# All Questions

174 views

### what is a typical way forex brokerages can provide cheap leverage for their customers?

I'm not very well read in the area of high finance but I'm curious how forex brokerages are able to provide the backing for leverage that they can provide to customers. Is it possible to do this ...
1k views

### How to build an execution trading system with CQG API?

I am currently using CQG for spread trading and have a spread trading strategy in CQG chart. I am trying to automate my spread trading strategy in CQG, but CQG told me to look at CQG API samples to ...
157 views

### Parameter estimation using martingale measures - include real world data?

Please note: I posted this in nuclearphynance first, but didn't get any replies. For desks which sell exotics it is common practice (as far as I know it) to calibrate the model (Stochastic ...
370 views

### What is the minimum history data size to get an accurate EMA/ MACD for latest history point

Currently, I have history data for 10 years. Most of the time, I only interested in getting EMA/ MACD for the last history point (means yesterday point). Instead of using entire 10 years history, I ...
415 views

### Are there any tools or useful algos for identifying corner portfolios?

Let's say I am performing mean-variance optimization subject to some weight constraints. I'd like to identify the set of corner portfolios so that I can interpolate the entire efficient frontier. A ...
2k views

### C++ training from scratch to quantitative trading? [closed]

I have been trading for decades, and I have a solid knowledge of technical analysis but also VB as professional programmer. I would like to start learning C++ from scratch, then specialised in C++ ...
241 views

### looking for regulations regarding stock symbol reuse in the US

in june 2009, GM has filed for bankruptcy. trading has moved from NYSE to OTC pink sheets, and the symbol changed to GMGMQ and later to MTLQQ. in november 2010 a new GM symbol started trading on NYSE. ...
1k views

### Is there a charting API which allows to replicate Bloomberg chart tool features?

I believe that most of us will agree that being able to compute values is only part of our job, as we would also like to be able to display them nicely in order to better understand or help ...
6k views

### Is there any thing out there as a substitute for KDB?

thanks a lot for your discussions on the original post. following your suggestions, let me re-phrase a bit : kdb is known for its efficiency, and such efficiency comes at a terrible price. However, ...
681 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 ...
170 views

### How companies choose earnings release dates, & effect on Implied Volatility

A company's earnings release date significantly affects weekly or monthly option prices/implied volatility. For companies that typically release earnings on the cusp of monthly options expiration, ...
288 views

I have historical trade data for every trade on a forex exchange, whcih includes the following data: Time the trade was made Amount, in currency A Price, in currency B I have also used this to ...
198 views

### If the distribution of returns in symmetric, why not use a coin toss, small risk & high reward?

If the distribution of returns is symmetric then why not use a coin toss to decide whether to buy or sell Calculate the average velocity of the market (ATR - in technical analysis) Place a stop ...
1k views

### Constructing an approximation of the S&P 500 volatility smile with publicly available data

Besides of the VIX there is another vol datum publicly available for the S&P 500: the SKEW. Do you know a procedure with which one can extrapolate other implied vols of the S&P 500 smile with ...
177 views

### what are the most common explanations of the January effect?

The "january effect" is one of the most widely recognized market anomalies. In a nutshell, it refers to the empirical observation that January appears to have systematically higher returns than other ...
116 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 ...
678 views

### How to optimize a portfolio under *both* maximum diversity ratio and minimum variance

I have a follow-on question to questions that appeared here and was not sure if the right way was to ask in the comments or post a new question. My question is: how can I optimize a portfolio to suit ...
421 views

I'm analyzing trades from several participants in a trading competition, and I was wondering - are there known mechanisms for analysis and inference of the logic in a set of trades done by one ...
208 views

### How many data points are required to perform a fitting of GPD?

A friend of mine told me that their firm is using Extreme Value Theory (EVT) to compute value of the Expected Shortfall 99% of a portfolio for their asset allocation process. To do so, they try to fit ...
322 views

### Creating a financial market

Let's say I wanted to create my own financial market where people could buy with real money shares in a real physical product such as, for example, a rock band. If the value of the rock band goes up, ...
735 views

### What is the impact of high-frequency trading on market depth, liquidity, and volatility?

On the surface, bid-ask spreads are far more narrow than even several years ago. However, during periods of financial stress liquidity seems to vanish. Also, the increasing amount of fragmentation ...
3k views

### Risk Parity portfolio construction

If I would like to construct a fully invested long only portfolio with two asset classes (Bonds $B$ and Stocks $S$) based on the concept of 'risk parity' the weights $W$ of my portfolio would be the ...
570 views

### Reduce correlation in output of Minimum Variance Portfolio Optimization

After running a minimum variance portfolio optimization on a universe of ETF's I see the resulting portfolios tend to be composed of bond ETF or related treasuries/government ETFs. I suppose that ...
607 views

### Financial Mathematics - Martingales example

Was hoping somebody could help me with the following question. Prove that under the risk-neutral probability $\tilde{\mathsf P}$ the stock and the bank account have the same average rate of growth. ...
803 views

### How to choose a data center for deploying high frequency trading strategies?

We are in the process of selecting the data center for deploying our high frequency strategies. Does anyone has some questionnaire that can be used to figure out that what type of infrastructure ...
226 views

### Can we explain physical similarities between Black Scholes PDE and the Mass Balance PDE (e.g. Advection-Diffusion equation)?

