AIMA

With the front and back offices, the middle (or mid) office completes the key best practice division of duties and responsibilities in a finance and investment operation. Its basic responsibilities include treasury activities (reporting, accounting, monitoring and internal control). Most companies may not have operations sizeable enough to require a middle office; in these cases, its role is performed by the back office or the accounting department.

The smallest amount that an investor is permitted to contribute to a hedge fund as an initial investment. Minimum investment requirements can range from US$50,000 to $5 million, but most funds insist on $500,000 to $1 million. The amount is set by the manager and can be dependent on the manager's/fund's domicile's definition of an accredited investor.

The market for short-term debt instruments.

A common instrument in fixed income arbitrage strategies. MBS are created when home loans are pooled and packaged into new instruments whose holders are entitled to some share of the cash-flow received from underlying mortgage loans. A key characteristic of these instruments is prepayment risk, which relates to the uncertainty in the timing of cash-flows. Arbitrageurs may either buy MBS and attempt to hedge out their prepayment risk or exploit relative mis-pricings between different MBS.