# All Questions

1k views

### Is there an open source alternative to Reuters Kondor+?

Basically, I'm looking for a system which have trading(in a demo account), book keeping, profit/loss and risk calculation capability across different asset classes such as bond, repo, equity, foreign ...
2k views

### statistical arbitrage option overlay strategies / volatility trading

Here's an interesting trading puzzle that I would love to get the community's input on. Let's say there exists an alpha signal that does a good job of sorting equities expected excess returns over ...
406 views

### What time are Bloomberg Open Symbology Files updated daily?

Does anyone know what time the Bloomberg Open Symbology precanned files are updated every day? I am planning on upating my view of them at 9 AM EST every morning. Furthermore, will the files for ...
2k 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 ...
2k views

### Why does the VIX index have *any* correlation to the market?

It appears that the log 'returns' of the VIX index have a (negative) correlation to the log 'returns' of e.g. the S&P 500 index. The r-squared is on the order of 0.7. I thought VIX was supposed to ...
11k views

I have a very basic data question: how to get a list of all common stocks traded on NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX? I would need to be able to get the approximate list of common stocks as is available in ...
3k views

The bid-ask bounce is the bouncing of trade prices between the bid and ask sides of the market. It introduces a systematic bias to the data which can cause serious problems in analysis. What methods ...
461 views

### What benefits are there to employing agile software development methodologies for quants?

Perusing the other SE network sites, particularly Programmers, I often find vigorous support for various agile software development methodologies, particularly the various values known as Extreme ...
849 views

### How do strategies deal with corporate actions?

There are many corporate actions that will affect the stock price, like dividend, stock split and rights. Given a large series of historical price data, how do we adjust the data to filter out the ...
2k views

### How do I find the most diversified portfolio, or least correlated subset, of stocks?

I have a trading system that chooses top 10 stocks in Nasdaq 100 ranked on relative strength and some other factors. However, I'd like to take positions in only 5 of these 10 stocks based on how ...
500 views

### Empirical or theoretical quant insights that have shaped your thinking?

What are some quant theoretical or empirical insights that have shaped your thinking or provided a deeper conceptual basis for explaining returns and risk?
508 views

### Transparent quant products with real track record

A real track record is better than backtesting! I am looking for products, funds, certificates, indices etc. that are based on quantitative trading strategies where the strategies and performance ...
4k views

### R: How feasible is it to store — and work with — tick data in a database connected to R?

I'm looking to convert some tickdata .csv files into a database on a local disk and then use R to call the data and do my various analytics and modelling. What are some best practices / ...
843 views

### How to detect regime change when estimating asset correlation from historical time series?

Suppose I have two asset time series, $X_t$ and $Y_t$, and I'm estimating their correlation from historical data. I'd like to apply some systematic criterion to estimate what time window I should use ...
2k views

I am looking for all kinds of research concerning option trading strategies. With that I mean papers that publish results on different option trading strategies properly backtested with real-world ...
3k views

### Implementing data-structures in a Limit order book

I'm working on implementing a 'LOB' and I'm being very careful about choosing my data-structures so as to maximize performance. Using F# as an example, I need to consider a List versus Array for ...
1k views

### At what point does someone using technical analysis become a Quant?

Sorry if the question sounds rough. It's not my intention to devaluate something I've not yet understood like Quantitative Finance. So to keep it simple: is Quantitative Finance a science, like ...
1k views

### Is there any good research on support and resistance?

Could somebody advise me on where to find good literature on the justification or motivation for using support and resistance lines - and also lines of maximums and minimums. In finance, it is ...
484 views

### How credible is Knight pointing the finger at Rule 107C?

After the Knight Capital incident, I decided to read into the new Rule 107C that NYSE pushed-out August 1st for a one-year pilot. From what I've read, Knight claims that new code rolled out for this ...
797 views

### Measuring liquidity

While liquidity is one of the key figure of financial markets, It seems to be very difficult to measure. Volume is sometime used as a proxy but can sometimes be completly irrelevant. Could you point ...
602 views

### What is the most effective way of determining & measuring the level of HFT activity in a stock in (close to) real time?

