a large overall profit consistently every year.

Bet cancellation: If a bettor places bets so as to make an arbitrage and one bookmaker cancels a bet, the bettor could find himself in a bad position because he is actually betting with all the risks implied. The bettor can repeat the bet that has been cancelled so as minimize the risk, but if he cannot get the same odds he had before he may be forced to take a loss. In some cases the situation arises when there are very high potential payouts by the bookie, perhaps due to an unintentional error made while quoting odds. Many jurisdictions allow bookmakers to cancel bets in the event of such a "palpable" ["obvious"] error in the quoted odds This is often loosely defined as an obvious mistake, but whether a "palp" in fact has been made is often the sole discretion of the bookmaker.

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Other problems:

Bookmakers who encourage responsible gambling will close accounts where they see only large losses, unaware that the arb trader has made wins at other books.

Capital diffusion is serious; many bookmakers make it very easy to deposit funds and difficult to withdraw them. Making a return involves many bets spread over typically many bookmakers so keeping track is a considerable challenge, and requires excellent record-keeping and discipline.

While there are commercial software products and web services available to help with some of these tasks, these are usually still fairly complicated tools which also further lower the total RoR because of the initial investment required, or even the monthly subscription fees involved.

Arbers using software tools or web services to find arbs, will often make an existing arb even more prominent and obvious to the bookie because of the number of arbers placing bets on the same outcome, so that the lifetime of an arb found via such tools is often even much shorter than the average 15 minutes. Thus, the risk of seeing bets revoked is also often much higher for arbs found via such tools than for arbs found manually, that are not shared with other arbers.

In addition, arbing often involves making use of bookie bonuses, these however, usually need to be turned over a number of times before a bettor becomes eligible for withdrawal, which may further reduce his total liquidity.

Foreign currency movements can wipe out small percentage gains and can make quick calculation of stakes difficult.

Transferring funds between bookmakers and eWallets may create additional costs at some point, most bookmakers and/or eWallets limit deposits to certain amounts per month.

Withdrawals are often limited to a certain amount per month or to a certain number of free withdrawals per month

Withdrawals are often charged for, not just on the side of the bookie, but sometimes also on the eWallet side (transfer to the bettor's bank account).

In some countries, additional costs are caused by government taxes, so that the final profit is further reduced by a fixed percentage of say 5%.

Professional arbitrage betting may eat up considerable time and energy and requires lots of experience and liquidity, as well as sufficient funds to recover from inevitable losses that will happen sooner or later due to some of the aforementioned reasons.

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Typically, arbs have a profit margin of only 2-5% - many other arbs are so called "high risk" arbs ("palps"). Accordingly, profits accumulated through 20-40 successful arbs can be quickly lost just with a single failed arb.

Risk arbitrage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Risk arbitrage, or merger arbitrage, is an investment or trading strategy often associated with hedge funds.

Two principal types of merger are possible: a cash merger, and a stock merger. In a cash merger, an acquirer proposes to purchase the shares of the target for a certain price in cash. Until the acquisition is completed, the stock of the target typically trades below the purchase price. An arbitrageur buys the stock of the target and makes a gain if the acquirer ultimately buys the stock.

In a stock for stock merger, the acquirer proposes to buy the target by exchanging its own stock for the stock of the target. An arbitrageur may then short sell the acquirer and buy the stock of the target. This process is called "setting a spread." After the merger is completed, the target's stock will be converted into stock of the acquirer based on the exchange ratio determined by the merger agreement. The arbitrageur delivers the converted stock into his short position to complete the arbitrage.

If this strategy were risk-free, many investors would immediately adopt it, and any possible gain for any investor would disappear. However, risk arises from the possibility of deals failing to go through. Obstacles may include either party's inability to satisfy conditions of the merger, a failure to obtain the requisite shareholder approval, failure to receive antitrustand other regulatory clearances, or some other event which may change the target's or the acquirer's willingness to consummate the transaction. Such possibilities put the risk in the term risk arbitrage.

Additional complications can arise in stock for stock mergers when the exchange ratio is not constant but changes with the price of the acquirer. These are called "collars" and arbitrageurs use options-based models to value deals with collars. In

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addition, the exchange ratio is commonly determined by taking the average of the acquirer's closing price over a period of time (typically 10 trading days prior to close), during which time the arbitrageur would actively hedge his position in order to ensure the correct hedge ratio.

In terms of hedge fund strategies, risk arbitrage shares some properties with other forms of arbitrage such as relative value, volatility arbitrage, convertible arbitrage, and statistical arbitrage, but it is also an example of an event driven strategy

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Uncovered interest arbitrage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Uncovered interest arbitrage is an arbitrage trading strategy whereby an investor capitalizes on the interest rate differential between two countries. Unlike covered interest arbitrage, uncovered interest arbitrage involves no hedging of foreign exchange risk with the use of forward contracts or any other contract.[1][2] The strategy is not completely riskless as an investor exposed to exchange rate fluctuations is speculating that exchange rates will remain favorable enough for arbitrage to be possible.[3] The opportunity to earn riskless profits arises from the reality that the interest rate parity condition does not constantly hold. When foreign exchange markets or interest rates are not in a state ofequilibrium, investors will no longer be indifferent among the available interest rates in two countries and will invest in whichever currency offers a higher rate of return.[4] Economists have discovered various factors which affect the occurrence of deviations from uncovered interest rate parity and the fleeting nature of uncovered interest arbitrage opportunities, such as differing characteristics of assets, varying frequencies of time series data, and the transaction costs associated with arbitrage trading strategies.

[edit]Mechanics of uncovered interest arbitrage

A visual representation of a simplified uncovered interest arbitrage scenario, ignoring compounding interest.

An arbitrageur executes an uncovered interest arbitrage strategy by exchanging domestic currency for foreign currency at the currentspot exchange rate, then investing the foreign currency at the foreign interest rate.[5][6]

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For example, consider that an investor with $5,000,000 USD is considering whether to invest abroad using an uncovered interest arbitrage strategy or to invest domestically. The dollar deposit interest rate is 3.4% in the United States, while the euro deposit rate is 4.6% in the euro area. The current spot exchange rate is 1.2730 $/€. For simplicity, the example ignores compounding interest. Investing $5,000,000 USD domestically at 3.4% for six months ignoring compounding, will result in a future value of $5,170,000 USD. However, exchanging $5,000,000 dollars for euros today, investing those euros at 4.6% for six months ignoring compounding, and exchanging the future value of euros for dollars at the future spot exchange rate (which for this example is 1.2820 $/€), will result in $5,266,976 USD, implying that investing abroad using uncovered interest arbitrage is the superior alternative if the future spot exchange rate turns out to be favorable.

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