Shares of stock traded in a stock market. Equities represent the residual claim or interest of the most junior class of investors in assets, after all liabilities are paid.

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16
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7answers
1k views

How to design a custom equity backtester?

I was thinking about writing my own backtester and I realize I have to make some assumptions. So I was hoping I could post what I am planning on doing and hopefully some of you can give me some ideas ...
8
votes
2answers
478 views

When should you build your own equity risk model?

Commercial risk models (e.g., Barra, Axioma, Barclays, Northfield) have evolved to a very high level of sophistication. However, all of these models attempt to solve a very broad set of problems. ...
3
votes
3answers
931 views

Why does the adjusted closing price take into account dividends?

I'm trying to get an intuition as to why the adjusted closing price includes a dividend adjustment: \begin{equation} 1 - \frac{dividend}{close} \end{equation} I understand why the adjusted closing ...
29
votes
5answers
1k views

Lévy alpha-stable distribution and modelling of stock prices.

Since Mandelbrot, Fama and others have performed seminal work on the topic, it has been suspected that stock price fluctuations can be more appropriately modeled using Lévy alpha-stable distrbutions ...
12
votes
3answers
2k views

What are the best sources for equity quantitative research?

What are the best sources of quantitative finance research in equities? I will list a couple and note an asterisk if the research is available by request (i.e. non-clients) or online: BAC-Merrill ...
14
votes
7answers
4k views

Any known bugs with Yahoo Finance adjusted close data ?

Yahoo Finance allows you to download tables of their daily historical stock price data. The data includes an adjusted closing price that I thought I might use to calculate daily log returns as a ...
13
votes
9answers
3k views

Which brokers offer a .NET stock trading API?

I'm trying to make up my mind and choose a broker, however much of my choice depends on the trading API offered. I'm definitely not interested in FIX solutions and I'd very much like a .NET ...
10
votes
2answers
586 views

How to forecast expected volatility from high-frequency equity panel data?

I'm wading through the vast sea of literature on realized volatility estimation and expected volatility forecasting (see, e.g. Realized Volatility by Andersen and Benzoni, which cites 120 other ...
13
votes
2answers
564 views

How do you distinguish “significant” moves from noise?

How do you distinguish between losses that are within the normal range for day-to-day shifts and situations with a real potential for loss? The specific application I have in mind is pattern ...
11
votes
3answers
1k views

Free intra-day equity data source

Are there any free data source for historical US equity data? Yahoo finance has daily prices but I'm looking for something more granular and goes back 2 or more years (doesn't have to be close to tick ...
8
votes
1answer
533 views

Forward Adjusting Stock Prices?

How should one correctly forward adjust historical prices given a time series of Open, High, Low, Close, Return? Suppose that the data series is given below ('1' is the oldest interval; '5' is the ...
10
votes
3answers
1k views

Hedging stocks with VIX futures

It seems that VIX futures could be a great hedge for a long-only stock portfolio since they rise when stocks fall. But how many VIX futures should I buy to hedge my portfolio, and which futures ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views

How can I learn about the quantitative aspects of market making in illiquid single stock options?

I would like to learn more about the possible ways of doing quantitative research regarding option market making. In particular, while the mainstream index option market may be very liquid, the ...
4
votes
1answer
1k views

How to simulate stock prices with a Geometric Brownian Motion?

I want to simulate stock price paths with different stochastic processes. I started with the famous geometric brownian motion. I simulated the values with the following formula: ...
7
votes
2answers
411 views

What is a reasonable upper bound on the performance of a daily trading strategy?

I am backtesting an equity trading strategy which trades only once per day. Is there a general rule of thumb for the reasonable upper bound on the rate of return of such a strategy? For example, a ...
2
votes
3answers
276 views

Why should there be an equity risk premium?

After years of mathematical finance I am still not satisfied with the idea of a risk premium in the case of stocks. I agree that (often) there is a premium for long dated bonds, illiquid bonds or ...
4
votes
1answer
196 views

What is the relative performance of hard-to-borrow securities?

Is there any research on the equity return performance of hard-to-borrow securities? Many shops will simply screen for hard-to-borrow and eliminate these names from their short book. Anecdotally, ...