All Questions

547 views

How to Calculate Risk of Ruin [closed]

I'm reading a book titled "A Trader's Money Management System" and it discusses risk of ruin(ROR) tables. It says that you can have a zero probability of ROR with a payoff ratio of 2 to 1 and a win ...
615 views

Hobbyist Quants [closed]

I'm interested in investing some money in the stock market, and I have the math background that will make following the math used in quantitative finance possible (with some work). What are the ...
858 views

Which CEP platform is most popular for trading systems? [closed]

I heard that trading firms employ CEP platforms such as StreamBase, Marketcetera, JBoss Drools, and etc., to implement trading systems. I wonder which one is most popular and the recent trend of ...
268 views

How to calculate correlations(COT report) in R ? [closed]

First thing i want to do is load data(.csv) into R. The data i am concentrating are the COT reports. Want to load a single column into R and calculate the correlation with the proper instrument.
292 views

Can you implement a condor options trading strategy in a spreadsheet? [closed]

Can you implement a condor options trading strategy in a spreadsheet? Could you give an example?
94 views

How to calculate a forward-starting swap with forward equations?

I have been trying to resolve this problem for some time but I cannot get the correct answer. The problem is the following one. Compute the initial value of a forward-starting swap that begins at ...
89 views

Volatility estimation: sampling frequency and scaling

I have a year long stock data sampled at 5 min frequency and would like to estimate monthly volatility using it. I am thinking using GARCH or TGARCH for volatility estimation. However, I am not sure ...
73 views

Correlation Multiple Currencies

If i have a portfolio of stocks from different currencies and i want to generate a correlation matrix from the stocks, how is the correct procedure ? Imagine a portfolio which the base currency is ...
426 views

Open source equity/bond index data

I have been using the tseries package of R (get.hist.quote) to get historical quotes for various indices from yahoo finance. I am interested in DAX, VDAX, EB.REXX ...
2k views

What is “Flow Interest Rates”?

Looking at quant roles I keep seeing 'Flow Interest Rates' or 'Interest Rate Flow' - what does this refer to?
132 views

american option and cash dividends

Can someoe help with this : What is the precise arbitrage argument demonstrating that the price of an american option should be continuous around an ex-dividend date? Thanks
530 views

Calculate correlation between two sub portfolios and the combined portfolio

I have two sub portfolios (lets call them portfolio a & portfolio b - a portfolio is just a vector of weights that sum to 1) that combine to create a total portfolio. I also have a 2 x 2 ...
743 views

Understanding the concept of Martingale pricing

I am a bit confused about how to formulate a problem where I have to price an option on a stock. Many papers say that stock prices are best modeled using a geometric Brownian motion (GBM), and I ...
406 views

Proof that the number of trades done (successfully) matters for whether or not a strategy was lucky

Me and a friend is trying to settle and argument in relation to the following quote by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: I don’t want to spend too much time on Buffett. George Soros has 2 million times more ...
2k views

Appropriate method for calculating negative returns on a trading strategy?

I have a cumulative profit/loss time series below for a trading strategy, what is the appropriate way to calculate the returns in percentage for such a series? My issue is the appropriate ...
3k views

What are the common trading systems for hedge fund automated trading?

Is there any common trading system that is implemented by hedge fund, especially for equity or forex automated trading? I know some big names like Sungard and Bloomberg. Is there any other choices ...
107 views

How to extrapolate VaR?

I have a model predicting 1-day VaR. How does 1-year VaR follow from it? Shall I just multiply by 365 or another method?
74 views

Proof oriented introductory text?

I'm currently taking this Coursera course on financial engineering, which is fine but it's very focused on applications instead of proofs. They recommend Investment Science as a companion text, but ...
83 views

Art market specificities

I am looking for some reference on the art market in light of quantitative finance. I am interested in some things: The market in general, how is it compared to financial market ? What about common ...
291 views

CDS Spreads and Equity Volatility

Why does CDS spreads track the implied volatility on equities? What is the fundamental relationship that would keep the two inline from deviating too far from each other? My speculation: Could it be ...
181 views

What is PCA and how does it relate to eigenvectors and eigenvalues?

What are the principal components? How they are calculated? What is their relationship with eigenvalues and eigenvectors? This is a lead-in question to explain PCA basics. EDIT: PCA is implemented ...
447 views

Market making: buy on bid/sell on ask [closed]

In this thread, the top answer discusses: "buy on bid, sell on ask" as "market making" strategies. My question is: In layman ...
410 views

How to derive zero-coupon rates from IRS?

How can I calculate zero-coupon rates from historical IR swap rates? I have a record of IRS for the past 4000 days and I am want to compute the zero coupon rates based on them.
60 views

What does tradable asset mean?

I see a lot of theorems related to tradable assets in quantitative finance text books. What is a tradable asset? What does 'tradable' mean exactly? Does it simply mean the asset can be bought and ...
64 views

Using central limit theorem to test whether population average return is the same, before and after the recession

This is the task I have been asked to do. I've read up on what central limit theorem (clt) is, but I feel like I'm missing something. The data I have is a matrix of monthly stock returns from 50 ...
367 views

Handling Missing values in stocks returns when estimating the co variance matrix

What is the best way to handle missing values when stocks did not exist for the entire historical period?.
279 views

What are the unfair order execution/routing advantages HFT firms apparently have?

