ABSTRACT
This book is divided into three sections: first, developing country debt; second, volatility and risk; and third, liquidity. Each of these areas has important unresolved issues regarding financial markets in general, and futures markets in particular. Moreover, in each case the futures markets aspects of these issues appear to have received relatively less attention than their spot market counterparts. Indeed, there are reasons to expect futures markets to behave differently compared with spot markets, because of important asymmetries between spot and futures markets, and within futures markets. An example of the first type of asymmetry is that futures markets operate on margin, whereas spot market transactions typically require payment in full. An example of the second type of asymmetry is that within futures markets, delivery, if possible, is only at seller’s option.
