I've traded various equity options and single stock futures, including option spreads. I've also done some amount of analysis (although not as much as I'd like due to time constraints and how many hours I put in at work) on exotic options (like knock-ins/knock-outs, etc), credit default swaps, and pretty much every put/call/underlying combination out there. As far as I know, an equity swap behaves much like a single stock future, it prices in the expected carry cost of paying cash for the equity, dividends, and borrowing costs if it's a hard to borrow stock. You can also replicate it with options if there's no SSF available (although it's riskier due to early exercise, pin risk, wider spreads, etc..). I also have some understanding of interest rate swaps, variance swaps, forex forwards and swaps. I've also thought about strategies I could employ on a larger scale if I were ever lucky enough to get the opportunity, like dispersion trades for equity options (write puts and calls on individual equities hedged with long SPX straddles) and credit default swaps (sell protection on selected bonds hedged with long protection on a selected CDX or iTraxx tranche), various long/short equity strategies (such as the opportunity with EMC/VMW, which is STILL a fairly decent trade), various strategies combining convertible bonds/preferred stock with credit default swaps and equity options. Believe me, I'd love nothing more then to have my own bloomberg terminal to pull data w/ and run analytics all day to find profitable strategies, and I'd have no problem with learning new things and picking them up quickly. Right now it's an issue of access to data usable for in depth analysis, and free time to do so. It's also incredibly hard to find the opportunity to get a front office job, especially in today's job market. I took computer science & business as my major, which was a huge mistake -- I should have taken finance.