Both the Black-Scholes PDE and the Mass/Material Balance PDE have similar mathematical form of the PDE which is evident from the fact that on change of variables from Black-Scholes PDE we derive the ...
290 views

### central limit theorem and VAR

If I have a lot of data points and number of different dependent variables, can I use central limit theorem to assume data is multivariate normal and compute my VAR? Is this the appropriate use of ...
592 views

### a simpler test for normality given skewness, kurtosis and autocorrelation and size of time series

I typically do a JB (Jarque Bera) test and DW (Durbin Watson) tests for check for normality given skewness, kurtosis and autocorrelation of the data. However this requires a CHI distribution table ...
374 views

### NASDAQ TotalView ITCH order reference number number characteristics

I am building a custom hash implementation for storing NASDAQ ITCH order messages. Obviously this is keyed on the order reference number and I am wondering if these numbers are sequential, random or ...
1k views

I have a time series of data that is 300 days long. I compute PCA factor loadings on a moving window of 30 days. There are 7 stocks in the universe. Thus factors F1 through F7 are calculated on each ...
1k views

### Optimizing a portfolio of ETFs

I am aware of how to do mean-variance or minimum-variance portfolio optimization with constraints like weights must add to 1.0 no short sells max weight in any ticker using basic quadratic ...
219 views

### Eurodollar Options Stike Price > 100 bps

Looking at Eurodollar IR options market data coming down from CME, I can see a whole host of options where the strike is > 100 bps. My understanding in this case is that puts will always be in the ...
3k views

### Historical Level 2 Data (Market Depth)

I'm currently looking to hone a system using market depth however I am looking for a good source of historical level 2 data. As of right now the best source of historical I have found is automated ...
249 views

### How to think about pricing this weather call option

So as opposed to the normal structure using a reference temperature and HDD/CDD, I'm looking at pricing a call option with a structure similar to the following: Daily option on maximum daily ...
145 views

### How do I check whether OAS value is correct?

How do I check whether the Option-adjust spread value I have retrieved from external calc utility is correct? Can you please tell me the steps to verify this?
911 views

### What does leverage cost?

Let's say I've developed a strategy that always outperforms the S&P-500, let call it the "magic strategy". Now I should be golden. All I need is to always have the S&P shorted with the same ...
1k views

### Non-SQL methods for high-frequency accounting?

Does anyone know of any prior art for non-SQL data structures for high-frequency accounting, whether client, broker, or exchange-side? I'm thinking specifically of the problem of booking individual ...
369 views

### Can we use White's reality check to compare two Sharpe ratios?

I read a paper from Ledoit and Wolf that proposes a method to compare two Sharpe ratios and a paper from White that proposes a method to compare $n$ trading rules. My question is: Can we use White's ...
88 views

### how to identify similar assets based only on a few price samples

Using quantitative finances techniques on limited information, how might one go about finding similar(highly correlated) assets whose public information is available? The only data offered on a list ...
395 views

### Is it possible to demonstrate that one pricing model is better than another?

Take the classic GBM (geometric Brownian motion) model for equities as an example: ds = mu * S * dt + sigma * S * dW. It is the basis for the classic ...
137 views

### Assumptions based on non-martingale?

Quantitative finance formular are mostly based on martingales, Poisson jump, GBM, CEV, etc.. The logic behind it is that martingale means the future could not be predicted, or, EMH (Efficient-market ...
295 views

### age-sensitive correlation measurements in finances

When it comes to comparing returns or prices of instruments like stocks/ETFs, are there any well-established formulas, or ones in common use, that place stronger emphasis on recent correlations more ...
4k views

### Where can I find some examples of high frequency or stat arb trading algorithms beyond basic textbook pairs trading?

In particular, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading#Algorithms has several name algorithms. I understand most HFT algorithms are proprietary but I am looking for examples of HFT ...
541 views

### portfolio diversification tester

Are there any online tools (optionally with developer API, to spare me the scraping) that given an existing portfolio, calculate how well a new candidate position would score to increase combined ...
227 views

### What are some quantitative ways to obtain the view confidences in Idzorek's version of Black-Litterman?

I'm using Idzorek's version of the Black-Litterman model for estimating asset returns. Idzorek's version bypasses the need to estimate directly the covariance matrix $\Omega$ of errors in the various ...
216 views

### Market order quantity greater than quantity of the inside quote at the exchange

If I send a market order to an exchange with quantity greater than the quantity of the inside quote at this exchange, and if another exchange has quantity to fill the residual portion at NBBO, will my ...
610 views

### Kalman Filter Vs Hough Transform

These questions are in regards to the Kalman filter and the Hough Transform. What are the Pros and Cons of using each method? In what situations is it better to prefer one over the other?
1k views

### Limit order book size

I am trying to write a highly optimised limit order book and I wondered what sort of size I can expect for: Range of limit prices Number of orders at each limit price I am developing custom ...