# All Questions

471 views

### Why are there still manual market makers in options

Why are manual market makers still predominant in options markets? Why haven't algorithms replaced these market makers, as they have for liquid stocks for example?
705 views

### Why isn't all market data free?

I am hoping any answers can be threaded somewhere between "don't be naive" and starting a quasi-political flame. Transparency is suppose to be good for markets and also a social good. The market ...
2k views

### Vanna - any practical uses for risk or pnl attribution purposes?

What is the practical use for Vanna in trading? How can it be used for a PnL attribution?
527 views

### Is Walk Forward Analysis a good method to estimate the edge of a trading system?

Do you think Walk Forward Analysis is a good method to estimate the predictability or edge of a trading system? Are there similar methods to know (estimate) how much alpha can capture an algo (in the ...
8k views

### Mapping symbols between tickers, Reuters RICs and Bloomberg tickers

Is there any known solution (preferably open source) to map between ticker symbols, Reuters and Bloomberg symbols. For example: Ticker: AAPL Reuters: RSF.ANY.AAPL.OQ Bloomberg: AAPL US Equity ...
672 views

### Analytical relationship between a covariance matrix and cross-sectional dispersion

Given an expected returns vector and a covariance matrix, one can perform a joint draw and measure the average cross-sectional variation as the standard deviation across returns for a particular joint ...
3k 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, ...
371 views

### Any research paper on stop loss?

Has there been any rigorous study on stop loss ? When to apply it? Has it been shown to work through proper statistical backtests? I am interested in Equities, preferably European stocks.
1k views

### How does volatility affect the price of binary options?

In theory, how should volatility affect the price of a binary option? A typical out the money option has more extrinsic value and therefore volatility plays a much more noticeable factor. Now let's ...
1k views

### How can one compute the Greeks on VIX Futures

I am guessing the short answer to this question is "use the chain rule and linearity of the derivative," but I am looking for more specific advice on how to compute the derivatives of a VIX futures ...
2k views

### Equity Risk Model Using PCA

I'm trying to build a simple risk model for stocks using PCA. I've noticed that when my dimensions are larger than the number of observations (for example 1000 stocks but only 250 days of returns), ...
819 views

### Why doesn't Black-Scholes work in discrete time?

I have a question considering Financial markets in discrete Time: One of the main theorems in discrete time is: In finite discrete Time with trading times t={1,...,T} the following are equivallent: ...
487 views

### What is a reasonable upper bound on the performance of a daily trading strategy?

I am backtesting an equity trading strategy which trades only once per day. Is there a general rule of thumb for the reasonable upper bound on the rate of return of such a strategy? For example, a ...
3k views

### Quanto CDS modeling

What is the market standard for pricing quanto CDS (i.e. CDS which pays the contingent leg in different currency than the pricing leg)?
512 views

### Minimizing Correlation

Is there a quantitative method in monitoring trades to reduce the possibility of correlated trades?
2k views

### What is an effective way of backtesting VWAP execution?

From Optimal Trading Strategies : There are two main reasons why traders execute orders using a VWAP trading strategy. First, a VWAP strategy is the trading strategy that minimizes market ...
427 views

### How does Cornish-Fisher VaR (aka modified VaR) scale with time?

I am thinking about the time-scaling of Cornish-Fisher VaR (see e.g. page 130 here for the formula). It involves the skewness and the excess-kurtosis of returns. The formula is clear and well ...
407 views

### Position management in presence of continuous forecast

Let's say we have an equity liquidity-providing model that was fitted on 1 minute bar periods. The model forecasts the 1-min next period return given the activity of the previous bars. Now, when we ...
609 views

### When should you build your own equity risk model?

Commercial risk models (e.g., Barra, Axioma, Barclays, Northfield) have evolved to a very high level of sophistication. However, all of these models attempt to solve a very broad set of problems. ...
455 views

### How do I eliminate developed currency funding cross rate risk in an EMFX position?

Back in the "old days" (ie 5-10 years ago) when we wanted to be long or short an emerging currency (say the ZAR, BRL, or TRY) we simply did everything against the pre-eminent currency of the day, the ...
364 views

