# All Questions

43 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 ...
42 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 ...
193 views

### How are quants able to verify whether their calculated prices are any good

This question is related to the discussion on Model Validation Criteria However it appeard to be very high level to me and I would like to go more into detail. Not working at a pricing desk the ...
304 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 ...
52 views

### FTAP in the model independent case, paper by Schachermayer

I have a question about the following paper by Beatrice Acciaio, Mathias Beiglböck, Friedrich Penkner, Walter Schachermayer. At the very beginning of the paper, on page 3, there are two definitions ...
66 views

### How is the redemption right on delisting of underlying shares held by holder in the convertible bond valued?

As title, If there is no delisting constraint, then I can treat the redemption right as the put right on the convertible bond. If there is redemption right on delisting, what is the conventional ...
3k views

### Difference between S&P 500 index and S&P 500 Total Return index?

There's the standard S&P 500 index (SPX) and the rarer used S&P 500 Total Return index (SPTR). If you compare graphs, you'll find that the latter grows faster. Supposedly, SPTR assumes ...
454 views

### mean reversion with Kalman Filter - Spread calculation

Ernest Chan in its book "Algorithmic Trading" shows how to use the Kalman Filter for mean reversion pair trading. I have seen that he uses the measurement prediction error for calculating the spread ...
173 views

### Time series (stochastic process) estimating parameters using characteristic function

I have a time series of assets ${A_1, A_2, ..., A_n}$, which is described by a sophisticated distribution having the following characteristic function: $\phi(u; t;\theta)$, where $\theta$ is a vector ...
119 views

### default probability

Suppose the hazard rate is $\lambda$ the default probability density function follow exponential $f(t) = \lambda e^{-\lambda t}$ and cumulative probability function is $F(t) = 1 - e^{-\lambda t}$ ...
207 views

### Fitting Student t-distributions to log-returns

It seems that some tail-risk centric groups are bent on using Paretian and t-distributions to account for tail risk when fitting log-returns. It has been observed, however, that with and without ...
109 views

### Estimating risk aversion (power or exponential utility) from options prices

I came across this literature and it seems like there are a number of ways people do this. You can do it for an option on any underlying as long as you can create the risk-neutral p.d.f. If you agree ...
79 views

### Dividend Index Futures

My question is dealing with the proportionality between Dividend Index Futures prices and Index prices. Indeed, we in the past we used to do a simple regression between these variables and use the ...
266 views

I have calculated a hedge ratio that generates a mean reverting spread (stationary, without trends) 60-70% of the time. But the remaining 30% of the time, it seems like there is a trend in the spread. ...
75 views

### LSM American Option pricing with dividends

Under the Longstaff-Schwartz LSM method for an American call, how should I account for a continuous dividend paying stock? I assume that it'll needs to be accounted for when simulating the underlying ...
162 views

### Credit Rating vs Bond Yield

I am looking for some references on quantifying the dependence between credit rating and bond yield. I have some data (found some Bloomberg indices which give average yield based on credit rating), ...
163 views

### Should I use Resampling or Expectation Maximization to compute a robust covariance matrix?

I have several assets, each with different return histories. Some of the assets have 75 days of return history, others have 40 or so days. In calculating a robust covariance matrix, should I be using ...
714 views

### FIGARCH estimation in R

I am trying to estimate a FIGARCH(1,1) model in R for Value-at-Risk purposes. As I understand it, the rugarch package does not support FIGARCH or FIEGARCH. To that end, I used the garchOxFit function ...
337 views

### Definition of risk factors for market risk scenario testing

I am doing a research for stress testing in market risk. The usual process I found out for scenario testing is: Define risk factors upon the portfolio Define the desired scenarios Vary the risk ...
265 views

### Market risk stress testing?

I am doing a research for a paper for market risk stress testing. In fact I found some information on the web about this important topic such as: Stress Testing from Art to Science Stress Testing ...
170 views

### Black-Scholes PDE to heat equation, nonconstant coefficients

Can someone provide me with details or a reference on how to transform the Black-Scholes PDE with nonconstant coefficients (i.e. $r=r\left(S,t\right)$, $\sigma=\sigma\left(S,t\right)$) to the heat ...
75 views

### Standard Assumption Terminology

Regulators are starting to analyse (or at least they are talking about it) model assumptions. We all know that too often our assumptions are just in the model documentation. Furthermore, we have no ...
63 views

### Discount of Asian vs European vols

I understand the discount for Asian vs. European vol depends on time to expiry and length of averaging period. This makes sense intuitively; a short averaging period far away blurs into a single ...
93 views

### Optimal mortgage rate strategy

When buying a mortgage, you can choose to "lock in" a rate at any point within 60 days of your closing date. Once locked in, you can't revert. This makes it a secretary problem - in the traditional ...
93 views

### Overnight Index Swaps

Just a very quick general question regarding the OIS market. Is it common place on termsheets to state a PV Notional and additionally a FV notional, if so what is the purpose of this and does market ...
160 views

