Guide
Collateral Debt Obligations
Collateralized debt obligations redistribute the credit risk of pooled debt through tranches, making the collateral, payment waterfall and loss structure central to understanding the investment.
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MarketReview author profile
Eric Baker
Trading and Quantitative Markets Contributor
ActiveEric Baker brings more than two decades of trading experience to MarketReview, including work with personal accounts and at a proprietary trading firm. He continues to follow and participate in markets, with a particular interest in the decisions traders make when outcomes cannot be known in advance.
His writing concentrates on process: estimating probabilities, sizing positions, comparing expected return with downside risk and deciding how much uncertainty a strategy can bear. He also draws an important distinction between decision quality and outcome. A winning trade may have been poorly judged, while a sound decision can still lose money.
Eric contributes to MarketReview’s coverage of active trading, futures, derivatives and quantitative decision-making. He explains numerical ideas in practical terms, while making clear that models and calculations are tools for managing uncertainty—not ways to remove it.
Areas of coverage
- Trading
- Market probabilities
- Quantitative decision-making
- Risk management
- Futures
- Derivatives
Published work
Latest work by Eric Baker
News, analysis and evergreen financial guides credited to this author.
Guide
Swaps
Swaps let institutions exchange financial cash flows or exposures tied to interest rates, currencies, commodities, equities and credit without necessarily trading the underlying asset.
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Guide
The Function of Derivatives
Derivatives help businesses and investors transfer risk, establish future prices and reshape financial exposure, but those benefits depend on liquidity, sound pricing and disciplined risk management.
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Guide
Risks of Options Trading
Options can define risk, amplify exposure or create substantial obligations, so understanding leverage, time decay, assignment and liquidity is essential before trading them.
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Guide
Writing Options
Writing options means accepting a contractual obligation in exchange for premium, so the real question is not how much income the trade produces but what risk remains if the option is assigned.
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Guide
Using Options to Manage Risk
Options can limit selected portfolio and business risks, but effective hedging requires matching the contract, cost and duration to the exposure being protected.
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Guide
Trading Options for Profit
Options can magnify a market view, but profitable trading depends on contract selection, pricing, volatility, execution and disciplined risk management, not direction alone.
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Guide
How Options are Structured
An options contract is built from a small set of terms that determine exactly what can be bought or sold, at what price, in what quantity and until when.
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Guide
Managing Risk with Futures Trading
Futures risk management starts with understanding contract exposure, sizing positions deliberately and planning for margin, execution, volatility and expiration before a trade is opened.
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