The Duration command calculates the duration of a set of cash flows or a portfolio of bonds.

For a set of cash flows  the simple duration is defined as

A bond's duration is defined in a similar way. It can also be interpreted as the weighted first derivative of the price:

Duration is useful as a measure of sensitivity of a bond's or cash flows' price to interest rate movements.

The parameter cashflows is a cash flow data structure or a list of cash flow data structures.

The parameter bond must be a fixed- or floating-rate bond data structure.

compounding = Simple, Continuous, Annual, Semiannual, EveryFourthMonth, Quarterly, Bimonthly, Monthly, SimpleThenAnnual, SimpleThenSemiannual, SimpleThenEveryFourthMonth, SimpleThenQuarterly, SimpleThenBimonthly, or SimpleThenMonthly -- This option specifies the compounding type for the given interest rate.

daycounter = Actual360, Actual365Fixed, AFB, Bond, Euro, Historical, ISDA, ISMA, OneDay, Simple, Thirty360BondBasis, Thirty360EuroBondBasis, Thirty360European, Thirty360Italian, Thirty360USA, or a day counter data structure created using the DayCounter constructor -- This option provides a day counter that will be used to represent the period between two dates as a fraction of the year. The default day count convention can be set using the Settings command.

evaluationdate =  a string containing a date specification in a format recognized by ParseDate or a date data structure -- This option specifies the evaluation date. This is set to the global evaluation date by default (see EvaluationDate).

The Finance[Duration] command was introduced in Maple 15.

For more information on Maple 15 changes, see Updates in Maple 15.