# Tag Info

13

Short of having a 'reasonable' predictive model for expected returns and the covariance matrix, there are a couple lines of attack. Shrinkage estimators (via Bayesian inference or Stein-class of estimators) Robust portfolio optimization Michaud's Resampled Efficient Frontier Imposing norm constraints on portfolio weights Naively, shrinkage methods '...

11

Perhaps you may want to consider article by D. Levine - Modeling Tail Behavior with Extreme Value Theory who gives practicale example on how EVT can be used to calculate probabilities on returns in tails with use of the Pickands-Balkema-de Haan Theorem and generalized Pareto distribution. It also contains some criterias and points on other methods that can ...

10

One approach is Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) a.k.a. Expected Shortfall (ES). It does, as you suggest, take into account the whole set of returns. However, instead of traditional VaR which asks "what is the worst 1% or 5% loss I can expect" in a given time frame, conditional VaR asks "assuming I sustain losses of at least 95% or 99% (and perhaps am ...

10

Both answers from Shane and Vishal Belsare make sense and detail different models. In my experience, I have never been satisfied by a unique model since the majority of papers out there can be split in two categories: Those that predict the mean component of the problem. Those that predict the variance component of the problem. The ideal (to read "...

7

You raise a very important point, which unfortunately doesn't have a simple answer. Black-Litterman addresses the allocation problem by allowing you to provide a prior within a bayesian framework. It doesn't really tell you how to produce the prior itself. But more importantly, it doesn't address the fundamental problem: it's difficult to accurately ...

7

Here's a partial answer: This partly depends on the return characteristics. One way to look at this is to analyze the skewness and kurtosis of the returns. Most strategies have a negative skewness, which roughly means that they have mostly consistent small positive returns, with the occasional large negative return. Alternatively, some strategies have "...

5

Because you can hedge. Once you have delta hedged, the pay-off is symmetric about up and down moves so drift doesn't matter. Also the delta-hedged call and the delta hedged put have to have the same value since they have the same pay-off. (Put-call parity) Yet any argument that the call should be worth more because of drift says that the put should be ...

5

Tail risk represents the probability that the magnitude of returns on an asset/portfolio will exceed some threshold (usually three standard deviations) on the normal curve. If you visualize a normal curve on standard axes, the tail on the left side corresponds to an extreme low return and the tail on the right side corresponds to an extreme high return. In ...

5

You are trying to apply the Kelly Criterion, supposedly to maximize how aggressively to bet, and you are having trouble when the Kelly Value turns negative. The naive answer to your question is that when your kelly value turns negative, then $f=\frac{bp-q}{b}$ turning negative means the instantaneous expected return is negative, which means you should not ...

5

If the equation satisfies all the assumptions of OLS, particularly homoscedasticity and no autocorrelation in the errors, then the expected return for the equation you laid out is $E[r_{future}|r_{history},x_{news}]=\alpha+\beta_1r_{history}+\beta_2x_{news}+\beta_3r_{history}*x_{news}$ If the unconditional expected return is zero (as is likely to be ...

5

If you don’t have any specific model which describes the behavior of the asset being traded, you can estimate the empirical distribution of returns by backtesting your momentum strategy. Then you can adjust this estimate during your strategy’s lifetime from your trading results. Additionally you can enhance this by accounting for different market regimes (e....

4

It seems that your real question is: is the PFP (Price Formation Process) diffusive from intraday to weekly sampling rate? It is a very good question since on intraday, some academics found some multifractal features into intraday returns, meaning that the PFP is not a Geometric Brownian Motion at small scales (even considering stochastic volatility). You ...

3

I think to gain intution you have to understand that the same agents that value the stocks will value the options. And agents compensate for volatility by demanding higher expected returns. Therefore you should ask: Why are stocks priced as they are in the first place? In your example, the stock with higher volatility has much lower expected return. This ...

3

In effect, you are wondering whether to price this option on risk-free probability distributions (B-S drift $r_f$), or real-world ones (B-S drift $\mu$, however calibrated) One cannot short the mutual fund, so the argument for using risk-free is weakened. But, there are various economic equilibrium arguments why using it may still be OK. If you use the ...

3

The answer is that you may use an approach that includes IRR, but that's not a necessary component of what I would consider a good model. I have seen commercial tools that include them and those that don't. I have also seen practitioners set the variables in packages that include this approach, so that they were not a relevant component of the resulting ...

3

The answer to the original question is simple: the Chopra-Ziemba paper is highly flawed and unreliable. Note that the framework is in-sample and based on a utility function. It has nothing to do with out-of-sample behavior of the mean vs. the covariance in an optimization. Estimation error grows linearly in the mean but quadratically in the covariance. At ...

3

What a great question -- it touches on many issues at the core of quantitative finance. This answer might be a lot more than you bargained for, but it's too interesting to pass up. References Mostly, this subject falls somewhere at the intersection of these three highly-interrelated topics: risk-neutral valuation, rational pricing and the fundamental ...

3

Another possible approach is taking views a la Black-Litterman. There is a 2006 paper "Incorporating Trading Strategies in the Black-Litterman Framework" that discusses the methodology in more detail. There are several practical issues that one should consider when implementing a momentum strategy with optimization. I would pay careful attention to the ...