### RQuantLib: any difference between FixedRateBond() and FixedRateBondPriceByYield() with flat term structure?

Please, consider the following functions from RQuantLib package: FixedRateBond() ...
236 views

### How replicate data using PCA

I have a set of date covering petrol prices. My example has two columns where each row represents a sequential date. ...
124 views

### Industry factors without GICS

I'm working through the Quantitative Equity Portfolio Management book by Chincarini and Kim. I'd like to build a basic industry-based fundamental factor model. As this is a pet project for ...
237 views

### PCA Variances and Principal Portfolio Variances

In Meucci's paper called "Managing Diversification" he mentions that: "Indeed, the eigenvalues A correspond to the variances of these uncorrelated portfolios" I tried to replicate it but found they ...
199 views

### Fitting a non linear AR + GARCH(1,1)-M model

I want to fit the following model to a time series: $$y_{t}=\alpha_{0}+\alpha_{1}y_{t-1}+\alpha_{2}y_{t-1}^{2}+\lambda h_{t}+\varepsilon_{t}$$  ...
56 views

### Credit spreads vs default events dependence

Reading this note it strikes me that credit spreads and defaults seem not to be commonly modeled jointly (e.g. more or less directly in structural models), but at best with some kind of "ex post" ...
214 views

### how to represent financial data as a spatial process

Does any one have a good tutorial , introduction or overview on the web for different ways of representing financial data as a spatial process? Such as those spatial processes often used in ...
109 views

### Resources to read more about/learn how implied pricing works

I was looking at this video today: http://www.cmegroup.com/education/interactive/webinars-archived/implied-price-functionality.html on implied pricing. And am aware that implied orders/pricing ...
312 views

### Monty Hall Model

Given a fixed time period,say 3 days, the stock/market can go up,down or stay sideways. A hedge fund can long, short or use rangebound(options strategy) to bet for that 3 days closing level. Hedge ...
99 views

### Estimating two normal random numbers with one equation

Subtitle: Estimating the correlation of the shocks driving two commodities in two multi-factor models I am fitting two 2-factor models to electricity and gas futures, respectively. In order to ...
326 views

### How does one estimate theta in the Ho-Lee model from a yield curve?

I have a yield curve constructed using linear interpolation with data points every 3-months for US treasuries. I would like to use that calibrate a Ho-Lee model, but I can't wrap my head around how ...
225 views

### Measuring unbiased estimator for variance with RMSE?

The root mean squared error (RMSE) is considered by some to be the best measure of how good a variance estimate is. You often see it quoted as: \$RMSE=\sqrt{\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n(\hat{\sigma_i} - ...
201 views

### Optimal Position Size with Transaction Costs given Forecast Mean and StDev

I have rather a challenging question. I'm hoping that someone can share their experience. I will build up the problem in steps. Let's start our thinking with the idea of a buy and hold strategy of ...
82 views

### Individual/casual investors and the bias towards blue-chip stocks?

There's quite a bit of research (example, [1]) teasing out the fact that home/casual/individual investors prefer stocks with large positive skewness. It surprised me, as I was reading a bunch of these ...
349 views

### Real time stock volatility

Is there any need for real time weighted volatility on a tick by tick basis for equities? If you had that access to that, what could you do with it?
361 views

### Is there a standard method of scaling alpha forecasts to t-cost estimates?

Given a set of monthly alpha forecasts (i.e. standardized z-scores from a multi-factor return model) and a non-linear market impact model (or more specifically, its piecewise-linear approximation), is ...
119 views

### Are there canonical test cases for testing of pricing engines

Short intro: We are developing pricing engines for the calculation of market risk in a Solvency II solution, including bonds, callable bonds, cds, options, futures and so on. Are there any canonical ...
128 views

### What is the relation between return volatility and return rank volatility, and how can I control the latter?

I have no experience in finance, but I've been playing around with a virtual portfolio. I'm trying to control the "rank volatility" distribution - that is, the volatility of a stock's daily rank in ...
333 views

### How to balance two Forex crosses correctly to do a linear regression?

I have two cross and an account in EUR: EUR/USD GBP/USD I would like to do a balanced linear regression using R. With "balanced" I mean that I would like to normalize it by calculating the ...
164 views

### Benefits of Diversification and Rebalancing with negatively skewed leptokurtic return distribution?

I am missing tools to investigate this issue. I am trying to solve this question here. What kind of issues should you acknowledge over the naive diversification/rebalancing with normal distribution? ...
188 views

### What is the longest number of consecutive days that options implied volatility has stayed “extremely high” for any particular underlying?

Curious as to whether or not there is any sort of all time record. Any index, future, or stock will do. Volatility must be well above the average 1 year volatility for all periods.
35 views

### Comprehensive List of Regime Switching/ Change Point Models

I am looking for a comprehensive list of regime switching/change point models/techniques which can be used to model different regimes / change points in financial time series. What I found so far are: ...
49 views

### Modified duration in multi-currency portfolio

I was thinking about how to figure aut duration for portfolio of bonds denominated in different currencies… I would like to compare sensitivity of portfolio to shift of yield with competitive ...