# All Questions

119 views

### What data should be used for regression-based model backtesting?

I ran regressions using historical valuation data and now want to backtest the models I came up with. Are there any issues with using the same historical data set for the backtest that I need to be ...
58 views

### Is this a reasonable approach to determine the relative importance of valuation factors?

I am trying to come up with a measure of relative importance of a number of valuation factors. I am wondering whether correlation coefficients can't be used for determining this. More on the issue: ...
126 views

### How to combine Gaussian marginals with Gaussian copula to obtain multivariate normals?

in the book "Numerical Methods and Optimization in Finance" I red the following: "Combining the Gaussian copula with Gaussian marginal gives a fancy way of expressing multivariate normals. However, ...
157 views

### Capital Allocation for Portfolio of Multi-Strategy and Multi-Instrument

I would like to know if there is a way (or theory) to manage a multi-strategy, multi-instruments portfolio that would calculate the optimal weight to allocate capital for each combination of strategy ...
107 views

### Why does the price of a convertible bond go up if the CDS spread goes up?

Looking at convertible bond prices in a commercial pricing tool, which is based on a model of Black-Scholes volatility plus a Poisson process of jump to default, I noticed that increasing the spread ...
149 views

### Why is two-factor model so popular for bond futures?

Given that which bond in the basket becomes CTD depends massively on idiosyncratic moves among different bonds, should we not be always using N factor model instead of 2 Factor model? By using only ...
192 views

### Does anyone have a C# implementation of the Barone Adesi Whaley options pricing model?

Thanks. Can't seem to find it through google. Worst case, if you can provide me the code in Java or C++ I can convert it to C#.
48 views

### Hedging using relative values

Consider I have two stocks $A$ and $B$, $A$ is trading at $\$40$and$B$at$\$30$. The standard deviation of its returns are $\sigma_A=25\%$ and $\sigma_B = 30\%$. Correlation between the returns is ...
1k views

### How to optimally allocate capital among trading strategies?

I'm trying to find an optimal way to allocate capital among trading strategies. "Quantitative Trading" by Ernie Chan claims on page 97 that the optimal fraction of capital to allocate to a given ...
417 views

### Why is “full” Yield Curve (term structure of interest rates) 3 component based?

I am trying to understand bond-valuation and construction of yield curve. I don't have any exposure to bootstrapping or what-so-ever as of now. So it's appreciated to have an example but not too ...
88 views

### For which instruments performs SABR/LMM better than LMM?

For which class of instruments the SABR/LIBOR Market Model does perform better than the classical LIBOR Market Model? The LIBOR Market Model The LIBOR Market Model — also known as Brace, Gatarek, ...
151 views

### Can selling put equity options be a good business?

In one of his last books Jack D. Schwager suggested that selling equity puts can be a good business. The puts are like insurance policies against market downturns and there is a natural demand. ...
96 views

### Calculating returns for a mutual fund with dividends

I'd like to calculate returns for a given mutual fund (in this case, PRWCX from troweprice). When I look at their published performance, it says the Calendar Year Total Returns for 2013 is 22.43% but ...
383 views

### How does Volatility Pairs Trading work?

I've read some material related to pairs trading for equities and I understand the process of finding non-stationary pairs price series that can be cointegrated to form a stationary series. The basic ...
297 views

### Exporting Time Series Data For Securities Prices From Bloomberg to Excel

I have a list of securities over a thousand entries long that I want to construct a time series of prices for over a specified historical period (e.g. 2/01/10-2/20/10). Doing this manually would take ...
85 views

### Question 1.18 from Hull's Financial Risk management CAPM

A portfolio manager maintains an active portfolio with beta of 0.2. Risk-free rate is 5% The market return for a particular year is -30% The fund produced a result of -10%. He claimed the return was ...
24 views

### Collateralized Loan Obligation - reliable source of information

Can someone provide me with some reliable source of information about CLOs? Especially some scientific articles etc. Google or wiki are good for starters and I would like to get some examples, ...
118 views

### Literature on Empirical Option Pricing

When I started combing through the literature I was astonished about how little the option pricing models are tested against market data and benchmarks are limited. The main barrier is of course ...
264 views

### What is Base- vs. Implied Correlation of a CDO tranche?

What is the difference between Base Correlation and Implied Correlation for a CDO tranche?
51 views

### Double auctions in online games

I am currently doing a PhD in mathematics and we study the phenomenon of segregation in double auctions. As it is very difficult to gether datas from financial institutions I wanted to start by ...
191 views

### interpreting huge jumps

i have been working on this trading system that uses digital filters to generate signals. the system works fine during normal market hours. but it goes haywire when there is news release. i have ...
144 views

### Bootstrapping Sharpe Ratios

A similar question to this was asked here: How do i test the significance of Sharpe ratio of a strategy using bootstrap I have bootstrapped the original time series (using block bootstrapping) and ...
96 views

### Asian option numerical pricing method generates a negative time value

I use R to write a function which simulates price path and calculates the value of an arithmetic Asian option. I found sometimes the value of the option can be lower than its intrinsic value, i.e., ...
97 views

So I was trading the option contracts on NLY (Annaly Capital Managment) today. The stock took a big dip today which piqued my interests in selling some OTM puts. Since the options market on this ...
205 views

