Offset
Liquidating a purchase of futures contracts through the sale of an equal number of contracts of the same delivery month, or liquidating a short sale of futures through the purchase of an equal number of contracts of the same delivery month.

Offshore Banking Unit (OBU)
A bank in an offshore financial center, not allowed to conduct business in the domestic market but only with other OBU's or with foreign persons.

Offshore Booking Centers
An offshore financial center used by international banks as a location for "shell branches" to book certain deposits and loans. Such offshore bookings are often utilized to avoid regulatory restrictions and taxes.

Offshore Limited Partnership
A partnership, the general partner of which is an offshore company. The limited partners may be onshore entities.

Offshore Trust
The quality that differentiates an offshore trust from an onshore trust is portability. The offshore trust can be transferred to additional jurisdictions to maintain confidentiality and to advantage desirable facets of the new jurisdictions laws.

On Track (or Track Country Station)
(1) A type of deferred delivery in which the price is set f.o.b. seller's location, and the buyer agrees to pay freight costs to his destination; (2) commodities loaded in railroad cars on track.

Open Interest
The total number of futures or options contracts of a given commodity that have not yet been offset by an opposite futures or option transaction nor fulfilled by delivery of the commodity or option exercise. Each open transaction has a buyer and a seller, but for calculation of open interest, only one side of the contract is counted.

Opportunistic
This strategy refers to managers with the broad mandate to invest in any opportunity they identify in debt, equities, foreign currencies, physical commodities and derivatives in both developed and emerging markets globally. They invest in directional as well as hedged positions and typically use leverage in order to increase their invested position.

Option
The right, but not the obligation, to buy (for a call option) or sell (for a put option) a specific amount of a given stock, commodity, currency, index, or debt, at a specified price (the strike price) during a specified period of time.