Res cogitans

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™ Go Premium Index — Click the ᐅ to expand: Glossary Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

What the Latins (and Enlightenment French, come to think of it) called what we think of as a derivative: things that exist only in the mind; hypotheticals; as opposed to the physical hard stuff you stub your toe on when you are in the real word. That’s res extensa.

• Cash brokerage: res extensa.
• Contracts for difference: res cogitans.

See also

• Second-order derivative
• Res extensa
• René Descartes