# All Questions

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### Effect of volatility on the delta of a call option

In the book 'Dynamic Hedging', Nassim Taleb writes: ...
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### How to compute/find the volatility of an index like the S&P 500 and use that to compute an ideal leverage ratio based on interest rates? [on hold]

I've asked two related questions. First this one on the money stack exchange and this one on the math stack exchange. But have not yet found a complete answer. Given an index such as the S&P ...
23 views

### Difference between ito process, brownian motion and random walk

Can someone explain to a non-math person (myself) what is the difference between these three? If they are so different that a comparison does not even make sense, please point it out. 1.Ito process ...
22 views

### How can put options be more expensive than call options in an efficient market?

I noticed that for some securities, puts were more expensive than calls (with same expiration). For example, suppose the underlying security is trading at 50. A put with a strike of 45 is more ...
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### Relation between Parkinson number and historical volatility

In his book 'Dynamic Hedging', Nassim Taleb gives the relation: P = 1.67*historical volatility, where P is the Parkinson number. What is the basis of this relationship. Does this hold under special ...
21 views

### How can a beginner trader make use of 'volatility of volatility'

For a beginner option trader in equity options, how can he use this metric that is provided by his broker/data vendor? How can he use this metric to gain an added understanding of the option ...
25 views

### Interpretation of Correlation

I have two geometric Brownian motions (GBMs) driven by the same underlying Brownin motion, namely \begin{align*} S_t^1 = S_0^1\exp\left(\left(\mu_1 - \frac{\sigma_1^2}{2}\right)t + \sigma_1 ...
19 views

### Bond yield: is it martingale with respect to risk-neutral probability measure of some numeraire?

Let $t$ mean current time, let $T_0, T_n$ mean two times such that $T_0\le T_n$, and let $y_t[T_0, T_n]$ mean the forward swap rate of a swap starting at $T_0$ and ending at $T_n$. (I am ignoring ...
17 views

### Pricing long-term European options

I would like to price a long-term (10 or 20 years) European option under a stochastic interest rates framework. I have two questions about this: 1-What is the risk-free interest rate for this kind of ...
10 views

### ASX level 2 data via API

Is anybody aware of Java/C++/Python API's available for ASX stock market depth? I'm currently using IB which is ok but has a number of limitations / issues - the one I care most about is the limit of ...
14 views

### How to calculate beta against a multi-asset benchmark

Lets say that I have a benchmark, $BM$ that consists of 3 assets- 30% asset $A$, 30% asset $B$ and 40% asset $C$. Now, lets further assume I am trying to construct a portfolio that uses $BM$ as its ...
60 views

### Math background required to understand geometric brownian motion

What mathematical concepts are required before I can understand what exactly is a Geometric Brownian motion as applicable to stock prices? I mean which branches of probability, calculus, statistics ...
40 views

### Is Trading in the Underlying Necessary for Replication?

In a simple one-period binomial model we have two possible payoffs: $f(S^u)$ and $f(S^d)$. To replicate this we must trade in two assets, usually the stock $S$ and the money market account (assumed ...
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### Which kind of normalization to prefer before PCA (generic solution for any factor analysis)

I have financial assets with totally different volatilities, thus I must standardize them before PCA, otherwise, assets with high variance may be considered as principle components, which is wrong. ...
10 views

### Best books/ways to start SAS? [on hold]

What would you recommend? I'm starting to use SAS and would like to do it most efficiently.
7 views

### Leveraged ETFs Holding Period; Compare LETF with DITM

Why the "standard recommendation" is that LETFs are only for short periods (< 1 day) while their performance charts indicate that the leveraging is retained once the period EXCEEDs several days? ...
15 views

### How does a stop loss affect the P/L of a trader

In his book 'Dynamic Hedging', Nassim Taleb writes: Problem: A trader is given a stop loss of 100,000 in any given month (he would have to close his books and go home until the end of the month). ...
65 views

### Pricing Treasury futures

I've recently learned that at the delivery of Treasury futures the short side can decide which of the $n$ Treasury bonds (with relevant maturities) to deliver. If the short side chooses to deliver the ...
53 views

### Speeding up computations: when to use Quasi and standard Monte-Carlo in pricing

I am familiar with the theory of Monte-Carlo techniques in the numerical integration, and recently I have started my experiments with these methods applied to derivatives pricing. I am using ...
40 views

### Questions on the relationship between option price and maturity

From the plot of volatility surface, as maturity goes up, the implied volatility will decrease. Dose it mean that options with the same strike have higher value when maturity is larger. If so why ...
32 views

### Using FX ATM Volatility to Estimate Smile

Suppose $S$ is some FX rate, EUR/USD say, and $\sigma_{S}(K,T)$ is the implied volatility for some option written on $S$, sourced from the surface $\sigma_{S}(\cdot,\cdot)$ (alternatively, consider ...
26 views

### Pie-chart (or alternative) representation with negative values/liabilities

I'd like to represent graphically/visually a fund/portfolio by something that resembles a pie chart. But... the fund/portfolio contains things that have negative value (think of liabilities such as: ...
76 views

