The options and futures traded on exchanges are derivatives contracts.

In the 1987 stock market crash, according to the conclusions of the official Brady report, colossal sales of stock index futures by so-called portfolio insurers - whose investment strategies depended entirely on these derivatives - greatly exacerbated the 500-point market decline.

The good thing about a dealer's derivatives portfolio is that it is marked to market.

When they are employed wisely, derivatives make the world simpler because they give their buyers an ability to manage and transfer risk.

Every regulatory speech on derivatives takes a bow to their hedging 'benefits.' Less publicly, regulators pay their respects to derivative profits, a blessed relief from the banks' troubled loans to less-developed countries, highly leveraged companies, and real estate swingers.

A futures contract is a derivative, but the futures exchange doesn't call them 'derivatives,' they call them 'futures.'