Financial Market and Institutions Lecture
Nijsje Venrooy
Period 2-2021
1
,Introduction week 1: Financial Market and Institutions
Flow of funds through the financial system
Why financial intermediaries?
1. Transaction costs
Intermediaries take advantage of economies of scale. They also reduce search costs.
2. Risk sharing
Intermediaries facilitate hedging against ‘bad’ states. Thus, they make markets ‘more
complete’.
3. Information asymmetries: adverse selection and moral hazard
Information inefficiencies may lead to market breakdown. Financial intermediaries, through
pre-contractual research and post-contractual monitoring, reduce adverse selection and
moral hazard risks.
Primary and secondary markets
• Primary markets: where debt or equity is raised (funds are borrowed).
o Investment banks charge fees for organizing the issuance of securities. The
desks in charge are usually called ECM (equity capital markets) and DCM
(debt capital markets). It doesn’t need to be a public market. Markets for
loans and private equity financing are also primary markets with this regard.
• Secondary markets: where the value of existing (previously-issued) debt and equity
securities is determined by virtue of trading.
o This is a huge ecosystem: investors, brokers and dealers, exchanges, trading
platforms, clearing houses, rating agencies etc.
2
,Securities markets by type:
• Money markets
o Instruments with maturity < 1 year. Mainly fixed income and FX
• Capital markets
o Instruments with maturity > 1 year. Mainly equity and fixed income
Formula
Assume there is NO RISK associated with the cash flows of an instrument/project. Then:
For notation in this course:
Small t or 0 is time RIGHT NOW.
Big T is some time in the future.
4
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