Capital Markets & Derivatives Fundamentals

Session Overview

What This Session Covers

Market structure to regulatory constraints — the financial context behind every system you build.

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Market Structure

How capital markets are organized — exchanges, OTC markets, clearing houses, and the flow of a trade from execution to settlement.

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Instruments & Pricing

Equities, fixed income, FX, and derivatives — how each instrument works, what drives its price, and where risk lives.

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Risk Concepts

The Greeks, VaR, PnL attribution — the vocabulary of risk that every engineer building trading infrastructure needs to speak.

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Regulatory Landscape

Dodd-Frank, EMIR, Basel III — how regulation shapes system design, reporting requirements, and what compliance teams actually need.

Session Structure

The Agenda

Finance fluency for the people who build the systems. No prerequisites assumed — deep context guaranteed.

Block 01

How Capital Markets Work

Market structure: exchanges vs OTC, lit vs dark — the plumbing underneath every trade

Trade lifecycle: order → execution → clearing → settlement — what happens between "buy" and "done"

Key participants: buy-side, sell-side, prime brokers, CCPs — who does what and why it matters to engineers

Block 02

Instruments: What You're Actually Building For

Equities and fixed income — pricing basics, yield curves, duration, and why bonds behave the way they do

Derivatives: futures, options, swaps — how they're priced, margined, and what risk they transfer

Collateral and margin: why assets move between counterparties and what triggers a margin call

Exercise Trace a derivatives trade from execution to settlement — identify every system, data feed, and counterparty touchpoint along the way

Block 03

Risk: The Language of the Trading Floor

PnL attribution — breaking down profit and loss into its components so you know what's actually driving performance

The Greeks (delta, gamma, vega, theta) — not just definitions but what they mean for system design and data requirements

Value at Risk (VaR) and its limits — what it measures, what it misses, and why it's still the industry standard

Key Insight Risk is not a number. It's a distribution. Engineers who understand this build better systems.

Block 04

Regulation and What It Demands from Systems

Post-2008 reform: Dodd-Frank and EMIR — what changed, why, and how it shaped modern trading infrastructure

Reporting obligations: trade repositories, real-time reporting, and the data quality problem

Capital requirements under Basel III — how bank capital rules drive product decisions on the trading desk

Exercise Audit a hypothetical system design against a regulatory checklist — identify which reporting requirements it satisfies and which it misses

What You Leave With

Reference Materials

Session Frameworks

Fluency that changes how you build

Three reference tools for technical teams working in financial markets — designed to be kept and used, not just read once.

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The Trade Lifecycle Map

A reference diagram tracing every touchpoint from order placement to settlement — with the systems, data flows, and risk checks at each stage.

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Instrument Primer

A concise reference for equities, fixed income, and key derivatives — pricing mechanics, risk characteristics, and what each instrument demands from a data system.

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Regulatory Checklist

A practical guide to the key reporting and capital requirements that shape trading system design — mapped to the engineering decisions they affect.

Skills Covered

What You'll Understand

Capital Markets Derivatives Risk Management Trade Lifecycle Fixed Income Equities PnL Attribution The Greeks VaR Collateral & Margin Dodd-Frank / EMIR Clearing & Settlement Market Microstructure

How Capital Markets Work

Instruments: What You're Actually Building For

Risk: The Language of the Trading Floor

Regulation and What It Demands from Systems

Fluency that changes how you build

Bring this seminar to your engineering or risk team.