I originally thought that you have an orderbook per stock and orders would be filled on the time at which they arrive. Arrive first and you get the best price and the qty in the orderbook is reduced ...
160 views

I have a return history for a universe of risky assets and I've run a principal component algorithm and obtained a loadings matrix (num_factors by num_assets) for the first 5 factors. I have a ...
101 views

Controlling portfolio concentration

I'm working with a heterogenous basket of instruments (in volatility terms). Risk parity allocation seems to be useful for the portfolio( * 1/Volatility). However, there are times when the ...
1k views

Is there a Bloomberg field for a bonds (upcoming) coupon dates?

For a specific bond I need to calculate the time until each of the upcoming cash flow payments (for obvious reasons). So I wondered if there is a field (bulk data) that gives me all the dates of the ...
604 views

Calculating Momentum From Returns

I am doing some modelling and have some data: ...
154 views

Liquidity in a market risk model based on historical simulation

I would like to model liquidity effects in my risk model which is based on historical simulation. I would like to develop a practical solution that still captures liquidity effects. Most probably I ...
175 views

Looking for analysis of NASDAQ suit?

I may have every particular detail of this wrong, including the exchange, but years ago, maybe as long as 20, there was a successful suit against NASDAQ based on research by academics showing their ...
53 views

What is the use of computing the par yield?

I have learnt how to compute par yields in class, but I am not certain when knowing this would be of use and by Professor himself said it's a somewhat useless concept. What is the use of computing the ...
83 views

Question about the stochastic differential equation in the Merton model

in the following stochastic differential equation merton model we have $$\frac{ds}{s}=(\alpha-\lambda k)dt+\sigma dW+dq$$ where $\alpha$ is the instantaneous expected return on the stock; ...
837 views

How can I export intraday frequency data from Bloomberg and (how) is this procedure different than for lower frequencies?

For a research project, I would like to work with some intraday asset prices. I have already successfully exported the corresponding data at daily frequency, using the Excel API, but somehow this ...
140 views

(Beginer on bond market) References on callable bond's pricing

I am searching for references on pricing callable bonds. I've not find any rigorous mathematical approach on the web. All I found was some soft approaches in a discrete framework. Edit: First of ...
156 views

What is the name of this product?

Consider the payoff =$S_T1_{S_T>K}$ where $S_T$ is the asset price at maturity. What is this type derivative called? and is it a liquid option?
118 views

How can one find an area of research in quantitative finance appropriate to write a masters thesis on? [closed]

I am in the first semester of a MS in mathematics. A requirement for the degree is to write a masters thesis. Here a thesis means writing on a current area of research in finance, but an original ...
220 views

Exchange rate model and Martingales

In exchange rate model explanation, "...If under the domestic risk neutral measure $Q_d$, the process $X(t)$ satisfies $\displaystyle \frac{dX(t)}{X(t)}=\sigma dZ_d(t)$ Since $Z_d(t)$ is ...
329 views

How to get Geometric Brownian Motion's closed-form solution in Black-Scholes model?

The Black Scholes model assumes the following dynamics for the underlying, well known as the Geometric Brownian Motion: $$dS_t=S_t(\mu dt+\sigma dW_t)$$ Then the solution is given: ...
279 views

Stochastic Calculus in Quantitative analysis

I am an aspiring quant that would like to get a head start learning stochastic calculus, which books FROM EXPERIENCE are the most reader friendly?
2k views

What does it mean by autocorrelation coefficient near 1?

It is said that the time series has a stochastic trend if the first autocorrelation coefficient will be near 1. Q1) What does it mean by the above statement? Q2) How do we calculate the first ...
73 views

Get discount factors with limited knowledge?

I am facing the problem of just having this information: 6% coupon bond with 2.5 years to maturity, traded at a 100% clean price 4% coupon bond with 1.5 years to maturity, traded at a 98% clean price ...
396 views

Trader's identity in a limit book

In a limit book like NASDAQ ITCH, can liquidity suppliers know the demand-side identity of a trader prior or after a trade? Knowing this will help me with my theoretical model that I am trying to ...
363 views

VaR Calculation - Covariance matrix is not positive semidefinite

This is a basic question. I have three assets, equally weighted, and all the mutual covariances are -1. Then, the covariance matrix looks like - ...
152 views

Reasoning behind multiple names for the equivalent risk measures AVaR/ETL/ES/CVaR

Doe's any one know the history behind, or background of the multiple naming conventions for the equivalent risk functions. Different quant authors prefer using different names, does any one know why? ...
526 views

Order and position management in (semi-)automated trading system

A simple and lazy approach to implementing an order and position management (OPM) component in a (semi-)automated trading system: leave most OPM to counter party (broker/exchange). Even then funds ...