Discount certificate return profile calculator
Discount, cap, sideways return, buffer.
Interactive: discount certificate return profileMedium
The classic retail structure: buy below spot, give up the upside beyond a cap. Enter a quote and see what you're actually being offered.
- Discount vs. spot
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- Maximum return
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- Maximum return p.a.
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- Return if spot unchanged
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- Buffer before you lose
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Payoff at maturity: min(spot, cap) at the certificate's ratio. Dividends are forgone, issuer credit risk applies — see the discount certificate page.
The idea behind it
This calculator belongs to Equity Derivatives, where the mechanism it computes is explained step by step, with the formula, what each input means and where the simple model stops being right. Everything is computed in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Instruments it applies to
- Equity Swap — Trade the return of a stock or index against an interest rate — exposure without ownership.
- Total Return Swap — One leg pays everything an asset earns — price moves and income — the other pays funding. Ownership economics without ownership.
- Autocallable — The world's best-selling structured product: fat coupons while markets behave, a cliff if they don't.
- Tracker Certificate — The simplest structured product: one-for-one exposure to an index, with none of the protection and all of the issuer risk. An ETF's payoff wrapped in a bank's credit.
- Discount Certificate — Buy the stock below the market price — in exchange for giving away everything above a cap.
- Dividend Swap — A trade on dividends alone, with the share price removed. The market where structured-product hedging leaves its fingerprints — and the cleanest example of a price set by flow rather than by view.
- Knock-Out Certificate — Leverage with a trapdoor: a cheap slice of the underlying that dies instantly the moment a barrier is touched.
- Binary Option — Pays a fixed amount if a condition is met and nothing otherwise. A legitimate institutional building block, and — in its retail form — a product banned across most of the developed world.
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