# All Questions

22k 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?
293 views

### Testing a simple stock market trading hypothesis? [closed]

I have a simple stock market trading hypothesis ... Something along these lines: Based on a certain deviation from a stock market index over a 30-day period, 5 certain stocks tend to drift ...
380 views

### When is it rational to exercise a bond option early?

Consider american options on interest rate futures such as the 10-year treasury note. When is early exercise optimal?
336 views

### What changes to put-call parity are necessary when evaluating american options on non-dividend paying assets?

If an underlying doesn't pay dividends (for our purpose defined as any distribution to the underlying's holder) directly or indirectly (e.g. options on futures) how does put-call parity change from ...
4k views

### What exactly is meant by “microstructure noise”?

I see that term tossed around a lot, in articles relating to HFT, and ultra high frequency data. It says at higher frequencies, smaller intervals, microstructure noise is very dominant. What is ...
314 views

### What close price to assume for thinly traded stocks?

If a thinly traded stock has not traded for the last few days (volume=0), is it better to use the last known trade price (i.e. roll over last non-missing trade price) or use last known ...
2k views

### How to price a calendar spread option?

How do you price calendar spread options, that is, options on the same underlying and the same strike but different times to maturity? Clarification: I'm interested in the pricing of a a CSO ...
404 views

### Calculating Theta assuming other variables remain the same

Is there any way to calculate theta at X day in future based solely on knowing 1) Total Current Option Price 2) Days Till Expiration How would this be done? Thank you
2k views

### How does Kalman filtering of beta in pairs trading model work in R?

Could anyone show how this could be done in R? The dlm package seems to be a good start, but I can't really find any good examples to learn from. Currently I have ...
54 views

### Performance of 1X0/X0 funds vs. traditional benchmarks?

Some years ago there was a proliferation of new products touting the ability of active managers to take short bets on securities: 130/30 funds, 150/50 funds, and the like. What is the empirical ...
332 views

### Why is there a price difference between 30 year principal and interest STRIPS?

Sorry if this is obvious, I am not a professional. I like to trade 30 year treasury zero's. I have noticed that the price for a 30 year principal payment is never the same as a 30 year interest ...
2k views

### What distribution to assume for interest rates?

I am writing a paper with a case study in financial maths. I need to model an interest rate $(I_n)_{n\geq 0}$ as a sequence of non-negative i.i.d. random variables. Which distribution would you advise ...
151 views

### What are some common models for one-sided returns?

One typically models the log returns of a portfolio of equities by some unimodal, symmetric (or nearly symmetric) distribution with parameters like the mean and standard deviation estimated by ...
660 views

### Hasbrouck's information share

Given a cointegrated set of price series, I am trying to compute the Hasbrouck's information share, as described in page 12-13 of this article. page 7-8 of this article I have the vector error ...
3k views

### How to combine multiple trading algorithms?

Is it possible to combine different algorithms so as to improve trading performance? In particular, I have read that social media sentiment tracking, digital signal processing and neural networks all ...
896 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 ...
2k views

### Tools in R for estimating time-varying copulas?

Are there libraries in R for estimating time-varying joint distributions via copulas? Hedibert Lopes has an excellent paper on the topic here. I know there is an existing packaged called copula but ...
224 views

### Options: Vertical LEAPS

I am developing an algorithm and it needs to know what to do in certain market conditions It takes on a Vertical Bull Call Debit Spread on LEAPS that are 12+ months out in the future. This means that ...
629 views

### Can options volume have an impact on the price of the underlying asset?

Can options volume affect the underlying asset price indirectly? I know that options buying/selling does not directly affect the price of the underlying asset (rather, the asset price contributes most ...
262 views

### TA/Pattern algorithm analysis

I have been building a momentum pattern detection algo (essentially involves fitting curves in overlapping windows at different timeframes) and wanted to see if anyone has done/seen similar work. I ...
220 views

### Can binary model lead to non-normal distribution?

If we suppose an instrument goes up or down 1 tick per $\Delta t$ (binary model), its long term distribution will be normal, per the Central Limit Theorem. However, suppose we model as follows: The ...
560 views

### What is a good site to download historical stock 'events' such as earnings releases? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: What data sources are available online? Earnings and valuation data sources online I'd like to backtest some strategies involving earnings release surprises, as well ...
469 views

### Standard Deviations out the money where options will respond to underlying asset price changes

Is there an understood way of determining how far out the money an option can be, before it starts/stops responding to the underlying asset price changes? I usually look at the greeks, gamma, delta, ...
2k views

### Can social media be applied to algorithmic trading?

Can social media sites, like Twitter, be used to analyze financial markets for algorithmic trading? How much research has been done on this topic?
651 views

