swap

Swap

Traditionally, the exchange of one security for another to change the maturity (bonds), quality of issues (stocks or bonds), or because investment objectives have changed. Recently, swaps have grown to include currency swaps and interest rates swaps.

Investopedia Commentary

If firms in separate countries have comparative advantages on interest rates, then a swap could benefit both firms. For example, one firm may have a lower fixed interest rate, while another has access to a lower floating interest rate. These firms could swap to take advantage of the lower rates.

See also: Basis Rate Swap, Bond Swap, Commodity Swap, Credit Default Swap, Currency Swap, Interest Rate Swap, Non Deliverable Swap - NDS, Swap Spread, Total Return Swap, Variance Swap, Volatility Swap

swap

A contract in which two parties agree to exchange periodic interest payments. In the most common type of swap arrangement, one party agrees to pay fixed interest payments on designated dates to a counterparty who, in turn, agrees to make return interest payments that float with some reference rate such as the rate on Treasury bills or the prime rate. Also called interest rate swap. See also counterparty risk.

swap operating system
To move a program from fast-access memory to a slow-access memory ("swap out"), or vice versa ("swap in"). The term often refers specifically to the use of a hard disk (or a swap file) as virtual memory or "swap space".
When a program is to be executed, possibly as determined by a scheduler, it is swapped into core for processing; when it can no longer continue executing for some reason, or the scheduler decides its time slice has expired, it is swapped out again.
This contrasts with "paging" systems in which only parts of a program's memory is transfered.
[The Jargon File]
(1996-11-22)