# All Questions

364 views

### Key Rate Duration for MBSs greater than Key Rate Tenor

Key Rate Durations (KRD) are essentially some fixed income instrument's price sensitivity to a non-parallel shift in interest rates (i.e., a shift at the "Key" Rate). For example, a 10-year bond's ...
74 views

### Model-independent dynamic portfolio optimization techniques

For a problem where we need to optimize the portfolio based on the data, going for Markowitz MPT has the following advantage: we only have to estimate mean and covariance to find optimal weights. I'd ...
170 views

### Implied volatility and pricing of vanilla options

As far as I understood, implied volatility (IV) is a lucky parametrization of the vanilla option's price. That is, instead of deciding how much the call worth now, you can decide on its IV and put ...
72 views

### An Alphabet Effect?

While I prepared some quick and lazy charts picking just the first 10 symbols out of the SP500 for this other question I observed, that the first 10 symbols (figure 1) actually outperformed the larger ...
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### What is the probability distribution of the changes in $\Delta$?

What are the odds that a 10 delta option will become a 30 delta option in "N" number of days? Is that calculation possible? For instance, I want to know the probability with which my 56 day, 10 ...
1k views

### Par Yield Curves vs Zero Curves

Does it make sense to look at par yield curve for German bonds in the current environment? Because low rates mean that a lot of bonds are trading above much above par (even around 150!). I would ...
162 views

### C# - Using Black Scholes Newton returns NaN occasionally

First caveat: I'm a programmer doing this for a client, and my knowledge of options probably has holes in it. So be a little forgiving here. =) The Issue: When I run Black Scholes Newton against ...
136 views

### Stochastic Differential

Let $W_t$ be a Wiener process. It is clear to me that $dW_t$ is of size $\sqrt{dt}$. This can be seen because $$\mathrm{Var}(W_{t+\Delta} - W_{t})=\Delta.$$ But am I allowed to actually write ...
25 views

### Index tracker and inflation

I'm trying to get my head around how inflation really affects index trackers. I've been looking at this question, but somehow misses the point I want (How To Account For Inflation Over Historical ...
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In various financial models such as CAPM, Black Scholes, one assumes the returns are adjusted for dividends. As I understand it, the share price often (in a relative sense) increases a bit before the ...
106 views

### How to compute daily compounded backtest returns closer to real-world results?

I often run quick tests of trading strategies in my analytics suites by: multiplying a vector of signal (lagged, {-1,0,1}) with a time series of daily percentage returns doing a cumulative product ...
108 views

### Best sources for worldwide balance sheet data?

I’m interested in databases with quarterly balance sheet data of the financial sector. I’m aware of the following datasets: -Compustat -Compustat Global -Bankscope Can someone point out other ...
107 views

### Index creation from multiple time-series and variable weights

I am trying to compose one index out of several (three) indices with variable weights, 50%, 25% and 25%. After normalizing and calculating the log returns, what would be the best way to create the ...
113 views

### Black scholes text book

I am looking for an easy and well presented introduction to Black-Scholes theory and stochastic calculus aimed at undergraduate mathematics students. Please can you recommend a book? How about Paul ...
253 views

### Quadratic exponential method (by Andersen) in Heston model

I am having trouble understanding the reasons that led Andersen to define his QE scheme to efficiently simulate Heston Stochastic volatility model (you may check the celebrated scheme here). The ...
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### Historical list of Primary Dealers in Europe

I would be interested in a list of all the banks and financial institutions that have been Primary Dealers in the European Union from the 1980s until today. For a current list you can check this pdf ...
161 views

### LMM. Calibration to swaptions by Brigo and Morini. Volatility of swaption that matures at T=0

I'm reading Brigo D., Mercurio F. Interest Rate Models - Theory and Practice (Springer, 2006)(ISBN 3540221492) and also a source article on LMM cascade calibration to swaptions by Brigo and Morini. I ...
292 views

### In bond pricing, is negative convexity better than positive convexity?

Say that I have two bonds and one of them has positive convexity and the other negative. Which one is better (assuming that you only care about convexity)? I understand that high convexity is ...
98 views

### Optimization metric that takes into account number of trades vs expectancy

In optimizing my automated trading system I find that certain combinations while increasing the expectancy: ...
170 views

