# All Questions

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### 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 ...
2k views

### Is Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) coherent?

When the risk is defined by a discrete random variable, is CVaR a coherent risk measure? I stick to the following definition of CVaR:  CVaR_\alpha(R) = \min_v \quad \left\{ v + \frac{1}{1-\alpha} \...
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### Order submission strategies of a rational market maker?

Consider a market maker that has decided to try to make a round-trip trade in stock A in order to capture the bid-ask spread. Assume furthermore that he has no current inventory in the stock A. To ...
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### 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 ...
3k views

### Categories of systematic trading strategies?

What are the main categories of systematic trading strategies (e.g. momentum, mean reversion), as might be considered by an index or fund-of-fund analyst? Are there any common sub-strategies?
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### Are two identical time series cointegrated?

I did cointegration test on two identical time series, and the result shows that they are not cointegrated, but intuitively, I think they are. Can anyone share some thoughts on this? Thanks!
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### What are some quantitative approaches to value investment?

As a developer and statistician, I consider value investing to be a statistically sound investment strategy. I've read a few books on the area but I am still not clear on valuation measures. So I ...
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### How to combine multiple trading algorithms?

Is it possible to combine different algorithms so as to improve trading performance? In particular, I have read that social media sentiment tracking, digital signal processing and neural networks all ...
567 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 ...
3k views

### Skewness and Kurtosis under aggregation

Returns possess non-zero skewness and excess kurtosis. If these assets are temporally aggregated both will disappear due to the law of large numbers. To be exact, if we assume IID returns skewness ...
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### 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 ...
616 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 ...
848 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: ...
786 views

### Effective Euro-USD (EURUSD) Exchange Rate Prior to Euro's Existence

Motivation: I am running a quantitative analysis that requires long-term, exchange rate data. Problem: Does anyone have methods for dealing with the EURUSD exchange rate prior to the Euro's existence?...
6k views

### R: Fast and efficient way of running a multivariate regression across a (really) large panel (First pass of Fama MacBeth)

I am attempting to run a rolling multivariate regression (14 explanatory variables) across a panel of 5000 stocks: For each of the 5000 stocks, I run 284 regressions (by rolling over my sample ...
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### 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 ...
2k views

I am currently doing my research for my master thesis, which will clearly focus on the question of risk managment in algorithmic trading systems. I have done research about this topic and found some ...
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### 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 ...
743 views

### How to price a volatility-index option?

There exist several volatility indices, such as the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX). There are also options on such indicies. What is the best way to price a volatility-index option? Is there a simple ...
926 views

### How does UBS hedge its exposure to XVIX ETN?

I am wondering how UBS hedges its exposure to its ETN XVIX. Unless I am grossly overestimating the trading costs, executing the strategy they describe in their prospectus with futures would be quite ...
755 views

### Missing step in stock price movement equations

Assuming a naive stochastic process for modelling movements in stock prices we have: $dS = \mu S dt + \sigma S \sqrt{dt}$ where S = Stock Price, t = time, mu is a drift constant and sigma is a ...
2k views

### Topological methods in finance

Recently a promising start-up (Ayasdi) has made headlines. They are a spin-off of the Applied and Computational Algebraic Topology group of Stanford University (ComTop). What they basically do is ...
2k views

### What is the ideal ratio of in-sample length to out-of-sample length?

Suppose you are running a portfolio of quantitative strategies and that you develop a new potential strategy to be added to the mix. Assume for simplicity that the new strategy is independent of the ...
669 views

### Meta-view of different time-series similarity measures?

While I spend most of my StackExchange time on MathematicaSE, I'm in the business and follow the questions and answers on this site with great interest. Recently questions like the following (and ...
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### Drawbacks & Caveats of using (N)Esper for ESP/CEP in trading systems?

Esper and its .NET port NEsper are components that enable Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Event Stream Processing (ESP) engines. They are especially suitable for trading applications. They can, ...
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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 $\sqrt{(days/252)}$ $*volatility*mean*$ $\log(mean)$. ...
3k views

### Modelling with negative interest rates

For a project, I am interested to model the impact of recently negative interest bonds on the portfolio. The literature on modelling negative interest rates is limited, and the only theory I could ...
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### Has any research used Bayesian networks to estimate risk factor betas?

Is there any published research on estimating the beta of a security with respect to one or more risk factors via Bayesian networks? I'd like to see if this is a promising angle of research.
4k views

### Correctly applying GARCH in Python

Problem: Correct usage of GARCH(1,1) Aim of research: Forecasting volatility/variance. Tools used: Python Instrument: SPX (specifically adjusted close prices) Reference material: On Estimation of ...
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### Is QuantLib more trouble than it's worth?

I'm just starting to work with QuantLib and wonder if I'm going down a very wrong path. I'm working on a site that presents the visitor with a table of streamed real-time options data, including ...
2k views

### Value-at-Risk of the sum of two dependent lognormal random variables

Hy I posted this question first at mathflow.net they suggested me this page, which I was not aware of. Question: Let $(X_1,X_2)$ be a multivariate normal random vector ($X_1$ and $X_2$ need not be ...
273 views

### How do you characterize dividends for equity options?

While many systems like to treat dividends as a continuous yield when pricing equity options, it works quite poorly for short-dated options. In the short run, deterministic dividends are clearly the ...
816 views

### Applicability of PCA to get historical volatilities to calibrate interest rates trees

My question in short is as follows: can I take main principal component of historical covariance matrix and use it as historical volatilities when fitting a binomial tree? Here's more detailed ...
2k 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 ...
493 views

### Comparing backtesting returns with real trading returns

I have 10 years of backtested simulated performance of some trading strategy (using historical prices), and N months of actual trading performance. What statistical test can I do find out if I'm on ...
549 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 ...
441 views

### Consistency of economic scenarios in nested stochastics simulation

I am interested in references on research regarding the consistency of economic scenarios in nested stochastics for risk measurement. Background: Pricing by Monte-Carlo: For pricing complex ...