# All Questions

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### How does pair trading work?

Explain pair trading to a layman. What is it, why would you want to do it, and what are the risks? Provide a real life example.
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### Mean reverting strategies

I would like to take advantage of a volatile market by selling highs and buying lows. As we all know the RSI indicator is very bad and I want to create a superior strategy for this purpose. I have ...
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### How to calculate future distribution of price using volatility?

I want to create a lognormal distribution of future stock prices. Using a monte carlo simulation I came up with the standard deviation as being $\sqrt{(days/252)}$ $*volatility*mean*$ $\log(mean)$. ...
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### How are risk management practices applied to ML/AI-based automated trading systems

A potential issue with automated trading systems, that are based on Machine Learning (ML) and/or Artificial Intelligence (AI), is the difficulty of assessing the risk of a trade. An ML/AI algorithm ...
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### What methods do you use to improve expected return estimates when constructing a portfolio in a mean-variance framework?

One of the main problems when trying to apply mean-variance portfolio optimization in practice is its high input sensitivity. As can be seen in (Chopra, 1993) using historical values to estimate ...
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### Is there a standard model for market impact?

Is there a standard model for market impact? I am interested in the case of high-volume equities sold in the US, during market hours, but would be interested in any pointers.
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### 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 ...
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### 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?
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### What broker/feed/APIsetup allows for recording the most accurate data (cheaply)?

I'm currently using IB's Java API and getting feeds through them. However the real-time feed is updated only every 250ms and the historical feed only every second. I'm primarily looking for ES data ...
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### Approximately what proportion of a stock’s volatility is explained by market movement?

Assume we decompose the daily (log) returns of a stock as beta times market movement plus an idiosyncratic part. If this is done ex-ante, what proportion of the variance is explained by the market ...
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### is beta of a portfolio always meaningful?

Consider the following strategies: a stat arb strategy with no overnight exposure, but significant market exposure intraday. a market timing model which is always long or short the market. etc is ...
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### What is the best method to compute project volatility in Real Option Valuation?

There are few methods like Copeland-Antikarov, Herath-Park, Cobb-Charnes etc. to compute project volatility, however these methods compute upward biased volatility. What is the best method I could ...
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### Why does implied volatility show an inverse relation with strike price when examining option chains?

When looking at option chains, I often notice that the (broker calculated) implied volatility has an inverse relation to the strike price. This seems true both for calls and puts. As a current ...
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### Local Volatility vs. Stochastic Volatility

Are there any empirical observations or practices when to prefer Local Volatility Model for pricing over Stochastic Model or vice versa?
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### Option pricing before Black-Scholes

According to the Wikipedia article, Contracts similar to options are believed to have been used since ancient times. In London, puts and "refusals" (calls) first became well-known trading ...
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### What type of analysis is appropriate for assessing the performance time-series forecasts?

When using time-series analysis to forecast some type of value, what types of error analysis are worth considering when trying to determine which models are appropriate. One of the big issues that ...
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### What is the difference between the methods for calculating VaR?

There are three different commonly used Value at Risk (VaR) methods: Historical method Variance-Covariance Method Monte Carlo What is the difference between these approaches, and under what ...
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### What is the “delta” option quoting convention about?

At my work I often see option prices or vols quoted against deltas rather than against strikes. For example for March 2013 Zinc options I might see 5 quotes available for deltas as follows: ...
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### Hedging stocks with VIX futures

It seems that VIX futures could be a great hedge for a long-only stock portfolio since they rise when stocks fall. But how many VIX futures should I buy to hedge my portfolio, and which futures ...
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### Concentration risk in credit portfolio

How do you model concentration risk of credit portfolio in IRB/Basel II framework?
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### What blogs or articles online should I read to get started with quantitative finance? [closed]

I want to start learning quantitative finance, what articles or blogs should I look at to start? Also see the Related Question on Quantitative Finance Books