### How to determine if one player moved a price

I'm trying to understand what caused certain price movements (aren't we all!) in per-minute data for major NYSE stocks. In particular, I'd like to determine whether a given price movement of X% in ...
574 views

121 views

### Simulating property price index

I am trying to write a Monte Carlo simulation to calculate risk associated with some property based products. What is the most reasonable stochastic process to model property price index? Do people ...
965 views

### How to apply the Kelly criterion when expected return may be negative?

My concern is how to handle a negative value for the Kelly formula. Even when you have a system that has positive expectancy, you can (and usually will) sustain a number of losses, sometimes ...
2k views

### Can the J language be used as an effective alternative to Q/Kdb+?

I hear a lot about Q/kdb+. I've never had the opportunity to use it for anything real but have played with it using their trial license and found it intriguing (if not somewhat mind warping). I've ...
997 views

### 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 ...
610 views

How should one correctly forward adjust historical prices given a time series of Open, High, Low, Close, Return? Suppose that the data series is given below ('1' is the oldest interval; '5' is the ...
361 views

### Connections between random walk and heat equation (Material for ~)

I am preparing an undergraduate lecture in quantitative finance and I am looking for material that combines the topics: random walk and heat equation The material should be accessible ...
170 views

### St Petersburg lottery pricing & short investing horizons

I am a statistician (no solid background in finance). Please forward me to a book \ chapter \ paper to resolve the following general question. Suppose we have a stock with the following monthly return ...
223 views

### Are there any standard techniques for adding realistic synthetic microstructure noise to a price series?

This may seem like a strange question, but for my particular application we need to actually add synthetic microstructure noise to real time charts. The signal should still be representative of the ...
623 views

### Implementing a Fast Fourier Transform for Option Pricing

So, I'm in need of some tips regarding a small project I'm doing. My goal is an implementation of a Fast Fourier Transform algorithm (FFT) which can be applied to the pricing of options. First ...
37 views

### What are useful indexes for rapid evaluation of country economic risk?

The World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report offers a comprehensive view of individual country risk/reward. There has been an explosion of these types of indexes over the past few years. ...
552 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?
283 views

### What drives changes in implied volatility on ETFs/ETNs?

I thought implied volatility, as well as the VIX, primarily increase due to increases in the underlying asset's volatility, as well as the options themselves being bid up because more people were ...
325 views

### Option Portfolio Risk - Volatility/Skew - practical implementation

I'm trying to improve my methods for calculating real-time US Equity option portfolio risk. My main problem is volatility "stability" across all strikes in an option series. The current ...
457 views

### What techniques are used for testing order book implementations?

I am finishing the implementation of a limit order book for modeling NASDAQ. The order book works off of the ITCH feed. My question is what techniques are typically used for testing order books. I am ...
2k views

### Which approach to estimating fundamental factor models is better, cross-sectional (unobservable) factors or time-series (observable) factors?

There are many approaches to estimating fundamental factor equity models. I would like to focus on two traditional methods: The time-series regression approach of Fama and French. Factors are ...
791 views

### What is the Sugihara Trading System?

I recently heard the term Sugihara Trading System. I guess it might be some trading strategy or a special model to predict trends in market data, but I couldn't find out anything about it. Does anyone ...
327 views

### What are the main differences in Jump Volatility and Local Volatility

Is a JV model simply Local Vol + Jump Diffusion? If so, it seems logical that an existing JV model be able to be used for valuation of both Vanilla and Exotic options. Is this true? Does a Local ...
363 views

### How to select/construct benchmarks for black-box trading strategies?

When faced with a black box trading strategy with extensive historical data available, how would one select/construct a representative benchmark? As a trivial example, when a strategy historically ...
365 views

### Where can I find data on the interbank lending market?

Where can I find disaggregated interbank lending data (i.e. bank A lends to bank B x money at y rate)? I could only find data on interest rates. I would accept LIBOR market data as well as any ...
1k views

### How to vet an intraday strategy

I am working on an intraday strategy using 5/10 minute bars. I am getting a decent return and sharpe on the strategy. But on close examination I see that I am making about 1 cent per trade (I haven't ...