# All Questions

2k views

### Easiest and most accessible derivation of Black-Scholes formula

I am preparing a QuantFinance lecture and I am looking for the easiest and most accessible derivation of the Black-Scholes formula (NB: the actual formula, not the differential equation). My favorite ...
2k views

### 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 $\sqrt{(days/252)}$ $*volatility*mean*$ $\log(mean)$. ...
343 views

### copula-marginal algorithm

has there been any interesting work or advances on the copula-marginal algorithm (CMA) as proposed by Attilio Meucci. I am unable to find anything on the web other then the original article, here is ...
994 views

### Is the risk-free rate really limited by inflation?

In all the classic texts on equities derivatives, there is an assumption of the risk-free rate r. We can immediately dismiss the concept of a fixed rate; all interest rates are variable (and ...
484 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 ...
326 views

### local price return and volume relationship

I wanted to see how the stock price and volume relationship is locally. So I tried ranking both the daily return (at day t) and volume (at day t) base on a 30 day rolling window with historical daily ...
345 views

### Links to the risk model methodologies of the major providers?

There is quite a bit of art in constructing an equity risk model. This paper summarizes some of the key decisions: choice of factors, horizon matching, cross-sectional vs. time-series method, and ...
573 views

### Quantitative Derivatives Trading vs. Time

Most quantitative investment strategies focus on the changing prices of a commodity or equity over time. Derivatives, however, make this more complicated. How can I apply quantitative strategies to ...
163 views

### Breaking Transactions Down into Derivatives

We were talking about merger arb in a class I had last night, and when we got do deal construction it was mentioned that the different ways can be viewed as different options. For instance a fixed ...
401 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 ...
455 views

### How are Expected Shortfall and Variance related?

I would like to know how Expected Shortfall $SF_\alpha$ and variance $\sigma^2$ are related. If I follow what Aaron Brown answered in this post, when the underlying distribution is Normal with ...
462 views

### Models for measuring insurance risk exposure

I've recently begun working as a quant for a large bank, and one of my first tasks will be to improve the model determining the risk exposure of their insurance portfolio. The portfolio is fairly ...
451 views

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### Currency Hedged ETFs

At work we were talking about currency hedging our equity index exposures but I am struggling to understand how this happens in a typical iShares ETF. If we take the Japan ETF IJPN then we see this ...
2k views

### What are some good technical and non-technical books for a math lover to get in to quantitative analysis? [closed]

To get the ball rolling... I will answer this question this evening For people aware & unaware I think it would be a great way to introduce the group, resources for fundamental knowledge & ...
2k views

### 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.
1k views

### What kind of specialized hardware is used in trading?

What kind of computer hardware, in additional to the 'conventional' fare, is actually used in trading? And what languages is it typically programmed in? I'm interested in ASICs, FPGAs, that sort of ...
3k views

### What is Ito's lemma used for in quantitative finance?

Further to my question asked here: prior post and which left some points unanswered, I have reformulated the question as follows: What is Ito's lemma used for in quantitative finance? and when is it ...
971 views

### How do I estimate the joint probability of stock B moving, if stock A moves?

I have two stocks, A and B, that are correlated in some way. If I know (hypothetically) that stock A has a 60% chance of rising tomorrow, and I know the joint probability between stocks A and B, how ...
949 views

### What functional form describes the implied volatility curve?

It is often convenient to parametrize the implied volatility curve to allow easy interpolation of volatility for any strike or maturity. What functional form describes the implied volatility curve for ...
361 views

### Seeking Historical Non-Finance Datapoints for Backtesting

I'm working on some financial analysis code which I'd like to test against a historical dataseries to analyze the correlations to my algorithm to some non-finance related data. Ideally, I'd like to ...
1k views

### When to use Monte Carlo simulation over analytical methods for options pricing?

I've been using Monte Carlo simulation (MC) for pricing vanilla options with non-lognormal underlyings returns. I'm tempted to start using MC as my primary option-valuating technique as I can get ...
6k views

### Why would an investor trade a variance swap over a volatility swap?

Why would an investor trade a variance swap over a volatility swap? Is it simply related to the leverage involved in a Var (i.e. sigma-squared) or is there something else to it?
1k views

### 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 ...
905 views

### What is a Quant

In the interest of having "canonical questions" on this site ... What is a Quant?
478 views

### Reference on Markov chain Monte Carlo method for option pricing?

I have to implement option pricing in c++ using Markov chain Monte Carlo. Is there some paper which describes this in detail so that I can learn from there and implement?
805 views

### What tools are used to numerically solve differential equations in Quantitative Finance?

There are a lot of Quantitative Finance models (e.g. Black-Scholes) which are formulated in terms of partial differential equations. What is a standard approach in Quantitative Finance to solve these ...
1k views

### Why do we use GARCH(1,1) to predict volatility?

What makes GARCH(1,1) so prevalent in modeling especially in academia? What does this model has that is significantly better than the others?
642 views

### What are the risk factors in analysing strategies?

What do you think of strategies displayed on timelyportfolio.blogspot.com? I really like the fact that there is some code to reproduce the strategies, but they seem very elementary because he does ...
3k views

### Should I use an arithmetic or a geometric calculation for the Sharpe Ratio?

What are the advantages/disadvantages of using the arithmetic Sharpe Ratio vs the geometric Sharpe Ratio? Is one more correct? Or is one better in certain circumstances?
415 views

### How to test for and how to simulate price rise/fall asymmetry in the stock market

One of the stylized facts of financial time series seems to be a fundamental asymmetry between smooth upward movements over longer periods of time followed by abrupt declines over relatively shorter ...
2k views

### How can I compare distributions using only mean and standard deviation?

I only have means and standard deviations of samples of two random variables. What technique can I use to determine how similar the distributions these describe are? Assume that the values are built ...
4k views

### How should I calculate the implied volatility of an American option in a real-time production environment?

There are many models available for calculating the implied volatility of an American option. The most popular method, employed by OptionMetrics and others, is probably the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein model. ...
707 views

### Alternate money management strategies to Kelly?

Other than Kelly (or fractional derivatives), are there other money management strategies in wide use among quant funds? Certainly Kelly is mathematically optimal, but perhaps there are other ...
469 views

### Optimal execution strategy

Can someone shed some light on optimal ways to execute medium sized orders ~2000 shares in the market? Unfortunately the execution algo I have access to is very dumb. It follows the top-of-book ...
220 views

### Do weights from portfolio theory contain bias?

I want to experiment with some portfolio modelling and I was wondering if you guys could help me with something. If I try to estimate and implement the traditional two-fund portfolio consisting of one ...
986 views

### How can I quantitatively test the validity of momentum indicators?

I am learning about quantitative finance, and I am struck by how different it is from the techniques that make it into magazines and TV, particularly technical analysis. Specifically, if they say an ...