# All Questions

527 views

### Is it possible to understand financial theory without mathematics?

I am trying to develop a short course on financial theory, covering the fundamentals of forward and options pricing, and 'efficient market' theory. I want to reduce the amount of mathematics to a ...
542 views

### VaR for portfolio of funds

Let's assume we need to calculate a 1-day VaR for a portfolio of funds. Funds are traded, they can be bought and sold every day. We know exactly what the assets in each fund are. What is the right way ...
630 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 ...
511 views

### 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.
499 views

### What to ask for in a good prototyping framework?

Reading up on quantitative methods, model development, and back-testing, one obvious question springs to mind: What should one ask of a prototyping (model testing) framework? I know a lot of people ...
2k views

### How to get list of all CUSIPS/ISIN?

I want a list of all CUSIPs/ISINs. It would be nice if they were also categorized (e.g. Bonds/Funds etc). Where can I get such a data?
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 ...
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 ...
4k views

### Earnings and valuation data sources online

Are there any free/cheap sources for historical data on company earnings and valuations? I can get historical price data from Google and Yahoo, and it looks like I can get about five years of ...
3k 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 $\sqrt{(days/252)}$ $*volatility*mean*$ $\log(mean)$. ...
409 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 ...
3k views

### How to estimate probability of default from bond prices?

How do you use bond prices/yields to infer probabilities of default? I would think of it as follows: Create a relationship between default free (e.g., Germany) and defaultable (e.g., Greece) bond ...
2k 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 ...
348 views

### Appropriate measure of Volatility for economic returns from an asset?

I am doing research on uncertainty analysis and risk assessment for oil field development. For doing economic forecast and valuation I use Real Options theory, which is almost similar to theory used ...
1k 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 ...
359 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 ...
882 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 ...
1k 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 ...
332 views

### 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 ...
177 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 ...
364 views

### What good papers of short term (<30 seconds) volatility estimation [duplicate]

I am looking for good papers of short term (<30 sec) volatility estimation AND short term volatility forecasting. Do you have something in mind ?
188 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 ...
728 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 ...
316 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 ...
763 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 ...
573 views

15k views

### Strategy of Renaissance Technologies Medallion fund: Holy Grail or next Madoff?

Renaissance Technologies Medallion fund is one of the most successful hedge funds - ever! Yet it is very secretive. Do you have information on the strategy used that is not yet mentioned in the ...
3k views

### Why Drifts are not in the Black Scholes Formula

This question has puzzled me for a while. We all know geometric brownian motions have drifts $\mu$: $dS / S = \mu dt + \sigma dW$ and different stocks have different drifts of $\mu$. Why would ...
12k views

### How to calculate historical intraday volatility?

Sorry for what must be a beginner question, but when I went to write code I realized I didn't understand exactly how historical volatility, or statistical volatility, is defined. Wikipedia tells me ...
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 ...
1k 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 ...
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 ...
1k 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 ...