Pricing and Valuing Equity Swaps

Three common types of equity swaps are:

Pay Fixed Interest Rate, Receive Return on Equity

Pay Floating Interest Rate, Receive Return on Equity

Pay Return on One Equity, Receive Return on a Different Equity

Pricing Equity Swaps

The same formula used to find the fixed interest rate when pricing a plain vanilla interest rate swap or a currency swap to obtain an initial swap value of zero is applied.

The market value of a pay floating-receive return on equity swap is automatically zero at swap initiation since the floating rate portion of the swap equals 1.0 (making the numerator of the rate pricing equation zero, because it is 1 minus 1).

Pricing an equity for equity swap can be done by going long on one stock and short on the other. Like other swaps, this swap is valued at zero on initiation.