### Why is the rate of change of a stock price proportional to the stock price?

When deriving the Black Scholes equation, it is usually stated "we assume the change in the stock price is": $dS=\mu S(t) dt +$random term My question is why is the change in the stock price always ...
123 views

### Information on books about mathematical finance

In the past at my school the subject of "Mathematics of Derivative securities" has been taught out of two books. "Quantitative Finance" by T. Wake Epps and "Options, Futures and Other Derivatives" by ...
156 views

### Logging FIX Messages

I need to persist every single FIX message received or sent by my order gateway for auditing purposes, however it takes more than 1 millisecond to write the bytes to disk. I tried to write in chunks ...
102 views

### Data point discrepancy between Google Finance and Yahoo Finance

I have been comparing the historical stock data I am getting from Google Finance and Yahoo Finance. I am only getting six datapoints per day (date, open, high, low, close, volume). I have downloaded ...
100 views

### Why is OU process stationary?

The mean and variance of OU process have time dependence (exponentially decay in time). So they are not constant in time. How can it to be stationary?
459 views

### A model to stochastic hazard rate and CDS spread term structure

I'm interested in the term structure of CDS spread. It's known that the Market CDS rate (fair CDS spread or T-maturity spread) of a CDS contract initiated at $s$, maturity $T$ and recovery function ...
352 views

### Provide a bond pricing differential equation and invoke Feynman-Kac Theorem

Grateful for any assistance. Consider the process: $dZ=r(t)Z\,dt$ , where $r(t)$ is stochastic interest rate and $Z=Z(r,t;T)$ is a zero coupon bond Price. Provide a bond pricing partial ...
38 views

### American put on a foreign currency

I know that For an American-style put option, early exercise is a optimal for deep in-the-money options. In this case, it may make sense to exercise the option early in order to obtain the profit ...
109 views

### Mean Variance Analysis: what does the solution of the following exercise tells me?

I'm new in here and I hope this is the right board to ask this question. I'm at second year of university and in the Informatics II course the lecturer made us solve the following mean variance ...
78 views

### Dummy variable and negative estimation in GARCH (1.1)

I am trying to use GARCH model for my research. However, when I am running them, I see negative value for alpha and beta. How I can restrict them so that they do not provide me any negative value. Is ...
111 views

### Combine together different strategies in one portfolio [closed]

Hi I have generate equity of my strategies which invest in commodities and currencies at daily interval. What the best method to combine together all strategies in one portfolio? I want to make the ...
113 views

### Automatic trading strategies - what are benchmarks for PL on serious backtesting?

There are plenty books and sites which offer automatic trading strategies (robots) and claim they are very profitable. On the other hand many people do not believe in such things, saying that: if ...
87 views

### Anybody knows the answer to this exercise found in PWIQF?

I got this question from the last exercise of chapter 2 from "paul wilmott introduces quantitative finance" book. Appreciate your help.
6k views

### how to calculate a cross-currency swap in basis pt?

This question has been bugging me for awhile now and I've been trying to find a definite answer, however, no avail... My question, in specific, relates to the USD/CNH CCS rate. From what I understand ...
887 views

### Where can I find answers to questions in the book “Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance”?

I'm currently answering the exercises at the back of every chapter of the book "Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance" and would like to compare my answers to the correct ones. Tried looking ...
303 views

### Factor Model - Minimum Variance Portfolio [Complete Proof]

Can someone check my proof? I think there is something not quite right. I have found limited resources online for this as well so I think it might benefit others to get this on the internet. Assume ...
51 views

### Risk-free arbitrage given a volume oracle?

Given a magical oracle who can correctly predict the volume, but not the price, of a given security, does there exist a risk-free arbitrage to capitalize on this information?
132 views

### PDE and Black Scholes problem

Consider Black Scholes problem $\frac{\partial V}{\partial t} + \frac{\sigma^2 S^2}{2}\frac{\partial^2V}{\partial S^2} + rS\frac{\partial V}{\partial S} -rV = 0$ with boundary condition $V(S,T)=f(S)$, ...
60 views

### How to learn finance? [closed]

I have a background in programming of about 6 years. Now I decided to learn finance and trading as well. How can I get my foot in the door in that area?
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### Market Timing Performance for a single stock

It seems there are models that study the market timing ability of funds. Models such as the Treynor-Mazuy and Merton-Henriksson. One can also study the bull beta and compare it to a bear beta. My ...