### Variance replication using options

I would like to understand the intuition behind the following question: Why a certain weighted sum of prices of put and calls is equivalent to the implied variance of an underlying? A variance swap ...
27 views

### Calculating R Squared in this Problem

I am attempting to complete a homework problem and surprisingly, I am completely stumped. In one economy the risk free rate is 5%, the risk premium is 7%, and the volatility of the market is 18%. A ...
20 views

### Test .mql4 (meta trader 4 editor) when the fx market offline

I am coding some simple .mql4 program, you know, the fx market is offline on weekend, and the market will be not shown in Meta trader 4 platform. I wanna test my program in meta trader 4 on weekend. ...
29 views

### Bloomberg scripting language (BLAN)

Did anyone work with Bloomberg scripting language (BLAN is the name I guess). If so is it really flexible and is it competitive with other valuation services (say Super Derivatives). Does it enable ...
63 views

### Bloomberg tick data timezone offset

I am using python to access the Bloomberg Desktop API and am running into issues with the timezone conversion for their tick data. The data they deliver is supposed to be UTC but there is something ...
16 views

### johansen cointegration test eviews interpreation

I am not sure whether i am interpreting the cointegration test correct. This is the test result : Because of the probability of the test i understand that my series are cointegrated of order 2. ...
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### How do you calculate the asset drift rate in the Merton model? (used in N(-d2))

Can I replace it with the internal rentability rate? I only have the financial statements and some market data, but I can't find the expected returns anywhere. The goal is to calculate the probability ...
29 views

### FOMC Unscheduled Meetings

If you look at the FOMC announcement schedule here, you will see that since 2011, there have been 4 unscheduled meetings. By any chance, though they are "unscheduled" do market participants know one ...
27 views

### the incremental value of Kelly Criterion under difference circumstances

I know that the Kelly Criterion maximizes bankroll, but i was wondering how much value it contributes to the total return and under what circumstances. I'm trying to understand the difference between ...
40 views

### How to check that an interest rate curve is arbitrage free

I have 2 interest rate curves (LIBOR 3M and OIS). I want to create stress scenarios for those two curves. Is it possible that some scenarios will make my term structure arbitrageable? How can I test ...
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### Calculating or finding info about the value of a market? for example Cloud Storage [on hold]

I am assembling a pitch which will aim towards investors by the end of this year/beginning of next year, and I need to gather information such as how much the Cloud Storage market is worth and how ...
71 views

### Mean reversion time estimation

I am new to mean reversion trading, and I would like to get some good references about how to estimate the time it takes to a mean reverting process to cross its long term mean.
23 views

### Matlab loop statement is driving me mad [on hold]

Can someone please help me out with this loop over here? Matlab simple refuses to consider the for o=k:k-20 statement inside the if statement. :pullingmyhair: ...
93 views

### Why Lie groups, differential geometry and string theory relate to MF?

I'm reading Peter Carr's "A Practitioner’s Guide to Mathematical Finance". When talking about the math used in mathematical finance, he mentions Lie groups, differential geometry, string theory. Can ...
53 views

### Black Scholes Model and Dividends

My question can be summarised as such: Consider a portfolio. Say it has a price $\Pi = x$. Portfolio consists of a stock and a sequence of call options underlying on the stock. It has been announced ...
33 views

### How to calculate the JdK RS-Ratio

Anyone have a clue how to calculate the JdK RS-Ratio? Let's say I want to compare the Relative strength for these: EWA iShares MSCI Australia Index Fund EWC iShares MSCI Canada Index Fund EWD ...
47 views

### Obtaining intra-day values of the EUR-USD exchange

I need for my project the values of the EUR-USD exchange (both intra-day and ticker). I've been playing around with the Yahoo's YQL API and at this moment I can obtain the current value of the ...
23 views

### pdf of simple equation, compound Poisson noise

I would like to find the probability density function (at stationarity) of the random variable $X_t$, where: \begin{equation*} dX_t = -aX_t + d N_t, \end{equation*} $a$ is a constant and $N_t$ is a ...
57 views

### Black Scholes Formula, drift term

In the formula, the stock return is modelled as a brownian motion that is a drift + a stochastic term, ok I get that. But the drift term is then modelled as r - volatility ^ 2 / 2. I am not sure how ...
136 views

### What's the point of discounting in risk-neutral pricing?

Let $\phi$ be a self-financing strategy that replicates a time $T$ option payoff $X$ on stock $S$. By definition of a trading strategy, $\phi$ is previsible. Finally, let $V_t$ be the time $t$ value ...
15 views

### Yield and interest rate? [closed]

Are they the same thing? Is yield the annualized return rate? Why when yield rise, yearly return increases but price falls?
37 views

### Expected Utility and $\log$

I've just started reading about expected utility and utility functions and have the following question. $\textbf{Question:}$ An investor has an initial wealth of 100 and a utility function of the ...
In some texts (e.g. Baxter & Rennie, Shreve I) the binomial model is first constructed using the usual backward induction argument, and it is concluded that by no-arbitrage the time $t$ value of a ...