Skip to content
Felix
  • Topics
    • My List
    • Felix Guide
    • Asset Management
    • Coding and Data Analysis
      • AI
      • Data Analysis and Visualization
      • Financial Data Tools
      • Python
      • SQL
    • Credit
      • Credit Analysis
      • Restructuring
    • Financial Literacy Essentials
      • Financial Data Tools
      • Financial Math
      • Foundations of Accounting
    • Industry Specific
      • Banks
      • Chemicals
      • Consumer
      • ESG
      • Industrials
      • Insurance
      • Oil and Gas
      • Pharmaceuticals
      • Project Finance
      • Real Estate
      • Renewable Energy
      • Technology
      • Telecoms
    • Introductory Courses
    • Investment Banking
      • Accounting
      • Financial Modeling
      • M&A and Divestitures
      • Private Debt
      • Private Equity
      • Valuation
      • Venture Capital
    • Markets
      • Economics
      • Equity Markets and Derivatives
      • Fixed Income and Derivatives
      • Introduction to Markets
      • Options and Structured Products
      • Other Capital Markets
      • Securities Services
    • Microsoft Office
      • Excel
      • PowerPoint
      • Word & Outlook
    • Professional Skills
      • Career Development
      • Expert Interviews
      • Interview Skills
    • Risk Management
    • Transaction Banking
    • Felix Live
  • Pathways
    • Investment Banking
    • Asset Management
    • Equity Research
    • Sales and Trading
    • Commercial Banking
    • Engineering
    • Operations
    • Private Equity
    • Credit Analysis
    • Restructuring
    • Venture Capital
    • CFA Institute
  • Certified Courses
  • Ask An Instructor
  • Support
  • Log in
  • Topics
    • My List
    • Felix Guide
    • Asset Management
    • Coding and Data Analysis
      • AI
      • Data Analysis and Visualization
      • Financial Data Tools
      • Python
      • SQL
    • Credit
      • Credit Analysis
      • Restructuring
    • Financial Literacy Essentials
      • Financial Data Tools
      • Financial Math
      • Foundations of Accounting
    • Industry Specific
      • Banks
      • Chemicals
      • Consumer
      • ESG
      • Industrials
      • Insurance
      • Oil and Gas
      • Pharmaceuticals
      • Project Finance
      • Real Estate
      • Renewable Energy
      • Technology
      • Telecoms
    • Introductory Courses
    • Investment Banking
      • Accounting
      • Financial Modeling
      • M&A and Divestitures
      • Private Debt
      • Private Equity
      • Valuation
      • Venture Capital
    • Markets
      • Economics
      • Equity Markets and Derivatives
      • Fixed Income and Derivatives
      • Introduction to Markets
      • Options and Structured Products
      • Other Capital Markets
      • Securities Services
    • Microsoft Office
      • Excel
      • PowerPoint
      • Word & Outlook
    • Professional Skills
      • Career Development
      • Expert Interviews
      • Interview Skills
    • Risk Management
    • Transaction Banking
    • Felix Live
  • Pathways
    • Investment Banking
    • Asset Management
    • Equity Research
    • Sales and Trading
    • Commercial Banking
    • Engineering
    • Operations
    • Private Equity
    • Credit Analysis
    • Restructuring
    • Venture Capital
    • CFA Institute
  • Certified Courses
Felix
  • Data
    • Company Analytics
    • My Filing Annotations
    • Market & Industry Data
    • United States
    • Relative Valuation
    • Discount Rate
    • Building Forecasts
    • Capital Structure Analysis
    • Europe
    • Relative Valuation
    • Discount Rate
    • Building Forecasts
    • Capital Structure Analysis
  • Models
  • Account
    • Edit Profile
    • Manage Account
    • My List
    • Restart Homepage Tour
    • Restart Company Analytics Tour
    • Restart Filings Tour
  • Log in
  • Ask An Instructor
    • Email Our Experts
    • Felix User Guide
    • Contact Support

Deconstructing a Bank's Balance Sheet

Understand the composition and detail of a bank's balance sheet.

Unlock Your Certificate   
 
0% Complete

14 Lessons (53m)

Show lesson playlist
  • Description & Objectives

  • 1. Financial Instruments

    04:06
  • 2. Cash and Cash Equivalents

    03:17
  • 3. Repos and Reverse Repos

    04:46
  • 4. Receivables

    05:16
  • 5. Financial Instruments Owned at Fair Value

    03:34
  • 6. Deposits

    04:05
  • 7. Payables

    02:04
  • 8. Financial Instruments Sold but Not Yet Purchased at Fair Value

    03:27
  • 9. Unsecured borrowings

    04:27
  • 10. Equity

    06:44
  • 11. IFRS 9 Amort Cost

    04:20
  • 12. IFRS 9 FVOCI

    04:43
  • 13. IFRS 9 FVTPL

    02:39
  • 14. Deconstructing a Bank's Balance Sheet Tryout


Prev: Intro to Banking Next: Expected Credit Losses

Financial Instruments Sold but Not Yet Purchased at Fair Value

  • Notes
  • Questions
  • Transcript
  • 03:27

Review the instruments sold short in a bank's balance sheet and understand the mechanics of selling short

Downloads

No associated resources to download.