3

Isn't this a simple mathematical rule? $$\Delta r_{t}=r_{t} - r_{t-1} = ln(p_{t}) - ln(p_{0}) - ln(p_{t-1}) + ln(p_{0})=ln(\frac{p_{t}}{p_{t-1}})$$ i.e. logarithmic or continuously compounded return. As a result: E(\Delta r_{t})=\frac{1}{T}\sum_{t=1}^{T}\Delta r_{t} = \frac{1}{T}\sum_{t=1}^{T}ln(\frac{p_{t}}{p_{t-1}})=\frac{1}{T}ln(\prod_{t=1}^{T}\frac{p_{... 3 Note that \begin{align*} \frac{S_T-S_t}{S_t} &= \frac{S_T-K +K-S_t}{S_t}\\ &=\frac{(S_T-K)^+-(K-S_T)^+ +K-S_t}{S_t}. \end{align*} Then, \begin{align*} E\left(\frac{S_T-S_t}{S_t} \mid \mathcal{F}_t \right) &= \frac{e^{rT}}{S_t}(C_t-P_t)+ \frac{K-S_t}{S_t}. \end{align*} where \begin{align*} C_t &= e^{-rT} E\left((S_T-K)^+ \mid \mathcal{F}_t \... 3 Under GBM \frac {dS_t}{S_t} = \mu dt + \sigma dW_t $$we get$$ S_T = S_0 e^{(\mu - \frac{1}{2}\sigma^2)T + \sigma W_T} $$suggesting that$$ S_T \sim \text{ln}\mathcal {N} ( \tilde {\mu}, \tilde {\sigma}) where \begin{align} \tilde {\mu} &= \ln S_0 + (\mu - \frac{1}{2}\sigma^2)T \\ \tilde {\sigma} &= \sigma \sqrt {T} \end{align} Now if X \... 2 Returns-based analysis cannot calculate the expected return of a trading system. It yields nonsensical results and is not suited to this particular calculation. Consider a game where every time you play, you win 25% twice and lose 40% once. There are basically three permutations of this game. Represented in R vectors: first <- c(.25, .25, -.4) second &... 2 You can't add returns. You must multiply them. In your example above where daily returns are 25%, 25%, and -40% To compute expected return from a return series, simply use this formula: return = product( 1+return); in the case of you example this yields: return = (1.25 * 1.25 * .6) = .9375 To get the expected daily return use the geometric mean: ... 2 IEX is an ATS. The ECN/ATS business is dominated by rampant and well known conflicts of interest. A part of the IEX value proposition from the beginning was to offer an alternative to traders who were disenfranchised by this market structure. If maker-taker rebates are part of your trading business model or if you engage in any strategy that could be deemed ... 2 Assume the weights of the two assets are w,1-w respectively;the expected returns and standard deviations are denoted by \mu,\sigma with subscripts 1,2,p(for portfolio),i.e,we have \mu_1,\mu_2,\mu_p,\sigma_1,\sigma_2,\sigma_p.The correlation coefficent is \rho Then\sigma_p^2=w^2\sigma_1^2+(1-w)^2\sigma_2^2+2w(1-w)\sigma_1\sigma_2\rho ...

2

The concrete (general) answer to part (ii) of my question seems to be contained in Equation 8 of the following link: http://www.columbia.edu/~ks20/FE-Notes/4700-07-Notes-portfolio-I.pdf In particular, interpreting $\sigma$ as volatility, take for example $E_A=0.10,\sigma_A=0.15,E_B=0.25,\sigma_B=0.40$ and $\rho =−0.2$. I get that about 83 percent of the ...

2

Yes and No. In the absence of arbitragers, the price of the option will be different for each speculator based on their drift expectations (and each speculator has a risk in his position and will limit his ability to trade large sizes to avoid bankruptcy) and the option price will converge to priced off a supply-and-demand driven drift expectation. ...

2

Since $Y=e^{(r-\frac{\sigma^2}{2})\tau + \sigma \sqrt{\tau}Z}$, then \begin{align*} xY > K \Leftrightarrow Z > -d_2, \end{align*} where \begin{align*} d_2 = \frac{\ln \frac{x}{K} + (r-\frac{\sigma^2}{2})\tau}{\sigma\sqrt{\tau}}. \end{align*} Consequently, \begin{align*} e^{-r\tau}\mathbb{E}\big(Y \mathbb{1}_{\{xY >K\}} \big) &= e^{-\frac{\sigma^...

2

Yes, for a short time horizon like 1 - 10 days, assuming $\mu = 0$ is fine. As you'd correctly pointed out, for 1 - 10 days (and referring to the link you'd referenced to), it scales linearly by $T$ (recall that $T$ is an annual number, so convert to a % number in reference to days), but volatility scales by $\sqrt{T}$ and so it is much larger than $T$ for ...

2

Each of these can be used, but each has serious drawbacks. No. 1 is inaccurate unless you use $N>>10$ years of data. But decades of data may not be available or may no longer be relevant to today's economy. No. 2 is good except that the CAPM has been rejected by empirical tests. More advanced models from Asset Pricing Theory may be helpful (FF3, FF5, ...

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