Fractional Banking and the Derivatives Market; reports over at Zerohedge have the Derivatives Market “valued” at $600 TRILLION! Yes, that is about 30x the gross output of Earth.
You have to understand how derivatives work. The notional value is of no significance; what you need to look at is the value at risk.
On a $500 million vanilla interest rate swap, the typical value at risk is $2 or $3 million. Other types of derivatives have even higher ratios.