Fear of flying

摘要

It may not set everyone's pulse racing. But the formal launch in London on September 16th of the Property Derivatives Interest Group (PDIG) is a big step for a new and crucial market which may serve as a model for property trading elsewhere. Foreign exchange, bonds, equities, commodities: all have been transformed over the past couple of decades by the emergence of large, liquid markets in derivatives (swaps, options, futures, structured products and the like). Only property, on some measures the biggest asset class of them all, has failed to follow suit. Past attempts to bring this illiquid corner of the investing world into the modern age have collapsed. Will it be different this time?