All Questions

170 views

Risk neutral Esscher transform of exponential Levy processes

Let $X_t$ be a Levy Process and $e^{X_t}$ the corresponding exponential Levy process. Using the Esscher transform for a change of measure for which the Radon-Nykodym derivative is ...
159 views

Mock/practice trading for options (delta/gamma hedging etc.)

I know there are some sites for practicing equity investing. But could you provide me with suggestions concerning options trading etc. I read Natenbergs book on Options and want to test things like ...
40 views

CAPM as pricing formula

P - price that the asset was purchased. Q - price that it was sold P = Q/(1+r+B(R_m - r)) What is the financial meaning of denominator. Thanks for help.
81 views

Detrending before cointegration

When checking for co-integration , is it necessary to detrend the time series? What is the best way to go about it?
193 views

Scaling of a transition matrix

I am working on a ratings transition matrix and I wondered how people scale it down to shorter time periods (although one should more or less stick to the estimation period i know). It is clear that ...
146 views

Given that $e^{r\Delta t}(u+d)-ud-e^{2r\Delta t} = \sigma^2\Delta t$ I would like to show that $u=e^{\sigma\sqrt{\Delta t}}$ I know I must somehow use Taylor's approximation $e^x = 1 + x + ... 3answers 557 views Convexity of BS Equation for Call and Put I have a simple question. Is the Black-Scholes Formula convex with respect to Implied volatility parameter$\sigma$(for calls or put) ? When I say Black-Scholes I mean for a call the following one ... 0answers 45 views Log returns vs Relativizing to Portfolio size of$1

In a current empirical research project, I am tracking a non-parametric measure of a transaction cost. To this extent, I track this cost in two ways Cost in terms of log returns Cost in terms of ...
487 views

Optimal lag length selection criterion in GARCH(p,q) model using MATLAB

As assessed by the title, I'm trying to estimate a GARCH(p,q) model to forecast stock market volatility and, in order to be able to do that, I've to identify the optimal number of lags, p and q, to ...
37 views

evaluating portfolio performance without knowing the amount held on cash accounts

I would like to evaluate the performance of a portfolio mananger. I know his trades, and the initial portfolio holdings. I do not know, however the amount held on his cash account. That is, I ...
396 views

How to incorporate fundamental analysis in quantitative trading algorithm? [closed]

I want to write a quantitative stock trading program based on fundamental analysis. It would crunch through prices, financial reports to look for value stocks. It can support backtesting of strategy ...
809 views

What does it mean by autocorrelation coefficient near 1?

It is said that the time series has a stochastic trend if the first autocorrelation coefficient will be near 1. Q1) What does it mean by the above statement? Q2) How do we calculate the first ...
444 views

Calculate volatility from call option price

Given call option price, what is the simplest formula to get the volatility value ? Test Data: ...
462 views

How do I calculate probability distribution of stock prices given option prices?

I'd like to calculate a probability distribution for prices given the option prices for that stock? Any ideas how to do this? My desire is to do this daily and then see how the price PD changes over ...
6k views

Are there any good tools for back testing options strategies?

There are all kinds of tools for backtesting linear instruments (like stocks or stock indices). It is a completely different story when it comes to option strategies. Most of the tools used are ...
177 views

Directional View of Volatility

What is an option strategy that someone could employ to simply go long/short volatility?? Assuming I want 0 delta(0 gamma if possible) risk in my option position, how do I take a directional view on ...
33 views

How can dividend protection be considered in the binomial model in pricing the convertible bond?

If the convertible bond has dividend-protection, how can we cater it in the binomial model? If there is dividend protection at or above 1%, can we impose input of dividend yield of 1% in the ...
4k views

Data source for historical Share Outstanding totals for individual stocks?

Data is normally adjusted for splits/reverse splits, etc. The current shares outstanding is usually available. Is there a data repository that captures the shares outstanding for any point in the ...
90 views

What are the equation that gives hurst exponent of value >0.7 and <0.3?

I had been working on algorithm which uses the Hurst Exponent. Once i random walk simulation on matlab, x = cumsum(randm(1000,1)), I was able to get a hurst value close to 0.5. To analyze the use of ...
61 views

Calculating the sensitivity of the modified bond duration to changes in the coupon rate

Given that $B=Ce^{-y} + Ce^{-2y}+ (100+C)e^{-3y}$ where B is the bond price, C is the coupon. and It is a 3 years annual coupon bond. I want to find $\frac{dD}{dC}$ where $D$ is the modified ...
147 views

Why was NASDAQ(or other index) not fluctuating in 70s and 80s?

Today I have a search of historical NASDAQ back to 70s and noticed the index was slightly increasing in 70s-early 90s and rising up and down in recent decade of years. Why would that happen? The only ...
274 views

Places to make quant code/tools publicly avaliable

Over the years I have developed several tools - including pricing, optimization and calibration tools - most in VBA, C# and C++ I would like to make them publicly avaliable. Aside from putting up my ...
142 views

Volatility calculation for intra-day cash-or-nothing call binary option

Firstly, I do not have a quant finance background. This is new to me, and I imagine that this is a basic question for this group. I am calculating the price of a binary/digital option with ...
195 views

Call option on a Mutual Fund

I am trying to price a call option on a mutual fund. Given the lack of market implied data, I am going to estimate the fund´s expected volatility using as a reference its historical volatility ...
79 views

What is a good index to track short term interest rates?

