# All Questions

235 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 ...
826 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 ...
530 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 ...
228 views

### reasonable asymptotic elasticity in utility maximization (paper by Kramkov / Schachermayer)

I'm working through this paper by Kramkov and Schachermayer. I have a question about the proof of Lemma 3.6. $\mathbf{Question}$ Why is the inequality $(3.13)$ true, i.e. \lim\sup_n ...
154 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 ...
386 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 ...
209 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 ...
275 views

### What is a commonly accepted econometric model for volume?

What is the gold standard econometric model for volume? For example, a common model for price is the autoregressive (AR) model with GARCH(1,1) innovations. Do you know of any good survey articles ...
35 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. ...
483 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?
273 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 ...
271 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 ...
1k 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 ...
744 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 ...
289 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 ...
341 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 ...
189 views

### Hedging duality

We consider a financial market over the time interval $[0,T]$ where a risky asset is a semimartingale $S$. By $\mathbb{P}$ we denote the set of all equivalent local martingale measures (ELMM). We ...
250 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 ...
419 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 ...
294 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 ...
996 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 ...
392 views

### Hedging long municipal bond portfolio using BMA/SIFMA

A question from one of my members. Anyone have experience hedging a long municipal bond portfolio using BMA / SIFMA swaps? Anything you can share regarding sizing and structuring the swap and ...
280 views

### Musiela parameterization

I have a question regarding the proof of the Musiela parametrization for the dynamics of the forward rate curve. If $T$ is the maturity, $\tau=T-t$ is the time to maturity, and $dF(t,T)$ defines the ...
756 views

### What are some examples of Compound Poisson processes in insurance?

I'm writing the Bachelor thesis but I need some information. I need to find some practical examples and applications of the Compound Poisson Process in insurance. Does anyone have any good examples?
178 views

### How should FX options be priced when a currency is artificially capped?

The question is inspired by yesterday's (06/09/11) historic announcement by the Swiss National Bank that it would impose a ceiling on the franc of 1.20 against the euro. I would like to know if there ...
324 views

### What are important model and assumption-free no-arbitrage conditions in options trading?

In the paper "Why We Have Never Used the Black-Scholes-Merton Option Pricing Formula" (Espen Gaarder Haug, Nassim Nicholas Taleb) a couple of model-free arbitrage conditions are mentioned which limits ...
479 views

### Why do low standard deviation stocks tend to have superior future returns?

I've recently stumbled on something that really surprised me. These papers (1, 2) find that past standard deviation of returns is inversely related to future returns. That is, portfolio of low ...
560 views

### Quantitative before/after or financial engineering studies of a bid or ask tax?

Has anyone in the quantitative finance or financial engineering community studied the effects of a bid or ask tax with actual or simulated data? If so, what were the quantitative results or ...
462 views

### Liquidity estimators: VWAP and IS

I am looking for some info on how to estimate liquidity (intraday). I have read some researches and created intraday measurements of liquidity on time yet not on price. What I mean by this is that I ...
431 views

### What tools and libraries may be used to model limit/stop systematic trading?

A lot of the tools/libraries out there seem to focus on close to close time series analysis. This is all fine but I typically do not trade close to close, I will use limit or stop orders that may or ...
683 views

### time series management system

I'm happy how we store a single time series but we somehow lack a system that glues them all together. I'm talking about a few million time series coming from ~50 data vendors and representing maybe ...
476 views

### Where can I find a database of ALL ETFs, sorted by age?

I have a portfolio allocation strategy I want to backtest, but I need a large "universe" of ETFs for it to choose from at each time period. I was thinking of starting with a criteria such as "all ...
253 views

### Are there any standard MBS coupon stack models?

I need to model MBS coupon stack prices. It would not be difficult to create something from scratch, but I don't want to re-invent the wheel (and explain why I did) if a somewhat standard model ...
182 views

### Measuring Behavioral Finance Effects in Fund/Portfolio Manager Analysis

I want to know if there are some standardized measures to evaluate how irrationally human a portfolio manager is. Are there any performance measures or scorings for behavioral finance effects? How ...
1k 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 & ...
950 views

### Methods for pricing options

I'm looking at doing some research drawing comparisons between various methods of approaching option pricing. I'm aware of the Monte Carlo simulation for option pricing, Black-Scholes, and that ...
1k views

### Statistical learning libraries

Is there a general (or specialised) FREE library to solve learning problems such that found in the book "The Elements of statistical Learning". As it is often time consuming to write all the ...
780 views

### Library to solve optimization problems

I'm working with C# and I start being bored writing optimization algorithm. Do you know of any free library containing this sort of algorithms. In particular I'm cutrently working with Semidefit ...
698 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 ...
1k views

### Is Visual Basic a fast enough for millisecond orders

I have an API that for an order routing platform that is in visual basic. The maximum frequency or orders to exchanges will be milliseconds, where the underlying systems are expected to be able to ...
6k views

### How to check if a timeseries is stationary?

I'm using KPSS Method to check if the series is stationary, but I would also like to use another test to confirm if the series is stationary or not, what method coudl I use?
943 views

### What approaches are there to order handling in automated trading?

I am currently developing a commercial automated trading program in which users can write their own proprietary code and develop strategies, like in NinjaTrader, MetaTrader etc. Right now I am working ...
10k views

### What are some examples of non-financial risks and contingency plans?

There are many online sources about common risk factors in investing and trading e.g. market risk, credit risk, interest rate risk. There are various factor models (Fama-French, Carhart) and risk ...
444 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 ...
658 views

### Trading a stock (or other asset) based on Bollinger Bands.

One way investors analyze stocks is on a technical basis. Looking at Bollinger Banks (20 day moving average +- 2 standard deviations) is one of the most popular technical tools. Some stocks trade ...
1k views

### How to perform risk factor calculation?

I am studying Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) and I have a question about calculating factor exposures. Assume: $$r = \beta_1r_1 + \beta_2r_2 + ... + \beta_kr_k + r_e$$ ...
378 views

### What is the optimal strategy when there is an equal chance for gain or loss but the size of the potential gain is larger?

I'm investigating a situation where the chance for gain or loss is the same, but the amount gained is greater than the amount that is lost. For example, the gain would be about 30% of the trade ...
1k views

### Real-time & Fast S&P 500 E-Mini Futures (ES) Data

I trade on local exchanges in Europe, but my HFT strategies need S&P 500 e-mini futures data (ES). I don't need to trade ES, but I need real-time data and I want to have it as fast as possible. ...