ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Vanna Volga

Vanna-Volga (VV) is a way of pricing foreign exchange options. Now, imagine that you are playing with toys, and you have two different kinds of toy coins - one for dollars and one for euros. You also have a magic hat that you can use to trade these coins for each other.

When you trade your coins in the hat, you get a different number of euros for each dollar, depending on how valuable people think the two currencies are. This is called an exchange rate.

Now, let's say you want to make a bet with your friend that the exchange rate will change by a certain amount. This is where an option comes in. It's like saying "I bet you that in a week, the exchange rate will be either higher or lower than it is now. If it goes in the direction I chose, you have to give me some of your toys."

But how much should your friend give you if you win the bet? That's where the VV comes in. It's a way of figuring out the fair price of the bet.

VV is like using a special calculator that takes into account lots of different things, like how much the exchange rate has moved in the past, how much it's expected to move in the future, and how much risk there is that the rate will change in a way that you don't expect. All of these factors help to figure out how much your friend should pay you if you win the bet.

So basically, Vanna-Volga is just a complicated way of figuring out how much one toy coin should be worth compared to another toy coin, and how much you should be paid if you make a bet about whether the exchange rate will go up or down. But instead of just guessing, you use a special calculator to make sure the bet is fair for both you and your friend.