Derivative valuation in incomplete markets: from commodities to equity-linked insurance

我们都容易受到金融市场中蕴含的风险的影响。在世界范围内，这些风险变得更加多样化，同时也更加相互关联。金融市场存在的主要原因之一是，不希望承担某些风险特征的个人可以将其交易出去，以换取他们满意的风险状况。个人投资者主要通过股票和债券交易，或通过共同基金管理投资组合来实现这一目标。然而，推动金融市场的主要力量是由老练的投资银行家焊接的。它们生产出越来越复杂的金融工具，以满足风险寻求者、套期保值者和套利者的胃口--投机风险的投资者、希望消除或平衡风险的投资者，以及试图通过抵消一种风险来（几乎）获得确定利润的投资者。

We are all prone to the risks embedded in the financial markets. On a world scale, these risks are becoming both more diversified and simultaneously more interlinked. One of the main reasons that the financial markets exist is so that individuals who do not wish to take on certain risk characteristics can trade them away in exchange for a risk profile they are comfortable with. Individual investors do this mostly by trading in stocks and bonds, or managed portfolios through mutual funds. However, the main forces which push the financial markets are welded by the sophisticated investment bankers. They produce ever more complex financial instruments to sate the appetite of risk seekers, hedgers and arbitragers - investors who speculate on risk, investors who wish to remove or balance risk, and investors who try to make (almost) for sure profits by offsetting one risk against another.