StrikeAndYield crib sheet · information and education only

Money Markets

Short-term funding instruments — where banks, corporates and governments borrow for days to a year.

The shelf — 10 instruments

Easy 5

Building Society Savings Contract	Save at a below-market rate now to earn the right to borrow at a below-market rate later. A forward-starting mortgage option, sold as a savings account.
Certificate of Deposit	A deposit with a term and a rate — the same instrument at the savings branch and on a bank funding desk.
Money Market Fund	The mutual fund that pretends to be a bank account — cash parked in the market's overnight instruments.
Savings Deposit	The product almost everyone owns and almost nobody analyses: a loan you make to a bank, repayable on demand, at a rate the bank chooses.
Treasury Bill	Government debt measured in weeks: the closest thing in finance to cash that pays interest.

Medium 4

Commercial Paper	Corporate IOUs measured in days — how blue-chip companies borrow between bond issues and bank lines.
Repo	Sell a bond today, buy it back tomorrow: the secured loan that finances the entire bond market.
Securities Lending	Renting out shares you already own. The invisible plumbing that makes short selling, market making and settlement work — and quietly earns fund holders a few basis points.
Structured Deposit	A deposit whose interest depends on a market. Capital protected by the bank, upside capped by the option budget — and the budget is smaller than the brochure suggests.

Hard 1

Trade Finance

A bank stands between two strangers on opposite sides of the world so that neither has to trust the other. The oldest financial product still in daily use.

What moves prices here

Where reserves are, and how scarce — Scarcity pushes the rate up through the corridor
Collateral availability — Scarce collateral makes secured borrowing cheaper, not dearer
Haircuts — They set the maximum leverage of the whole system
Credit appetite between banks — The unsecured-to-secured spread is the stress gauge
Regulatory dates — Balance-sheet reporting distorts prices predictably
Money-fund rules — What funds may hold is a legal fact, not a preference

The calendar

Weekly	Bill auctions
Daily	The overnight rate publication
Six to eight times a year	Policy meetings
Month and quarter end	Balance-sheet reporting
Year end	The largest of those distortions

Which risk decides, across the shelf

Failure mode	Decides	Share
Market	2 of 10	20%
Credit	5 of 10	50%
Liquidity	2 of 10	20%
Funding	1 of 10	10%
Operational	3 of 10	30%

Counted from the same table each product page prints. Not a rating and not a ranking: there is deliberately no total.