# Tag Info

12

This is not a trivial question. Here's a relevant excerpt (an appetizer, really) from Hull's book (7th Edition, P. 75): It is natural to assume that the rates on Treasury bills and Treasury bonds are the correct benchmark risk-free rates for derivative traders working for financial institutions. In fact, these derivative traders usually use LIBOR rates ...

10

I think you are interpreting too much into the matter. The $-\frac12\sigma^2$ is just a correction term that comes from Jensen's inequality. You need this when switching from supposedly symmetric returns (normal distribution) to the skewed price process (log-normal distribution). I think there are no deeper truths to be found here.

9

Interest rates in general are far from independent and identically distributed. A high interest rate observation is quite likely to be followed by another high observation, and the volatility is likely to be higher as well. Interest rates are also mean reverting, as in most real-world situations (at least for developed markets) interest rates rarely rise ...

7

As with most derivatives that have early exercise, you are going to want to price this using a grid scheme. I have priced callable loans with floors using the Generalized Vasicek model at my old hedge fund, and it is fairly easy to handle. As a matter of fact my students are doing that very problem as homework this week, and my reference implementation ...

7

To answer a question with a question - are you assuming proportional or constant dividends? :) The general consensus of the market is that dividends are somewhere between proportional (fixed yield) and constant (fixed dollar). The carry embedded into the forward prices at different strikes reflects that consensus, in fact you can establish the ...

6

There are certainly (short-rate) models which assume bounded interest rates. I suppose I should clarify - the design of the model prohibits negative interest rates. Further, some models asymptotically reach some target, or mean rate which is considered mean reversion, the most famous perhaps the Vasicek. Short rate models where rates cannot go negative: ...

6

Recall that an interest rate swap has two legs, one fixed and one floating, each paid by one party to the transaction. Now, assume you go to a big bank like JPM, and want to borrow $100MM at fixed rate. JPM will have to fund that position, which because it is a big bank it will do at floating interest rates. But maybe JPM is worried about the effect such ... 6 I like to present to you a slightly different approach: Historically, only one single yield curve was derived from different instruments, such as OIS, deposit rates, or swap rates. However, market practice nowadays is to derive multiple swap curves, optimally one for each rate tenor. This idea goes against the idea of one fully-consistent zero coupon curve, ... 5 Take a look at historical short-term risk-free rate proxies such as Fed Funds, LIBOR, short Treasuries, and you will find plenty of periods where rates have been significantly above or below inflation (as measured by any CPI series) in the same period. In fact, controlling this difference, known as the real interest rate, is the primary tool of modern ... 5 The very easiest change you can make is to switch to quasirandom sampling. I favor the Niederreiter sequence, for which you can find implementations in most languages around the web. You can also get a (sometimes tremendous) speed boost by running using a control variate. Even a swap would probably reduce your variance somewhat. I don't recall the CIR ... 5 Here's a research note devoted to pricing of CMS by means of a stochastic volatility model. The authors indicate in the Introduction that an analysis of the coupon structure leads to the conclusion that CMS contracts are particularly sensitive to the asymptotic behavior of implied volatilities for very large strikes. Market CMS rates actually drive the ... 5 As you said,$\mu$is the expected return that is the expected value (mathematical expectation) of the random variable "stock return" under the objective probability measure. Assuming that returns are stationary*, the obvious way to estimate it is to compute a large number$N$of returns$R_i$, then to average them. You also want to annualize this average ... 5 The following paper, Interpolation Schemes in the Displaced-Diffusion LIBOR Market Model and the Efficient Pricing and Greeks for Callable Range Accruals, addresses this issue: We introduce a new arbitrage-free interpolation scheme for the displaced-diffusion LIBOR market model. Using this new extension, and the Piterbarg interpolation scheme, we study ... 5 The Macaulay duration is a measure of how sensitive a bond's price is to changes in interest rates. Duration is related to, but differs from, the slope of the plot of bond price against yield-to-maturity. The slope of the price-yield curve is$-\frac{D}{1+r}P,$where$D$is Macaulay duration,$P$is bond price, and$r$is yield. Here's how the definition ... 5 You should use the full yield curve, discounting cash flows at specific dates using the appropriate zero-coupon interest rate. As to which yield curve, that is often a matter of convention. Generally one uses the LIBOR/swaps curve for all but the most liquid products (in which case you use the treasury curve). The curve is constructed from LIBOR/Eurodollar ... 5 First step is to decide what instruments you want to include in your process for estimating the spot curve. You want to look at the following instruments for inclusion - treasury coupon strips, on-the-run treasury issues, and some off-the-run treasury issues (those not trading at liquidity discounts), or all treasury coupon securities and bills. You want ... 5 This is not an arbitrage because the transaction costs of the basket of goods is too high. Ever try to sell an item on eBay? I doubt you'll get 2-3% more for it next year, even new in box. Some of the items in the basket are current consumption goods. Good luck selling those fresh fruits and vegetables next year for 2-3% more than you paid. Others are ... 5 Dividends are the key. For simplicity, let's include a single dividend at the time of expiration, and assume that the options are European and expire ex. (There is really no reason not to assume that an option on a market index is European. EDIT: not quite true; that's discussed here.)$S+P = e^{-rt}K+C + e^{-rt}D$This is a certain fixed dividend, but ... 5 Indeed,$D(t)$is the discount factor used to compute the present value of a cash flow at time$t\$: $$PV = D(t) \cdot CF_t$$ It is more convenient to write it that way when you assume stochastic interest rate because you don't have to write the integral all the time.

