# All Questions

706 views

### Tools in R for estimating time-varying copulas?

Are there libraries in R for estimating time-varying joint distributions via copulas? Hedibert Lopes has an excellent paper on the topic here. I know there is an existing packaged called copula but ...
154 views

### Options: Vertical LEAPS

I am developing an algorithm and it needs to know what to do in certain market conditions It takes on a Vertical Bull Call Debit Spread on LEAPS that are 12+ months out in the future. This means that ...
233 views

### Can options volume have an impact on the price of the underlying asset?

Can options volume affect the underlying asset price indirectly? I know that options buying/selling does not directly affect the price of the underlying asset (rather, the asset price contributes most ...
241 views

### TA/Pattern algorithm analysis

I have been building a momentum pattern detection algo (essentially involves fitting curves in overlapping windows at different timeframes) and wanted to see if anyone has done/seen similar work. I ...
175 views

### Can binary model lead to non-normal distribution?

If we suppose an instrument goes up or down 1 tick per $\Delta t$ (binary model), its long term distribution will be normal, per the Central Limit Theorem. However, suppose we model as follows: The ...
180 views

### What is a good site to download historical stock 'events' such as earnings releases? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: What data sources are available online? Earnings and valuation data sources online I'd like to backtest some strategies involving earnings release surprises, as well ...
167 views

### Standard Deviations out the money where options will respond to underlying asset price changes

Is there an understood way of determining how far out the money an option can be, before it starts/stops responding to the underlying asset price changes? I usually look at the greeks, gamma, delta, ...
2k views

### Can social media be applied to algorithmic trading?

Can social media sites, like Twitter, be used to analyze financial markets for algorithmic trading? How much research has been done on this topic?
401 views

### Monte carlo portfolio risk simulation

My objective is to show the distribution of a portfolio's expected utilities via random sampling. The utility function has two random components. The first component is an expected return vector ...
356 views

### Correct way to calculate bond's Yield-to-Horizon

I'm creating some .Net libraries for bond pricing and verifying its correctness with a bond pricing excel spreadsheet (Bond Pricing and Yield from Chrisholm Roth) but I believe it calculates the Yield ...
2k views

### The difference between Close price and Settelment Price for future contracts

What is the difference between Close price and Settelment Price for future contracts? Is there a define rule for evaluating the settlement price or each instrument/exchange different rules applied? ...
716 views

### What does the VIX formula measure and how does it work?

I have read the CBOE's white paper on the VIX and a lot of other things, but I need to honestly say, I don't really get it, or I am missing something important. In semi-layman's terms, is the VIX ...
160 views

### Tian third moment-matching tree with smoothing - implementation

I was wondering if someone has an implementation of the Tian third moment-matching tree (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1030143) with smoothing in code (e.g. c++, vba, c#, etc.)? ...
524 views

### What is the difference between STOXX and STOXXE?

Could anyone explain the difference between STOXX and STOXXE? Which is the right index for benchmarking European stocks? Thanks.
271 views

### Option Portfolio Risk - Volatility/Skew - practical implementation

I'm trying to improve my methods for calculating real-time US Equity option portfolio risk. My main problem is volatility "stability" across all strikes in an option series. The current ...
2k views

### How can I compare distributions using only mean and standard deviation?

I only have means and standard deviations of samples of two random variables. What technique can I use to determine how similar the distributions these describe are? Assume that the values are built ...
539 views

### What skills and education are required for HFT? [closed]

I'm a university student and I'm quite interested in High Frequency Trading Algorithms. What courses should I take and what skills should I acquire so that I can work in this field? So far, I've been ...
150 views

### how to choose a financial spread betting provider for ease of control with customers' programs [closed]

I want to use my quantitative finance programs for real world trades on financial spreads; forex, indices, stocks etc. The features presented by many providers are for the human interaction side. ...
210 views

### How to value a floor when a loan is callable?

Certain bank loans pay a spread above a floating-rate interest rate (typically LIBOR) subject to a floor. I would like to find the value of this floor to the investor. Assume for this example that ...
306 views

### How can I simulate portfolio risk (diversification) with a 'Wheel of Fortune' like investment options/returns?

Say I have 6 possible investment options with the following probability of success and the corresponding returns: ...
1k views

### How are limit orders selected from the order book?

I'm sure there is a simple answer to this but I haven't had any luck with searches. I'm just wondering when someone places a market order which order(s) from the limit order book are selected to fill ...
276 views

### Probability distributions in quantitative finance [closed]

What are the most popular probability distributions in quantitative finance and what are their applications?
162 views

### How often do ETF creation units baskets change?

Large institutions can swap baskets of underlying securities for ETF shares that can then be traded on an exchange as part of arbitrage between the price of the basket and the ETF share price. These ...
196 views

### Where are creation units baskets for ETFs published?

Where can the specification of a creation unit basket for an ETF be found? This information is needed for calculating the arbitrage possible between the ETF instrument itself and the creation unit ...
2k views

### Calculating Portfolio Skewness & Kurtosis

I need to calculate the skewness and kurtosis of 2 asset portfolio, can someone please help me with the formulas and definition of terms? Thank you. I have been using the matrices method and I am not ...
600 views

### How to normalize Futures data(different leverage) for cointegration test?

For example I want to construct 2 time series, one for ES and the other for NQ and test for cointegration. ES one point equal to 50$. NQ one point equal to 20$. If I have the following data: ...
753 views