### Monte carlo portfolio risk simulation

My objective is to show the distribution of a portfolio's expected utilities via random sampling. The utility function has two random components. The first component is an expected return vector ...
2k views

### Correct way to calculate bond's Yield-to-Horizon

I'm creating some .Net libraries for bond pricing and verifying its correctness with a bond pricing excel spreadsheet (Bond Pricing and Yield from Chrisholm Roth) but I believe it calculates the Yield ...
7k views

### The difference between Close price and Settelment Price for future contracts

What is the difference between Close price and Settelment Price for future contracts? Is there a define rule for evaluating the settlement price or each instrument/exchange different rules applied? ...
1k views

### What does the VIX formula measure and how does it work?

I have read the CBOE's white paper on the VIX and a lot of other things, but I need to honestly say, I don't really get it, or I am missing something important. In semi-layman's terms, is the VIX ...
204 views

### Tian third moment-matching tree with smoothing - implementation

I was wondering if someone has an implementation of the Tian third moment-matching tree (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1030143) with smoothing in code (e.g. c++, vba, c#, etc.)? ...
2k views

### What is the difference between STOXX and STOXXE?

Could anyone explain the difference between STOXX and STOXXE? Which is the right index for benchmarking European stocks? Thanks.
457 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 ...
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 ...
727 views

### What skills and education are required for HFT? [closed]

I'm a university student and I'm quite interested in High Frequency Trading Algorithms. What courses should I take and what skills should I acquire so that I can work in this field? So far, I've been ...
391 views

### How to value a floor when a loan is callable?

Certain bank loans pay a spread above a floating-rate interest rate (typically LIBOR) subject to a floor. I would like to find the value of this floor to the investor. Assume for this example that ...
426 views

### How can I simulate portfolio risk (diversification) with a 'Wheel of Fortune' like investment options/returns?

Say I have 6 possible investment options with the following probability of success and the corresponding returns: ...
3k views

### How are limit orders selected from the order book?

I'm sure there is a simple answer to this but I haven't had any luck with searches. I'm just wondering when someone places a market order which order(s) from the limit order book are selected to fill ...
332 views

### Probability distributions in quantitative finance [closed]

What are the most popular probability distributions in quantitative finance and what are their applications?
234 views

### How often do ETF creation units baskets change?

Large institutions can swap baskets of underlying securities for ETF shares that can then be traded on an exchange as part of arbitrage between the price of the basket and the ETF share price. These ...
370 views

### Where are creation units baskets for ETFs published?

Where can the specification of a creation unit basket for an ETF be found? This information is needed for calculating the arbitrage possible between the ETF instrument itself and the creation unit ...
3k views

### Calculating Portfolio Skewness & Kurtosis

I need to calculate the skewness and kurtosis of 2 asset portfolio, can someone please help me with the formulas and definition of terms? Thank you. I have been using the matrices method and I am not ...
829 views

### How to normalize Futures data(different leverage) for cointegration test?

For example I want to construct 2 time series, one for ES and the other for NQ and test for cointegration. ES one point equal to 50$. NQ one point equal to 20$. If I have the following data: ...
2k views

### How to cluster stocks and construct an affinity matrix?

My goal is to find clusters of stocks. The "affinity" matrix will define the "closeness" of points. This article gives a bit more background. The ultimate purpose is to investigate the "cohesion" ...
24k views

### How to annualize Sharpe Ratio?

I have a basic question about annualized Sharpe Ratio Calculation: if I know the daily return of my portfolio, the thing I need to do is multiply the Sharpe Ratio by $\sqrt{252}$ to have it ...
173 views

### Use of Local Times in Option Pricing

I know two applications of local time in option pricing theory. First, it allows a derivation of Dupire's formula on local volatility in a neat way (i.e. without resorting to differential operator ...
3k views

### Evaluating automated trading strategies: accepted practice

Both for private projects, and for clients, I've been working on code a lot this year to evaluate automated trading strategies. This often ends up turning into the task of how to fairly compare apples ...
207 views

### When does an ETF take out expenses?

When does an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) take out expenses (for example 0,3% on a yearly basis)? Does it happen daily, or once yearly or according to some other scheme? Where does it take them from?
438 views

### What weights should be used when adjusting a correlation matrix to be positive definite?

I have a correlation matrix $A$ for an equity market that is not positive definite. Higham (2002) proposes the Alternating Projections Method, minimising the weighted Frobenius norm $||A-X||_W$ where ...
711 views

### What strategy would benefit most from having the fastest connection to the exchange?

Imagine that you have the fastest connection to the exchange (receive quotes 1 ms earlier than everyone else) for both stocks and derivatives. How would you benefit from this? Of course almost any ...