Yeah. It's a little bit amusing when people equate "I don't understand anything whatsoever about finance and have no desire to understand it" with "it is extremely complex". There is nothing complex about notional value of a derivative vs its market value. 2008 happened not because finance is complex, but because financial bets always incur a degree of risk and that risk sometimes materializes. Anyone who ever extended a loan to anyone else takes a risk that the loan will not be paid back. Sometimes, it isn't paid back