On a security by security basis, I want to be able to quantify the level of HFT activity (and later institutional & retail activity). Is it higher than it normally is? How much so? What would you ...
1k views

### How do you evaluate a covariance forecast?

Suppose you have two sources of covariance forecasts on a fixed set of $n$ assets, method A and method B (you can think of them as black box forecasts, from two vendors, say), which are known to be ...
755 views

### What is the precision of standard deviation estimates with small samples?

I was asked today to "quantify" the precision of an estimated the standard deviation from a small sample, I was not sure how to answer. The case is quite simple, I have a sample of $n=25$ measures ...
2k views

### Volatility pumping in practice

The fascinating thing about volatility pumping (or optimal growth portfolio, see e.g. here) is that here volatility is not the same as risk, rather it represents opportunity. Additionally it is a ...
929 views

### Role of skewness in portfolio optimization?

What is the role of skewness in portfolio optimization?
1k views

### How to update an exponential moving average with missing values?

Say you have an Exponential Moving Average being continuously updated over a time series using 1-second-long time periods. What should happen if there is no value for the next second, e.g. there were ...
603 views

### What are some research articles on using principle components to generate alpha?

Here's an example by Marco Avellenada from NYU titled "Statistical Arbitrage in the U.S. Equities Market". The idea of this paper involves capturing mean reversion in the residual returns of a ...
630 views

### So many volatility models. Any comparisons of them?

Are there any papers that make an explicit contrast/comparison of the following (or other) vol models in terms of the suitability for addressing some empirical problem? Wavelet multiresolution ...
517 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 ...
2k views

### Free intra-day equity data source

Are there any free data source for historical US equity data? Yahoo finance has daily prices but I'm looking for something more granular and goes back 2 or more years (doesn't have to be close to tick ...
574 views

### Operating parameters of market makers?

I'd like to get a feel for the operating parameters of official market makers. I'm looking more for discerning characteristics, rather than exact numbers or an exhaustive list of each MM. Examples: ...
393 views

### How are prices calculated for commercial/residential mortgage-backed securities?

What is the theoretical/mathematical basis for the valuation of [C]MBS and other structured finance products? Is the methodology mostly consistent across different products?
479 views

### What benchmark/index to use for backtesting a portfolio of stock options?

What benchmark should I use for backtesting a model for when I should buy an option of a particular stock? For equities, one could say their portfolio outperformed the S&P 500. I would like to ...
427 views

### Issues when considering a quantitative trading/finance firm

I have an upcoming quantitative trading interview (prop desk at a large bank), and I would like to have some good questions to ask about the group. However, I am changing fields from academia and I do ...
2k views

### Techniques to optimize the placement of orders in market making strategy?

Market making often requires placing and canceling a lot of orders. You have to buy and sell nearly simultaneously, so you need to move orders pretty often to beat other traders. But I would like to ...
2k views

### How does left tail risk differ from right tail risk?

How does left tail risk differ from right tail risk? In what context would an analyst use these metrics?
565 views

### Copula models and the distribution of the sum of random variables without Monte Carlo

There is a vast literature on copula modelling. Using copulas I can describe the joint law of two (and more) random variables $X$ and $Y$, i.e. $F_{X,Y}(x,y)$. Very often in risk management (credit ...
658 views

### How to forecast expected volatility from high-frequency equity panel data?

I'm wading through the vast sea of literature on realized volatility estimation and expected volatility forecasting (see, e.g. Realized Volatility by Andersen and Benzoni, which cites 120 other ...
4k views

### Is statistical arbitrage on FX possible?

Do you know of any papers which consider pairs trading (or statistical arbitrage) on foreign exchange? I couldn't find any. I asked this question on several forums and got no reply. Thus I guess this ...
857 views

### What is a good topic on financial time series analysis for master thesis?

Can someone suggest a topic or some reasonably narrow area in financial time series analysis (e.g. statistical, machine learning, etc.) which can make a good topic for a master thesis? By 'good' I ...
270 views

### Are BSDE's used in practice?

In the academic applied probability/math finance community, Backwards Stochastic Differential Equations (BSDE's) are extremely popular, and they provide a single framework for several different ...
585 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 ...
812 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 ...
843 views

### How do I price OANDA box options?

How do I price OANDA box options without using their slow and machine-unfriendly user interface?: http://fxtrade.oanda.com (free demo account) sells "box options": If you already know what a ...
261 views

### Measuring Behavioral Finance Effects in Fund/Portfolio Manager Analysis

I want to know if there are some standardized measures to evaluate how irrationally human a portfolio manager is. Are there any performance measures or scorings for behavioral finance effects? How ...
715 views

### Keeping a track record honest

I want to start a blog/newsletter and maintain a track record of trades I recommend. I have a never-expiring demo account for this purpose. How do I keep this track record "honest"? Three months ...
2k views

### What exactly is meant by “microstructure noise”?

I see that term tossed around a lot, in articles relating to HFT, and ultra high frequency data. It says at higher frequencies, smaller intervals, microstructure noise is very dominant. What is ...
1k views

### Looking for a recommendation for a real life volatily trading book.

Recently I started working in an algotrading company as a programmer. After I studied that subject a little in the university and read a book or two in that field I gained a little knowledge in that ...