Pricing a Swap with Eurodollar Futures and OIS Discounting
Summary
The document outlines how Eurodollar futures can inform the floating-rate projections used to value a plain vanilla interest rate swap. Futures-implied rates need a convexity adjustment before they are treated as forward rates, since futures and forward rates differ by convexity bias. The adjustments may come from a model or dealer estimates.
For an example swap with semiannual fixed payments and quarterly floating payments, the method projects each floating coupon from a corresponding forward rate. It discounts both legs using discount factors from the overnight indexed swap curve, then solves for the fixed coupon rate that makes the legs’ present values equal. The example assumes futures periods align exactly with floating periods and sets aside market conventions such as day counts. It does not provide actual market inputs or a numerical valuation, and real swaps may require handling stub periods, date alignment, and other conventions.
Key ideas
- Eurodollar futures rates require convexity adjustments before use as forward rates.
- Forward rates project the floating-leg coupons over their respective accrual periods.
- The example discounts fixed and floating cash flows using the OIS discount curve.
- The par fixed rate is found by equating the present values of the two swap legs.
- The example assumes aligned periods and omits market conventions, so practical valuations need additional details.
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# Pricing an interest rate swap using Eurodollar futures
# Pricing an interest rate swap using Eurodollar futures
I see this posted but no answer given. I think it would be a good idea if we have a question on here to illustrate an example of how to price an interest rate swap.
So far, I understand that that for a plain vanilla swap, you will need to get the present values of the fixed leg cash flows, and the floating leg cash flows. These legs can then be added or subtracted to give the price of the swap for the buyer/seller.
The difficulty arises when deciding which interest rate to use for:
- Discounting fixed leg cash flows
- Discounting floating leg cash flows
- Predicting the floating leg coupon reference rate fluctuation
If Eurodollar futures are supposed to be used, are the different maturity spot rates (100 - quoted price?) simply used to get the implied forward interest rates for all cash flow periods until maturity? These forward rates then used to discount the cash flow legs?
## Answer by Helin (score 3, accepted)
https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/12771
Two things: 1) The eurodollar implied futures rates need to be convexity-adjusted before they can be used as forward rates (futures rate = forward rate + convexity bias). 2) Discounting should be done using the OIS discount curve, not the LIBOR curve.
More specifically (and ignoring market conventions such as day count), let's say you're pricing a 1-year swap (6m fixed vs 3m floating) and let's assume that all the Eurodollar futures are perfectly aligned with the floating leg (i.e., there's no stub period and start & end dates are matched). Then step 1 is to compute the implied forward rates from the Eurodollar futures, which are $100 - \text{ED prices} - \text{convexity adjustments}$, where the convexity adjustments can be obtained using simple models or from dealers. Then the par swap rate is solved from $$ \frac{c}{2} \cdot d(0.5) + \frac{c}{2} \cdot d(1.0) = F_{0,0.25}\cdot 0.25 \cdot d(0.25) + F_{0.25,0.5}\cdot 0.25 \cdot d(0.5) + F_{0.5,0.75}\cdot 0.25 \cdot d(0.75) + F_{0.75,1}\cdot 0.25 \cdot d(1), $$
where $c$ is the par coupon rate you're solving for, $F_{t_1,t_2}$'s are the forward rates between $t_1$ and $t_2$, and $d(t)$ is the OIS discount factor from time $t$ back to the settlement date.Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.