What Is an Interest Rate Collar?
Let me explain what an interest rate collar is. It's a relatively low-cost strategy for managing interest rate risk, using derivatives to hedge your exposure to fluctuations in interest rates.
Key Takeaways
You should know that an interest rate collar employs options contracts to hedge interest rate risk, protecting variable rate borrowers from rising rates or, in a reverse collar, lenders from falling rates. It involves selling a covered call and buying a protective put with the same expiration, which sets a floor and a cap on interest rates. While this effectively hedges the risk, it also restricts any potential upside from favorable rate movements.
Understanding Interest Rate Collar
A collar is part of a broader set of options strategies where you hold the underlying security, buy a protective put, and sell a covered call against it. The premium from the call covers the cost of the put. This caps the upside potential for the security's price appreciation but shields you from adverse movements. Specifically, an interest rate collar is this applied to interest rates.
In practice, it means simultaneously buying an interest rate cap and selling an interest rate floor on the same index, with matching maturity and notional amount. This protects you as a borrower from rising rates while establishing a floor on declining rates. It's a solid way to hedge risks tied to holding bonds. You fund the cap purchase with the premium from selling the floor.
Keep in mind the inverse relationship: bond prices rise when interest rates fall, and vice versa. As the buyer of an interest rate collar, your goal is protection against rising rates.
Buying an interest rate cap—essentially a bond put or rates call option—ensures a maximum decline in the bond's value. Selling an interest rate floor—a bond call or rates put option—limits bond appreciation from falling rates, but it gives you upfront cash to cover the cap's cost.
For example, if you enter a collar buying a ceiling at 10% and selling a floor at 8%, you'll receive payments when rates exceed 10% from the ceiling seller. If rates drop below 8%, you'll pay the floor buyer. This caps your maximum interest rate at the ceiling but gives up profits from rate drops.
Interest Rate Caps and Floors
An interest rate cap sets a ceiling on your interest payments. It's a series of call options on a floating rate index, like 3- or 6-month LIBOR, matching your floating liabilities' rollover dates. The strike rate is the maximum interest you'll pay as the cap buyer.
An interest rate floor establishes a minimum interest rate using put options. It minimizes risk for the payment receiver, ensuring coupon payments don't fall below the floor strike rate.
Reverse Interest Rate Collar
A reverse interest rate collar safeguards lenders, such as banks, from declining rates that reduce interest income on variable rate loans. It involves buying an interest rate floor and selling an interest rate cap. The premium from the short cap offsets part of the long floor's cost. You receive payments on the floor when rates fall below its exercise rate, and you make payments on the cap when rates exceed its exercise rate.
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