A forward contract simply refers to a deal that executes some time in the future. You aren't buying 100 shares of NFLX now. You agree to buy 100 shares of NFLX in September, at a price of $400.
A synthetic forward achieves the same goal, except without actually involving a forward contract. Instead, you use a combination of puts and calls to create the same scenario, only in a different way.
You want to recreate that forward to buy 100 shares of NFLX at $400, expiring in September. You buy a call contract (an option to purchase the shares) for 100 shares of NFLX at $400, with a September expiration. Then you write a put, i.e. you sell the option for someone else to sell you 100 shares of NFLX at $400 a share, expiring in September.
So...you're buying a call and selling a put. Both have the same strike price and expiration. (You can create a synthetic short forward contract by selling a call and buying a put.)
If NFLX rises to $420 between now and September, you'll exercise your call (the put will expire unexercised) and buy the shares for $400. If shares of NFLX drop to $380, the party who purchased your put contract will exercise it, forcing you to buy shares of NFLX at $400 a share (the call will expire unused). In either case, you end up buying shares at $400...same as if you purchased the forward contract.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What Is a Put Option?84 Views
finance a la shmoop what is a put option? hot potato hot potato
ow ow! yeah remember that game well nobody wanted the potato, poor thing. the
players wanted to put it in someone else's hands. well put options kind [glue put around a flaming potato]
of work the same way. a put option is the right or option or choice to sell a
stock or a bond at a given price to someone by a certain end date.
all right example time. you bought netflix stock at the IPO a zillion years
ago at $1 a share. that's you know splits adjusted. all right now it's a hundred
bucks a share. if you sell it you pay taxes on a gain of 99 dollars a share. in
California that would be a tax of something like almost 40 bucks. well the
stock was a hundred but you keep only something like 60. feels totally unfair.
right so you really don't want to sell your stock but you're nervous about the [graph shown]
next few months that Netflix will crater for a while and go down ten
maybe twenty dollars. longer term though you think it'll hit 300. so this is the
perfect setup to maybe look at buying some put options on Netflix. if the stock
goes down your put options go up. with Netflix volatile but at a hundred bucks
a share ,you look up the price of an $80 strike price put option expiring in
December, and you know that's mid-september now .for five bucks a share
you can protect your stock for the next few months .think about it like temporary [stocks placed in vault]
term life insurance. you pay the five dollars a share in the stock goes down
to 82 by mid December, worst of all worlds. well not only did you lose the $5
a share but your stock has lost $18 in value. but had Netflix really cratered
and gone to say $60 a share well you would have exercised your put and sold
your shares at 80 bucks. well those put options you paid $5 for
would be been worth 15 bucks a share. in buying that put option you've [equation shown]
guaranteed that your loss will be no more than a $75 value for your Netflix
position at least for that time period and ignoring taxes. well remember that
options expire after December whatever like the third Friday of the month it's
usually when options expire, you then have no protection and your shares float
along naked. naked? really who knew accounting could get so [paper put option goes "skinny dipping".]
raunchy. yeah well that's naked put options.
that's what they really are people.
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A derivative of a security is a "something" which derives its value based on the performance of that security... either a put option or a call option.
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