5

There's no class at this time to add two curves as you want, but it won't be much difficult to write it. The closest you'll get in the library is the ZeroSpreadedTermStructure class, that shows the general idea: it inherits from YieldTermStructure (by way of ZeroYieldStructure) takes a YieldTermStructure and a spread (constant, in this case) and override ...

4

The risk implied by Euribor or EONIA (or their swaps) is for lending to another prime rated bank. These rate indexes represent where contributor banks are offering funds to each other in the interbank market. Contributing banks are mostly rated P-1 (Moody’s) or A-1 (S&P). You wouldn’t use these rates for govt discount curves because the risk doesn’t ...

4

Overnight funding is made through an auction, a fixing as you name it and it is achieved successfully (usually, i.e. when Lehman Brothers doesn't go bankrupt) because of the huge amounts on BOTH sides of this auction (i.e. liquidity). If you do an auction every minute, you will have more volatility as prices will potentially vary every minute and there will ...

4

If you are trying to arbitrage the put-call parity, then use your collateral interest rate for the options side, and your cost of funds on the stock side of the equation. Yes, that's right, 2 different interest rates. Also, don't forget to incorporate bid-ask spreads. If you are trying to turn a put into a call for your own book, you don't actually need ...

4

I think you should put YOUR attainable interest rate. Because it is your view of how much the forward is worth. So, on the offer the rate at which you are indifferent is computed with the interest rate at which you borrow. And if you go short, the interest at which you can put your have your money fructified. No what rate can your money be fructified at ? ...

4

If you are looking for good explanation with example than you may want to consider reading Jim Harper aka Bionic Turtle and his article on forward rates and spot rates. You can find excel spreadsheet for given example there as well.

4

CMS adjustments in single curve context can be roughly explained if you consider a CMS swaplet by the fact that there is a single payment at the CMS rate at a single date and not on the whole strip of the underlying CMS tenor schedule. So if you are trying to hedge a CMS swaplet with the corresponding swap of CMS tenor length (with correct naïve nominal ...

4

Forward interest rates are negative whenever the yield curve is negatively sloped. The US term structure was inverted most recently around 2007. Hard to find bank deposits that have negative yields (find countries experiencing deflation and you may find it), however, treasury bills during recent times of financial stress have yielded a negative rate. The ...

4

A swap does not require a model because its price can be derived from the yield curve without any assumptions about how the yield curve may move in the future. The PFE however is an indication of by how much the swap's mark-to-market may move between now and a moment in the future. It is of course influenced by how volatile rates are. The more volatile ...

4

There are two flaws in the argument. The simpler one is that expectations give information about probability distributions (premise D). I think this is what John was referring to in his comment. The fact that the expectation of a forward rate in period X is Y% tells us nothing about the implied probability distribution in that period, and certainly doesn't ...

4

Taking the case of companies other than the bank, when you have a large amount of cash, you won't stock it in your backyard as there would be insurance and logistics costs that would cost you more than the negative government yield. I believe the main reason why people are willing to accept the negative yield is essentially for counterparty risk ...

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