Disclaimer: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage.
You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
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Out-of-the-money
An options contract that would not be profitable if it were exercised immediately.
Outright forward contract
A customised futures contract determined by two individual parties, as opposed to a fixed cutures contract determined by exchanges.
Outright option contract
A single-purchase options contract, as opposed to a multi-leg options contract.
Over-the-counter
Over-the-counter (OTC) is a decentralised marketplace for niche products not found on larger exchanges, using a broker-dealer network for trading.
Over-The-Counter (OTC)
Over-the-counter, or OTC, trading happens directly between two parties rather than on a centralised exchange. There is no order book, no exchange matching engine; instead a buyer and seller, often through a dealer, agree terms between themselves privately. Huge swathes of the financial world work this way, most of the foreign-exchange market, much of the bond market, and countless derivatives, precisely because OTC deals can be tailored to exactly what the two sides want rather than fitting a standardised exchange contract.
The trade-off is less transparency and more reliance on your counterparty.
Example: A company that needs to hedge an unusual currency exposure, an odd amount settling on an odd date, cannot find an exchange-traded contract that fits, so it arranges a bespoke forward OTC with its bank. The two agree the size, rate, and date privately to suit the company’s exact need, something the rigid, one-size-fits-all contracts of an exchange could never quite match.
Over-the-Counter (OTC) Derivatives
OTC derivatives are derivative contracts struck privately between two parties rather than traded on an exchange, and they make up a colossal, largely bespoke corner of finance. Swaps, forwards, and many options live here, custom-built to a client’s precise needs, which is their appeal. Their danger is counterparty risk: because there is no exchange clearinghouse standing in the middle to guarantee the trade, each side is exposed if the other fails to pay.
This overlaps with the plain OTC entry on the sheet, but the derivatives angle carries its own hard lesson.
Example: In the 2008 crisis, a tangle of OTC derivatives, credit default swaps in particular, turned one firm’s collapse into a system-wide panic, because nobody was sure who owed what to whom when a counterparty went under. The episode drove regulators to push many standardised OTC derivatives toward central clearing, precisely to reduce the web of hidden counterparty exposures the private market had quietly built up.
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