April 22nd, 2005, 12:15 pm
a 5-year 6% floors on 10-year CMS ... set up a standard schedule (I think quarterly) starting spot of today and running 5 years. 2 (london) business day before each interval starts, one looks at the 10y swap rate for the swap that starts on the intervals start date. At the end of the period, one pays max{6% - SwRate, 0} * dcf where dcf is the day count fraction for the interval. Having said that, (a) I am really not sure if the stadard frequency is quarterly (b) I believe the day count basis follows the swap rate basis (30/360 for USD, Act365 for GBP) (c) there may be a convention that the first caplet is not paid for spot starting CMS floors, since its payoff would be set on the trade date and effectively just change the price.