# All Questions

969 views

### How to improve the Black-Scholes framework?

Since the distribution of daily returns are obviously not lognormal, my bottom line question is has BS been reworked for a better fitting distribution? Google searches give me nada. The best dist ...
2k views

### Is there a piratebay for data(bases)? (here, talking about historical financial data) [closed]

I would like to, for example, access (and later, upload), for example, historical financial data for the S&P500. If a piratebay for databases existed, maybe we could freely share information that ...
245 views

### desk's performance

I need your point of view in evaluating the monthly performance of a desk. I have the daily credit risk capital requirement (A); the net banking income or GNP (B). What is the best measure of ...
509 views

### Bootstrapping first, then data mine?

I posted this on Cross Validated a month ago, but I didn't get any answers. Sorry for the second post! I'm wondering about the whole process of testing/data-mining for a strategy and THEN testing on ...
814 views

### What are current interest rates on senior/junior/mezzanine loans for e.g. real estate developers?

For a case study I have to work on for a university course, about a real-estate-development project, I need to simulate the financing with different proportions of equity (40%), senior loan (35%), ...
1k views

### Treasury Bond Yield Curves in R

Does anyone know if I can access interest rates series from the treasury using R? I tried yahoo! Finance and it doesn't seem to have this kind of information.
539 views

### Black-Scholes American Put Option

Here is my question: This is a question about Black-Scholes model, but it may be applicable to more complicated models. Throughout the discussion, the strike price $K$, interest rate $r$ and ...
234 views

### Does entropy pooling apply to distributions with time-varying drift?

I have a returns process that is drawn from a normal distribution with a nonlinear time-varying drift, so I was wondering if the entropy pooling method still applies or if I need an invariant ?
408 views

### Is making a bid/ask offer a good way to lower the spreads?

I have written an algorithmic trading program which relies heavily on low spreads in the 0.1-0.3 PIP region. I was now wondering if it would be a good idea to place bid/ask offers instead of limit ...
82 views

### Changes to option valuation for dollar-pegged underlying

In Russia, options on futures on the RTS index are priced in points instead of currency, with points being directly related to the value of the US dollar such that, for example, if the dollar rises, ...
1k views

### How do I estimate the parameters of an MA(q) process?

It is relatively easy to estimate the parameters of an autoregressive $AR(p)$ process. How do I do with a moving average $MA(q)$ process?
2k views

### Why do ATM call options have a delta of slightly bigger than 0.5 and not 0.5 exactly?

From the formula of the delta of a call option, i.e. $N(d1)$, where $d_1 = \frac{\mathrm{ln}\frac{S(t)}{K} + (r + 0.5\sigma^2)(T-t)}{\sigma\sqrt{T-t}}$, the delta of an ATM spot call option is ...
592 views

### How to calculate discounted inflation and growth?

Given the nominal bond yield and the inflation index bond yield (earning yield), how would one calculate the discounted inflation rate (discounted earning growth rates)? These two factor seems to ...
186 views

### Pricing forward contract on a stock

Please tell me where I've gone wrong (if I did in fact make a mistake). I'm pricing a long forward on a stock. The usual setup applies: This has payoff $S(T) - K$ at time $T$. We are at $t$ now. ...
238 views

### Pricing a Power Contract derivative security

I'm trying to price a "power contract" and would appreciate guidance on the next step. The payoff at time $T$ is $(S(T)/K)^\alpha$, where $K > 0$, $\alpha \in \mathbb{N}$, $T > 0$. $S$ is ...
1k views

### How to make the final Interpretation of PCA?

I have question regarding final loading of data back to original variables. So for example: I have 10 variable from a,b,c....j using returns for last 300 days i got return matrix of 300 X 10. ...
3k views

### How to simulate a Merton Jump Diffusion process?

I am talking about the Merton Jump Diffusion model, on this page, where they give the following formula: $$dS_t = \mu S_t dt + \sigma S_t dW_t + (\eta-1) dq$$ where $W_t$ is a standard brownian ...
264 views

### Absolute Dollar Form Of Kelly Criterion

Is there a absolute dollar form of the Kelly equation $f=\frac{m}{s^2}$? (i.e. one that does not use percent returns).
3k views

### When does delta hedging result in more risk?

There's a question in an interview book saying "when can hedging an options position make you take on more risk?" The answer provided is that "Hedging can increase your risk if you are forced to both ...
260 views

### How to calculate a the PFE for a Swaption?

How do you calculate the Potential Future Exposure (PFE) for a swaption? Do you incorporate the dynamics of implied volatility when you are running your simulations? Is there a standard way to ...
4k views

### How to Delta Hedge with Futures?

The theory of delta hedging a short position in an option is based on trades in the stock and cash, i.e. I get the option premium and take positions in the stock and cash. In the classical ...
1k views

### How to simulate stock prices using variance gamma process?

I want to simulate stock prices with the variance gamma process. The model is given by: $S_T=S_0 e^{ {[}(r-1)T + \omega + z{]}}$ where $S_0=$ starting value $T=$ Time ...
525 views

### Performance Stats of Pairs Trades

This is something I've been thinking about for a while but I can't reach a clear conclusion. When we calculate, for example, the profit factor for a pairs trading strategy, do we treat each pairs ...
18k views

### How to simulate stock prices with a Geometric Brownian Motion?

I want to simulate stock price paths with different stochastic processes. I started with the famous geometric brownian motion. I simulated the values with the following formula: ...
181 views

