# All Questions

281 views

### How do you handle Calendars in a .NET quant system?

I have developed an analytic platform in .NET, but I now have to tackle the problem of data cleaning which first starts by finding holes in time series, before actually looking to find inconsistent ...
1k views

### Equivalency of FX forwards and FX basis swaps for risk-management purposes

Can one deem an FX float-to-float swap and a FX forward equivalent on dates immediately after repricing? The reason I am asking, I am hedging something that can be modeled via an FX forward, I was ...
152 views

### Modeling asset performance to Bitcoin revenue

I'm attempting to model asset performance to Bitcoin revenue, which is a driving force in the Bitcoin community. Question Is there any model, or research being done that tracks "hashes per second" ...
204 views

### Fastest algorithm for extracting 25% and 75% marks

I'm hand rolling some visualization algorithms. Extracting the min/max of a time series is $O(n)$, for n entries. If I want the 25% and 75% mark, I could use an $O(n \log n)$ time sort, then get the ...
458 views

### FIX Heartbeat message not sent

I am using FIX4.3 and QuickFIX/n v1.0.0 for its implementation. I came across a situation where i had subscribed for Market Data and was successfully receiving Snapshot message then suddenly all ...
282 views

### Unsystematic and systematic risk of a portfolio

I have 8 country stock indexes and 1 world stock index. I do not actually have time series data but I'm given the following data: $\mu$, the vector of expected future returns for all 8 country ...
714 views

### VIX = Vega of S&P500 options?

ok, so let assume I can predict the daily change in the VIX itself (in points) every day. what would be the best way to play this with OPTIONS? well, obviously VIX options, but if I can look at the ...
284 views

### Portfolio Greek Exposure Equations

What are the calculations for calculating greek exposures in a portfolio of equities and equity options? I think I have them but I want to be sure. Are these correct (for vanilla options)? ...
96 views

### Aftcast Generation

Aftcast is a way of simulating equity curves for different start years, usually from a large sample data ~100 years. Its kind of like start date sensitivity testing but in my case, I incorporated ...
277 views

### Does amortization of bond start accumulating on trade date or settlement date?

I am sorry if this is not appropriate here. We are building a wealth management system and I really would like to know whether amortization of bond start accumulating on trade date or settlement date ...
532 views

### Varswap Basis - What is it in practice?

What is the varswap basis? I am not completely sure what this number represents. Is it the basis between the estimated future realized volatility and the vol surface implied volatilty at a specified ...
685 views

### SP500 sector weights - how do they change?

The weights of the nine S&P equity sector indexes vary over time. One can find measures of them in a number of different formats: S&P 500 Sector SPDRs - historical sector weights Here's ...
219 views

### Does the correlation amongst stocks rise when stock values decline?

Is there any research on whether the correlations among stocks rise when stock indices decline? Which model could account and test for that effect ? Maybe GARCH-BEKK, or some models using copulas?
303 views

### Correlation: Test for linear dependence

Setting the scene: Assume a multivariate GBM with correlation matrix $\Sigma$. Further, one want to estimate the correlation between two of the assets. Assume one has a suitable estimator of the ...
98 views

### Textbook / Reports on Alphanomics

Look at ACCT 340 @ http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/research/courses/acctg.html I've read some of the research papers written by the Professor, and the material is very interesting. However, I'm looking ...
598 views

### Risk-Parity Portfolio Optimization using Extreme Optimization in C#

I'm trying to create a risk-parity portfolio in C# using the Extreme Optimization routines. I'm mostly trying them out to see if I like them or not before I buy them (I'm a student so money is ...
163 views

### Indexes/stocks with flat implied volatilities

After the 1987 crash, the S&P500 index implied volatility changed from nearly flat to negatively sloped. According to Rubinstein the Black-Scholes model was not so wrong when applied to the ...
567 views

### Commerical delayed stock quote feed that is redistributable?

I'm looking for a commercial delayed quote feed that will allow us to distribute delayed US stock market quotes to the public (ie. that will allow us to display US delayed quotes on the Internet). We ...
219 views

### Can Hurst exponent be used to characterize nonlinear dependence in time series?

It appears to me that the answer is no, because Hurst exponent measures persistence in terms of autocorrelation, which is a linear measure. So even if a time series of asset returns is driven by ...
281 views

### Does Ito/Malliavin calculus have any applications helpful for direction based trading?

I'm an aspiring computer scientist who want to move into algorithmic trading at some point. At the moment I'm mostly focusing on courses in machine learning/data analysis etc. but I've noticed that ...
588 views

### Quantitative Analysis Games on Investing?

I have been playing a quantitative investing game (instructions here) that is actually quite interesting, teams have some time to decide their next moves. It requires all kind of knowledge such as ...
1k views

### What distribution to assume for interest rates?

I am writing a paper with a case study in financial maths. I need to model an interest rate $(I_n)_{n\geq 0}$ as a sequence of non-negative i.i.d. random variables. Which distribution would you advise ...
7k views

### What are some useful approximations to the Black-Scholes formula?

Let the Black-Scholes formula be defined as the function $f(S, X, T, r, v)$. I'm curious about functions that are computationally simpler than the Black-Scholes that yields results that approximate ...
109 views

### Observed market price for the August-Greece-paid bonds where the NPV of the bond or of an option?

The bonds which Greece has paid had been valued by market as junk once, just before there payment. Given that the observed market value is the net present value of the instrument, why were they so ...
57 views

### Neglect the positive values in negative interest rates modelling?

The magnitude of the negative interested rate should vary correlated with the increase in fixed assets prices and with cross-currency basis spreads. Could their volatility / correlation ...
615 views