Glossary

Derivatives Hedging Market Making Selling Short Short Sold Securities
Back to top
Financial Edge Training

© Financial Edge Training 2025

Topics
Introduction to Finance Accounting Financial Modeling Valuation M&A and Divestitures Private Equity
Venture Capital Project Finance Credit Analysis Transaction Banking Restructuring Capital Markets
Asset Management Risk Management Economics Data Science and System
Request New Content
System Account User Guide Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Log in
Transcript

We're taking a look at the liabilities and shareholders equity section of Goldman Sachs' financial statements here. And we're going to drill down into the line item which is called "Financial instruments sold, but not yet purchased at fair value". It's a big number, $117 billion. And this represents the liability side of the market making business. And we're gonna take a look at a little bit of detail of what's in this item and the mechanics of how it works. So this is the market making liability. There'll also be an asset related to market making as well. If you take a look at the detail, you can see that we've got a breakdown here in the notes. And on one side we've got the assets involved in market making. And you can see that that's a broad spread right across the different financial products. And also there's a fair slug of derivatives down there, 53 billion. But we're actually interested in the financial instrument sold but not yet purchased. And these are effectively short sold securities and you can see that they're focused in specific areas. So we've got a fair slug here of government bonds and government agency bonds. We've also got some corporate loans and debt securities and then a fair slug of equities and convertible to ventures there. There's also a significant amount of derivative short selling as well. And this all reflects the market making activity of Goldman Sachs. If we take a look at the impact on the income statement, you can see that this is a pretty significant business and it's spread into different buckets here. And this is looking at the notes between credit, currencies, equities, and commodities. So in 2016, the market making activities is $9.9 billion. So a significant amount of money. Be careful because a lot of this activity is not necessarily just done on its own in isolation. So often this activity is connected to other transactions or hedging activity as well. So it's quite difficult to look at this in isolation. It's worth actually having a detailed look at the mechanics of selling short. And what we've done here is simplified things significantly just to give you a taste of exactly what's going on here. So let's take a situation where a trader borrows and then immediately sells the security for a $100 and then happily the security is gonna fall to $90 before the settlement. Now we're not going to look at the mechanics and the accounting of borrowing the security, we're going to look at the sale and the effect of the fallen price. So assume that the borrowing has already taken place. And then what happens is we agree a sale of the security and we will record a receivable 'cause we expect to get a $100 from the person we sold it to. And then we create a liability, which is the sold but not yet purchased, because we actually don't have the security to sell 'cause we don't own it. And that would be a liability of 100. Then because the price has dropped of the security, it means that actually we're not going to have to spend a $100 to go out and buy the security. We're only going to have to spend $90. So what we'll do is mark to market that liability of the sold but not yet purchased down from a hundred to 90. And at the same time, we'll book a profit of 10 and that profit will go through the income statement as a market making profit and hit retained earnings which you can see here on the liability and equity side of the balance sheet.

Content Requests and Questions

You are trying to access premium learning content.

Discover our full catalogue and purchase a course Access all courses with our premium plans or log in to your account
Help

You need an account to contact support.

Create a free account or log in to an existing one

Sorry, you don't have access to that yet!

You are trying to access premium learning content.

Discover our full catalogue and purchase a course Access all courses with our premium plans or log in to your account

You have reached the limit of annotations (10) under our premium subscription. Upgrade to unlock unlimited annotations.

Find out more about our premium plan

You are trying to access content that requires a free account. Sign up or login in seconds!

Create a free account or log in to an existing one

You are trying to access content that requires a premium plan.

Find out more about our premium plan or log in to your account

Only US listed companies are available under our Free and Boost plans. Upgrade to Pro to access over 7,000 global companies across the US, UK, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Hong Kong and more.

Find out more about our premium plan or log in to your account

A pro account is required for the Excel Add In

Find out more about our premium plan

Congratulations on completing

This field is hidden when viewing the form
Name(Required)
This field is hidden when viewing the form
Rate this course out of 5, where 5 is excellent and 1 is terrible.
Were the stated learning objectives met?(Required)
Were the stated prerequisite requirements appropriate and sufficient?(Required)
Were the program materials, including the qualified assessment, relevant and did they contribute to the achievement of the learning objectives?(Required)
Was the time allotted to the learning activity appropriate?(Required)
Are you happy for us to use your feedback and details in future marketing?(Required)

Thank you for already submitting feedback for this course.

CPE

What is CPE?

CPE stands for Continuing Professional Education, by completing learning activities you earn CPE credits to retain your professional credentials. CPE is required for Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). Financial Edge Training is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors.

What are CPE credits?

For self study programs, 1 CPE credit is awarded for every 50 minutes of elearning content, this includes videos, workouts, tryouts, and exams.

CPE Exams

You must complete the CPE exam within 1 year of accessing a related playlist or course to earn CPE credits. To see how long you have left to complete a CPE exam, hover over the locked CPE credits button.

What if I'm not collecting CPE credits?

CPE exams do not count towards your FE certification. You do not need to complete the CPE exam if you are not collecting CPE credits, but you might find it useful for your own revision.


Further Help
  • Felix How to Guide walks you through the key functions and tools of the learning platform.
  • Playlists & Tryouts: Playlists are a collection of videos that teach you a specific skill and are tested with a tryout at the end. A tryout is a quiz that tests your knowledge and understanding of what you have just learned.
  • Exam: If you are collecting CPE points you must pass the relevant CPE exam within 1 year to receive credits.
  • Glossary: A glossary can be found below each video and provides definitions and explanations for terms and concepts. They are organized alphabetically to make it easy for you to find the term you need.
  • Search function: Use the Felix search function on the homepage to find content related to what you want to learn. Find related video content, lessons, and questions people have asked on the topic.
  • Closed Captions & Transcript: Closed captions and transcripts are available on videos. The video transcript can be found next to the closed captions in the video player. The transcript feature allows you to read the transcript of the video and search for key terms within the transcript.
  • Questions: If you have questions about the course content, you will find a section called Ask a Question underneath each video where you can submit questions to our expert instructor team.