### How to cluster stocks and construct an affinity matrix?

My goal is to find clusters of stocks. The "affinity" matrix will define the "closeness" of points. This article gives a bit more background. The ultimate purpose is to investigate the "cohesion" ...
7k views

### How to annualize Sharpe Ratio?

I have a basic question about annualized Sharpe Ratio Calculation: if I know the daily return of my portfolio, the thing I need to do is multiply the Sharpe Ratio by $\sqrt{252}$ to have it ...
141 views

### Use of Local Times in Option Pricing

I know two applications of local time in option pricing theory. First, it allows a derivation of Dupire's formula on local volatility in a neat way (i.e. without resorting to differential operator ...
1k views

### Evaluating automated trading strategies: accepted practice

Both for private projects, and for clients, I've been working on code a lot this year to evaluate automated trading strategies. This often ends up turning into the task of how to fairly compare apples ...
151 views

### When does an ETF take out expenses?

When does an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) take out expenses (for example 0,3% on a yearly basis)? Does it happen daily, or once yearly or according to some other scheme? Where does it take them from?
209 views

### What weights should be used when adjusting a correlation matrix to be positive definite?

I have a correlation matrix $A$ for an equity market that is not positive definite. Higham (2002) proposes the Alternating Projections Method, minimising the weighted Frobenius norm $||A-X||_W$ where ...
567 views

### What strategy would benefit most from having the fastest connection to the exchange?

Imagine that you have the fastest connection to the exchange (receive quotes 1 ms earlier than everyone else) for both stocks and derivatives. How would you benefit from this? Of course almost any ...
224 views

### Which is a more appropriate choice of risk measurement in a utility function, CVaR or VaR?

What is the consensus on which risk measure to use in measuring portfolio risk? I am researching what is the best risk measure to use in a portfolio construction process for a long/short option-free ...
386 views

### What are the most common/popular exotics in the interest rate markets these days?

By "exotic" I mean anything that is not a plain vanilla swap, swaption, cap or floor. Also any IR hybrids if appropriate. Possible examples would be: CMS and CMS spread options Multi-callable swaps ...
306 views

### Should cointegration be tested using close or adjusted close prices?

When doing cointegration tests should I use the adjusted close price or just close price for the time series? The dividend of each stock is on different dates and can cause jumps in the data.
797 views

### How to extrapolate implied volatility for out of the money options?

Estimation of model-free implied volatility is highly dependent upon the extrapolation procedure for non-traded options at extreme out-of-the-money points. Jiang and Tian (2007) propose that the ...
1k views

### What is the reason for the convexity adjustment when pricing a constant maturity swap (CMS)?

I'm trying to wrap my head around pricing a Constant Maturity Swap (CMS). Let's imagine the following deal: 6m LIBOR in one direction, 10y swap rate in the other. The discount curve is derived from ...
170 views

### Are there financial instruments that make a bet on traded volume instead of price or its derivatives?

For most financial instruments we can go long or short and make a bet on the price. In the case of options we can bet on derivatives of price and other factors (e.g., interest rates). Is there an ...
2k views

### What is a medium to low frequency trading strategy and why is it less hyped?

The term high frequency trading has been used quite often recently to refer to trading using real-time tick data (or data aggregated to few seconds) and having an intra-day holding period. How are ...
308 views

### Has any research used Bayesian networks to estimate risk factor betas?

Is there any published research on estimating the beta of a security with respect to one or more risk factors via Bayesian networks? I'd like to see if this is a promising angle of research.
188 views

### What procedure do leveraged ETFs use to limit losses?

I've skimmed through more than one ETF prospectus trying to find the procedure for clamping losses at the limits of an ETF, and so far, no help. Has anyone found a description of the "clamping" ...
172 views

### In a covered call strategy, should I hold the call or sell/roll if the delta becomes too small?

I am tweaking a covered call algorithm. The short leg consists of out of the money call options. The goal is to collect the tim premium, but an equally favorable circumstance is when the call ...
664 views

### Cleansing covariance matrices via Random matrix theory

I am exploring de-noising and cleansing of covariance matrices via Random Matrix Theory. RMT is a competitor to shrinkage methods of covariance estimation. There are various methods expressed usually ...
10k views

### How to calculate unsystematic risk?

We know that there are 2 types of risk which are systematic and unsystematic risk. Systematic risk can be estimate through the calculation of β in CAPM formula. But how can we estimate the ...
409 views

### Can you replicate an option on an arbitrary basket of stocks?

Since a market index is nothing more than a basket of stocks, you can create your own index by putting together stocks of your choice. The only difference is that you can trade options on major ...
207 views

### What does T statistics of Information Coefficient indicate?

Hi I am looking for a clear explanation of T statistics concept. Especially in quantitative equity portfolio management context, what does T statistics of monthly Information Coefficient for one ...
309 views

### What is the forward rate for a Black-Karasinski interest rate model?

I was wondering if anyone could help me with the instantaneous forward rate equation for a Black-Karasinski interest rate model? I was also after the Black-Karasinski Bond Option Pricing Formula.
Possible Duplicate: How to derive the implied probability distribution from B-S volatilities? Let's assume a stock price S, with volatility $\sigma$ constant, no dividend, and risk free ...