This is an FX question. I want to track short term (overnight or next best thing) rates for major/em ccys. What's the best way of doing this? Is there an index I can follow? Preferably something ...
83 views

Volatility swaps historical data

I am preparing a study about Volatility and Variance Swaps. Does anyone know where I can found historical public data regarding this instruments? Thanks!
231 views

Explanation or implementation of Ledoit-Wolf estimator (without math packages)

I have calculated weights of selected assets in a market-neutral portfolio (presumably with min variance) using PCA and simple data covariance matrix. The question is : It is obvious that Cov Matrix ...
195 views

Normally Distributed Returns Become Leptokurtic Due to Compounding

I was running a bunch of simple simulations in excel the other day in excel. Using the NORM.INV(RAND(),0,1) to simulate daily stock returns I noticed that the more compounded the returns, ie, the more ...
322 views

Is creating constrained random portfolios a hard problem?

Creating random portfolios with weights $x_i$ can be thought of as sampling from the surface of a simplex given by $$Ex = f$$ and $$Ax \le b$$ Where $E$ and $A$ are constraint matrices for equality ...
109 views

How to perform significance test on transition matrices

Say you have in your hand a transition matrix published by Moody, and you also collected the rating information for a sample of bonds, which you use to form your own transition matrix. How can we use ...
42 views

Characterizing relation “ has no less information than” between information systems represented by Markovian matrices

I crossposted this question on math.stackexchange. Background: Suppose that an investor's utility is both determined by the state and her action taken. A fact of life is that she can't observe the ...
99 views

Critique against consumption-based asset pricing theory?

I find asset pricing theory very vague and full of assumptions, especially the consumption-based modern theory. In its essence, the theory states that asset prices depend on the covariance between ...
3k views

Trading a synthetic replication of the VIX index

One cannot directly buy and sell the VIX index. Theoretically, however, one could approximate the index by purchasing an at-the-money straddle on the SP500, then delta-hedging the straddle. Does ...
191 views

Algorithmic Trading Model Calculation and Stale Data

I'd like ask everyone a more concurrency programming but definitely quant-finance related question. How do you deal with staleness of data in market hours as quote ticks are streaming and your model ...
160 views

Implied probability density (Question 2 - Applications and Interpretation)

Using the second derivative of the Call-Option-Price one can try to recover the pricing density. Formally: Assuming a constant interst rate $r$ and also not making any assumptions on the model ...
47 views

Minimum PD under Basel II retail asset?

I have been told that under Basel II the minimum PD that one can assign to any portfolio/segment classified under the retail asset class is 0.33%. But Google searches return nothing and I can't seem ...
589 views

Which greeks do you need to hedge if you want to implement an implied-volatility security?

Assume you want to create a security which replicates the implied volatility of the market, that is when $\sigma$ goes up, the value of the security $X$. The method you could use is to buy call ...
131 views

Sharpe Ratio and time spent in loss

Is it possible to express, given an annualized Sharpe Ratio value, what is an expected maximum/average time spent in a draw-down or something in this manner? E.g. with SR of 10, you'd expect to spend ...
323 views

How to prove that markets are incomplete under the Stochastic Volatility model?

Has anyone ever formally proved that Markets are incomplete under the stochastic volatility model? I know that if there are more random sources than traded assets, then the market is incomplete but ...
111 views

Volatility tools / web sites?

Could someone give recommendations regarding volatility tools / web sites that they find useful? I am looking for information that my brokerage platform does not provide. Specifically, I want to see ...
39 views

How do I determine what is a separate objective in a multi-objective portfolio optimization?

Is there a general rule to determining when to separate objectives when developing a multi-objective portfolio optimization? For example, one might start with a standard portfolio optimization of ...
16 views

Cost dependency quantification

Suppose one wants to estimate the manufacturing costs dependence of the price of a specific raw commodity, are there good quantitative methods for making such estimation? I'm interested in creating a ...
75 views

Pricing a piece of asset whose dividend stream following a Markovian matrix

I'm trying to calculate the result of an simple example on page 326-327, in Harrison and Kreps(1978). It's pricing a piece of asset whose dividend stream is a simple Markovian process. Here's my ...
207 views

Optimal Executions for Minimizing Slippage

There has been a considerable body of work for finding trading strategies that minimize the slippage wrt arrival price. For instance, the following are on of the most well known papers: [1] Robert ...
40 views

Econometrics - Granger Causality

Suppose we have two time series, if one has autocorrelations and the other is non stationary how do we test whether they Granger cause a returns series?
138 views

Monte Carlo American Option Pricing under GARCH(1,1) volatitliy

I am attempting to price a couple of at-the-money American option using the LSM algorithm and GARCH(1,1) volatility. The LSM code I have works correctly for constant volatility, however, when I switch ...
355 views

Intuitive explanation of the Hansen-Jagannathan bound

The Hansen-Jagannathan bound states that the maximum Sharpe ratio of a portfolio can't exceed the ratio of the standard deviation of a stochastic discount factor to its mean. I more or less understand ...
41 views

Is there evidence that illiquid stocks, held less by institutions, have more price momentum?

(One of) the standard explanation people gave for momentum is under-reaction of stockholders to firm-specific news. If this is true, then it seems that these stocks should have more momentum, and ...