Читать книгу The Incomplete Currency - Marcello Minenna - Страница 13

Every financial transaction which involves the exchange of amounts of money over time (let's call them flows) is subject to some form of uncertainty. It is not possible to know for sure how much (and if) you will gain from an investment, or how much will have to be paid for a loan at a variable rate: the randomness in the occurrence and amount of flows is somehow inevitable and structural, and represents the risk of financial transactions.

What is the value, in monetary terms today, of an investment in bonds or a fixed-rate mortgage? If I wanted to transfer the bond of my investment to someone else, how much would I get in return? If I wanted to pay off my mortgage early, how much would I have to pay? These are the main questions which professionals must answer every day to enable the smooth functioning of the financial system. Since these are financial transactions characterised by unavoidable uncertainty, and therefore a certain degree of risk, the only way to deal with them is to try to measure this uncertainty, in some way, through the use of probabilities. All financial products are valued, in the most objective way possible, looking to estimate the probability they have of producing gains or losses for the investor.

Let's try and understand how.