### Measure change in a bond option problem

This is not a homework or assignment exercise. I'm trying to evaluate $\displaystyle \ \ I := E_\beta \big[\frac{1}{\beta(T_0)} K \mathbf{1}_{\{B(T_0,T_1) > K\}}\big]$, where $\beta$ is the ...
152 views

### Question on OptionMetrics: when are adjustments for discrete dividends needed?

Bakshi et. al. (1997) analyzes the empirical performance of some alternative option pricing models. I am interested to do this as well - hence applying different models - but I am unsure how to handle ...
484 views

### Calculating portfolio VaR for (custom) leveraged products

I have been searching online for a few days regarding how to calculate portfolio VaR for a portfolio consisting of leveraged products - but so far, I have not been able to come up with anything ...
1k views

### portfolio optimization from empirical return distributions

I'd like to do a portfolio optimization of a set of ETF's but want to avoid traditional problems with normality assumptions in returns etc. Are there techniques that let me sample 'draws' from the ...
488 views

### When gains are made: Overnight or during trading hours? What is the connection to volatility?

Falkenblog reports an interesting finding: All of the stock returns since 1993 are from overnight returns and cross-sectionally, volatility receives a positive overnight risk premium, a negative ...
301 views

### What is the canonical reference for Minimum Variance Portfolio's uniqueness?

I am writing a white paper in which I am trying to compare a strategy to different well-known - and classic - asset allocation optimization approaches. One of the methods I chose is the minimum ...
107 views

### Proxy for a trigonometric angle function [closed]

You can't calculate an actual/real angle with the sine function with discrete market data. I need a substitute value for inputs that require an angle value. If you're only calculating the angle ...
5k views

### What does “Inst. Own” mean on Google Finance, and how can AOL be 103% “Inst. Own”'d?

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AAOL&ei=yZCpUODEMsKqqgHPzQE Previously, I assumed "Inst. Owned" meant the percentage of the company's stock that was owned by the company (viz. not ...
792 views

### Why would a trader quickly flicker an order immediately preceding a tick away?

The Setup Assume the inside market is $15.15 \times 15.16$ and there is a very large bid order imbalance. For example, 30,000 shares bid across 100+ orders, 200 shares offered across 1 order; ...
664 views

### Why is random trading minus transaction costs not zero expected value?

Somebody was telling me that if you buy randomly and assuming no transaction costs in todays market place, you wont make money 50% of the time and lose 50% of the time because of adverse selection. Im ...
210 views

### Missing factor in the factor model

I am developing a factor model to predict monthly returns. One of the factors alone accounts for an R squared of 0.3 to 0.4 for many single periods that has surprised me. However, for some periods ...
2k views

### Does mean reverting imply mean stationary?

If I have a time series that exhibits mean reverting properties, does it necessarily mean that the time series is mean stationary?
5k views

### What kind of return can an average algorithmic trading firm achieve today?

What kind of rate of return can an average, equities-focused algorithmic trading firm expect to achieve today? I come from a background of control and optimization, working in the industry in China, ...
432 views

### Proof that the number of trades done (successfully) matters for whether or not a strategy was lucky

Me and a friend is trying to settle and argument in relation to the following quote by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: I don’t want to spend too much time on Buffett. George Soros has 2 million times more ...
374 views

### Why is the CAPM securities market line straight?

Let $\gamma$ be the expected return, in terms of its exponential growth rate, of the market asset. If we set $\gamma=\mu-\sigma^2/2$ as explained by the Doléans-Dade exponential, then the expected ...
714 views

### Where can I find corporate bond spreads?

I am trying to price a 30 yr bond maturing in December 15, 2035. The bond is rated A- (S&P). Where can I find the spreads for corporate bonds rated A- maturing in 23 years (December 2035)? I ...
269 views

### Measuring unbiased estimator for variance with RMSE?

The root mean squared error (RMSE) is considered by some to be the best measure of how good a variance estimate is. You often see it quoted as: \$RMSE=\sqrt{\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n(\hat{\sigma_i} - ...
215 views

### Optimal Position Size with Transaction Costs given Forecast Mean and StDev

I have rather a challenging question. I'm hoping that someone can share their experience. I will build up the problem in steps. Let's start our thinking with the idea of a buy and hold strategy of ...
106 views

### Combining Mulitple Forecasts? Budged Constraints?

I'm hoping that someone can lend a hand. I have been reading various papers on how to combine multiple forecast time series. The main paper is Granger and Bates 1969. The suggestion here is that there ...
867 views

### Cointegration trading: Ignoring pairs that aren't economically related

Cointegration trading question What's the state of the art when it comes to choosing proper subsets of stocks/assets where cointegrating relationships aren't ignored as (likely to be) spurious? For ...
1k views

I have few questions about using OAS as a measure of risk: does OAS allow for comparison between bonds with and without embedded options (e.g. a callable bond against a plain vanilla one against a ...
707 views

### Is it possible to derive the “risk tolerance” from the portfolio efficient frontier?

I am trying to solve the Portfolio Optimization Problem using a "Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm". After obtaining the efficient frontier, I would like to know if we can infer for each point of ...
207 views

### How to group mutual funds by volatility?

I want to group Mutual Funds by their volatility. Ideally, I would like to end up with the mutual funds beings attached to different groups: High volatility Medium volatility Low Volatility My ...
118 views

### Exposition of Growth in a Perpetuity

Something that's bugged me since I've ever learned anything about finance: Philosophically(?) speaking, why does growth subtract from a perpetuity's return? I know the mathematical explanation, but ...