First introduced by Merrill Lynch, PRIDES are synthetic securities consisting of a forward contract to purchase the issuer's underlying security and an interest bearing deposit. Interest payments are made at regular intervals, and conversion into the underlying security is mandatory at maturity. 



|||Similar to convertible securities, PRIDES allow investors to earn stable cash flows while still participating in the capital gains of an underlying stock.This is possible because these products are valued along the same lines as the underlying security.