### How can higher co-moments be applied to portfolio optimization in an asset allocation context?

Traditional portfolio optimization involves mean variance optimization, where only the mean and covariance matrix of returns are estimated. What asset allocation and portfolio optimization techniques ...
427 views

### How does Cornish-Fisher VaR (aka modified VaR) scale with time?

I am thinking about the time-scaling of Cornish-Fisher VaR (see e.g. page 130 here for the formula). It involves the skewness and the excess-kurtosis of returns. The formula is clear and well ...
205 views

### Question on OptionMetrics: “Strike Price times 1000” differs too much from Index price

I have a question regarding the strike price that is given on OptionMetrics. My goal is to primarily retrieve options prices of a specific maturity with strike prices that are 20% in-the-money, ...
242 views

### Could banks move to continuous (rather than overnight) funding?

The dominant frequencies for Money Market and FX instruments were 6m and 3m for a long time, and banks slowly moved to commercial trades at those frequencies but funding overnight. If this is a step ...
1k views

### Interpolating FX forward points

When computing an FX forward rate for an expiry that is not explicitly quoted, it seems to me that a reasonable way to do it is log-linear interpolation of the two nearest outright forward rates, ...
332 views

### Computing FX forward delivery dates

I'm looking for a precise definition of how FX outright delivery dates are computed. Chapter 1 of the book 'Foreign Exchange Option Pricing: A Practitioners Guide' (this chapter can be found here) ...
1k views

### How to define the objective function for a custom optimization problem?

I would like to find the allocations that would minimize some user-defined metric (Sortino, minimum drawdown, etc) for a portfolio of assets. How would one go about formulating the objective ...
485 views

### ROC: difference between discrete and continuous?

Using the ROC function in the R package TTR, there is a choice between continuous (the default) and discrete, but with no guidance on which you choose when. In the code the difference is: ...
526 views

### Multi asset option portfolio risk management (greeks and FX exposure)

I am running an options book containing listed options across multiple products. I trade mostly equity and index related options - with a preference for European expiration products. I trade products ...
487 views

### Strategy Risk and Portfolio Allocation Model (copy from nuclear phynance)

Here is a very interesting question that I found at Nuclear Phynance (original author: Strange); I though it is so interesting that it is worthwhile to ask it here: I have $N$ strategies, across a ...
6k views

### Why would an investor trade a variance swap over a volatility swap?

Why would an investor trade a variance swap over a volatility swap? Is it simply related to the leverage involved in a Var (i.e. sigma-squared) or is there something else to it?
281 views

### Benfords law and quantitative finance

Benford's law has been applied in various ways for detecting fraud (e.g. elections or accounting). But what are the most useful applications of Benford in quantitative finance? Are there any? I have ...
268 views

### Is there any evidence that an option delta approximates ITM expiry probability?

Several sources (online and offline) that discuss the delta of a listed vanilla option, state that its delta is a (guesstimate?) of the probability of said option expiring ITM (in the BSM framework). ...
66 views

### Separated software and physical cash flows modelling and pricing to be used with negative interest rates?

The physical cash presence in the final transactions is one of the issues in the presently observed negative interest rates bonds. Such a situation has historically been modelled within the "liquidity ...
507 views

### How do I calculate weighted mean with negative weights?

I need to display in my system the amount of stocks that I own and the average price it took me to buy them. I am having a problem doing that when I include the selling. Lets say I bought 4 stocks ...
363 views

### Interpreting QuantLlib implied volatility numbers

I am using QuantLib to calculate implied volatilities. I am trying to understand the calculated figures (especially, when compared to historical volatility). The calculated implied volatility numbers ...
444 views

### Can the Heston model be shown to reduce to the original Black Scholes model if appropriate parameters are chosen?

Summary For Heston model parameters that render the variance process constant, the solution should revert to plain Black-Scholes. Closed from solutions to the Heston model don't seem to do this, even ...
233 views

### Equivalent (true) Martingale Measures and no-arbitrage conditions

I hope this is the correct site for this question, as it is rather theoretical... In their famous paper, Delbaen and Schachermayer proved that the No Free Lunch with Vanishing Risk condition is ...
122 views

### Brent Crude Data

I am trying to locate historical volatility data (5+ years) for Brent Crude? Does anyone know where I might be able to source such data?
378 views

### Why don't options traders use charts? Or do they?

Retail trading platforms typically offer equity charts but only instantaneous quotes on options. It seems like even a few minutes of historical data would be useful when entering an order. Are charts ...
170 views

### St Petersburg lottery pricing & short investing horizons

I am a statistician (no solid background in finance). Please forward me to a book \ chapter \ paper to resolve the following general question. Suppose we have a stock with the following monthly return ...
354 views

### Do people use unbounded interest rate models, and what alternatives exist?

A simple interest rate model in discrete time is the autoregressive model, $$I_{n+1} = \alpha I_n+w_n$$ where $\alpha\in [0,1)$ and $w_n\geq 0$ are i.i.d. random variables. When working with ruin ...
916 views

### What is the meaning of subadditivity in a risk measure?

The subadditivity reads: $\rho(X_1+X_2) \leq \rho(X_1) + \rho(X_2)$ What is the meaning of this condition? I can vaguely accept that one should diversify the investment portfolio. Or, I can ...
In the derivation of the Black Scholes equation, the value of the portfolio at time $t$ is given by $$P_t = -D_t + \frac{{\partial D_t}}{{\partial S_t}}S_t$$ where $P_t$ is the value of the ...