1. SUMMARY: Derivatives are capable of eliminating unexpected risks arising from the price volatility of an asset, but they have often been implicated in the most controversial organizational collapses and financial crises. The evolution of the assets underlying derivative products has prompted the development of legislation to support these changes. The Chicago Board of Trade was the first centralized derivatives trading market. Since then, U.S. derivatives regulations have served as a basis for other countries to regulate their markets. The research aims to assess the impact of changes to the underlying instrument on regulation. A historiography as a research methodology is proposed, where a historiographic essay study will be conducted with historical research and literature, and will be examined by comparing and contrasting theory. Through inductive reasoning, we are able to identify historical debates among historians, identify historical questions in the research area that still need to be studied, and finally answer the research questions and achieve the research objectives of our proposed study. Keywords: Derivatives, Underlying assets, Legislation2. IntroductionDerivatives were initially developed to secure the supply of raw materials and facilitate trade as well as to provide security against crop failure. But over the years, derivatives began to serve other purposes in addition to providing quick profit opportunities and serving as a source of financing. Derivatives are able to eliminate unexpected risks arising from the price volatility of an asset (Sundraran & Das, 2011). Derivatives have often been implicated in the most controversial organizational and financial collapses...... middle of paper...... as a subjective reality experienced differently by each individual (Ryan, Coughlan & Cronin, 2007 ), nor Do proponents of qualitative research believe that a phenomenon can be isolated into several variables that can be studied independently (Vishnecsky & Beanlends, 2004). While the nature of a study intended to be carried out by a simple quantitative methodology may fail to capture the changes, evolution and theoretical bases of the phenomenon, because the factors are presumed subjective and must be studied in their totality, the qualitative methodology allows us to conduct the study holistically. Qualitative historiographic methodology capturing the way financial historians and academics will best capture all aspects that need to be considered in the study. Historiography is defined by Sreedharan (2004) as the study of