### Filtration and measure change

I asked this question in math stackexchange but to no avail. So i'm trying the luck here. I'm reading Steven E. Shreve's "Stochastic calculus for finance II", and find myself not really understand ...
538 views

### Risk-Free Rate determinant in CAPM

I have trouble understanding what type of maturity to use when calculating CAPM. My professor uses the 3-Month risk-free rate to ...
62 views

### Can Standardized unexpected earnings be considered a Z-score

According to this wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnings_surprise, the SUE score is a "standardized" difference between reported earnings and expected earnings. Therefore, can the SUE score ...
44 views

### Fixed Income Swap Sharpe Ratio Calculation

I have a Fixed Income based strategy based on swaps. Q1.) Given that swaps are based on a "notional" principal and no actual exchange of principal's takes place, is it fair to assume a funding cost ...
577 views

### How do Return.portfolio and Return.rebalancing work in Performance Analytics in R?

I have a question about the function Return.portfolio/Return.rebalancing from the Performance Analytics package in R. I take ...
112 views

### Calibration Problem in the LMM-Skew (Shifted Diffusion) Model

I have implemented the LIBOR market model (LMM) and I am quite satisfied with the results. I have now added a skew to the model as described in 10.1 of Brigo/Mercurio. That is, I have replaced the SDE ...
70 views

### Beta distribution - Holding period

Let's say I have a risk factor that is defined between [0,1], such as recovery rates. Assuming I have daily data, I can estimate the "daily VaR", i.e. the tails over 1 day period, since the data is ...
174 views

### Is there a good closed-form approximation for Black-Scholes implied volatility?

While the solution for IV can certainly be reached using numerical search methods, I wonder if a high precision closed-form approximation exists. For example, there is a very robust (precise within ...
12k views

### How to compute Implied Volatility Calculation?

We all know if you back out of the BS option pricing model you can derive and solve what the options is "implying" as its volatility. However, what is the formula used to derive Implied Volatility ...
96 views

### Counterparty risk tutorials

I want to learn about the latest methods used to measure credit risk, which I believe is same as counterparty risk. Can you please direct me some links for this. I have come across a few of them but ...
124 views

### Calculation of weekly P/E ratio

The P/E-ratio is defined as $$\frac{\text{Market value per share}}{\text{Earnings per share (EPS)}}$$ I have weekly observations of stock prices, but what measure should I use for EPS? Should it ...
170 views

### Hedging future USD cost using different IR and forwards

I am facing a problem where I suppose an expense in 6 months from now of 2,500USD. My home currency shall be EUR, and I am trying to hedge given the following information. ...
2k views

### Why are there still manual market makers in options

Why are manual market makers still predominant in options markets? Why haven't algorithms replaced these market makers, as they have for liquid stocks for example?
125 views

### How can one find an area of research in quantitative finance appropriate to write a masters thesis on? [closed]

I am in the first semester of a MS in mathematics. A requirement for the degree is to write a masters thesis. Here a thesis means writing on a current area of research in finance, but an original ...
37 views

### MPT and the connection to asset prices / initial capital

I have some question about MPT. Suppose we want to build a portfolio given $N$ assets: $A_1,\dots,A_N$. At time $t$ we build the portfolio using MPT, which yields some weight vector ...
89 views

### Finding historical data for indices [duplicate]

Where can I find historical data for option prices on a given index ? Ideally I'd like to find for a period of several months 1) historical prices on options on a given index 2) historical prices on ...
160 views

### Predicting stock returns - in a panel data specification or by using portfolio formation strategies?

I'm working on an empirical analysis where I try to predict stock returns using weekly data. Ideally, I would like to use a panel data model like the following:  ...
249 views

Basically all Quant Finance theory is build on No-Arbitrage presumption and Efficient Markets Hypothesis. The known Grossman-Stiglitz Paradox says: if one can't make money from trading, one wouldn't ...
384 views

### Algorithm to detect the aggressor side of a trade

Most of the exchanges provide aggressor side property of trades (e.g. Tag=5797 AggressorSide on CME) in their raw data. But many data providers do not provide this information via their datafeed ...
17 views

### Standard errors clustered along the time dimension in pooled panel logit model

I'm trying to estimate a logit model on pooled panel data set (unit of observation is firm-year). My dependant variable is default indicator and I have several macro variables as independant ...
242 views

### Incoherence in Bloomberg Data in Swap Curve Builder (ICSV)

When working on calibration for LMM model, we need to have Initial Libor quotes and Swaptions Black vol quotes on the market data. We have data provided by Bloomberg. However, before performing the ...
188 views

### Explanatory variables for regression predicting weekly stock returns

In an empirical analysis I'm trying to predict log() weekly stock returns. I'm trying to model stock returns in a panel data model framework. As explanatory variables I have 1) a measure of investor ...
106 views

### Different interim balances when calculating annual compound interest different ways

Something interesting that doesn't quite make sense to me. When calculating compound interest using P(1+r)^t, I'm calculating in two ways - one using the day 1 principal balance, and the other using ...
59 views

### How to calculate burnrate?

Wikipedia says Burn rate is a synonymous term for negative cash flow but I neither agree nor believe that is formalized. A company could need turnaround from losses ...