Questions tagged [distribution]

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32 votes
4 answers
28k views

How to derive the implied probability distribution from B-S volatilities?

The general problem I have is visualization of the implied distribution of returns of a currency pair. I usually use QQplots for historical returns, so for example versus the normal distribution: ...
Thomas Browne's user avatar
24 votes
3 answers
5k 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 ...
Ram Ahluwalia's user avatar
14 votes
8 answers
6k views

Consensus on Cauchy distribution for stock prices

What is the general consensus for using a Cauchy distribution to model stock prices? I can't find much after researching online and wonder if it has been tried and discarded. My motivation is to find ...
rwolst's user avatar
  • 317
13 votes
5 answers
23k views

Copulas simply explained

I try to understand the basic idea of copulas, however I am still struggling and hope that someone can help me. I understood that in general a copula is a function which links several marginal ...
jeffrey's user avatar
  • 539
11 votes
7 answers
8k 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 ...
SBF's user avatar
  • 2,613
11 votes
2 answers
5k 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 ...
Mauricio Bustos's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
1k views

Is volatility for the next day forecastable? To any extent?

In a more general way: is there 1) a methodological approach to quantify the correctness of a model that produces a probability distribution for the, say, S&P 500 index return for the next ...
mt_christo's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
459 views

What distribution should I apply to estimate the likelihood of extreme returns?

Say I have a limited sample, a month of daily returns, and I want to estimate the 99.5th percentile of the distribution of absolute daily returns. Because the estimate will require extrapolation, I ...
user2303's user avatar
  • 537
9 votes
2 answers
1k views

Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for Generalized Pareto Distribution

I've fitted my data to a generalized pareto distribution as to model the returns in the tails more accurately. The interior is fitted with kernel distributions. I would like to now test whether the ...
Peter Miller's user avatar
9 votes
0 answers
337 views

On a time integral of Brownian motion up to the hitting time

Just come up with a 'simple' and interesting problem that I've been struggling to deal with for some time. Consider a filtered probability space $(\Omega, \mathcal{F}, \{\mathcal{F}_t\}_{t\in[0,T]},\...
FoolAlex's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
380 views

Can Gaussianity of returns depend on the time frame?

I would be interested in knowing if the fact that returns are Gaussian is disproved on all time frames, or if, for example, the 5 minute intra-day time frame could exhibits Gaussian returns assuming ...
Monolite's user avatar
  • 367
8 votes
3 answers
8k views

How can I estimate the degrees of freedom for a Student's T distribution?

I am doing research estimating the value at risk for non-normally distributed assets. I need help in the process of estimating the parameters of Student's t distribution and which method to use. I ...
fariz's user avatar
  • 119
7 votes
1 answer
789 views

Benfords law and quantitative finance

Benford's law has been applied in various ways for detecting fraud (e.g. elections or accounting). But what are the most useful applications of Benford in quantitative finance? Are there any? I have ...
Richi Wa's user avatar
  • 13.6k
7 votes
1 answer
2k views

Fitting distributions to financial data using volatility model to estimate VaR

I want to fit a distribution to my financial data using a volatility model to estimate the VaR. So in case of a normal distribution, this would be very easy, I assume the returns to follow a normal ...
Stat Tistician's user avatar
7 votes
0 answers
2k views

Arbitrage free smoothing of volatility smile - cubic spline - implementation procedure

I am studying the paper Arbitrage-Free Smoothing of the Implied Volatility Surface, from Matthias R. Fengler (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6978470.pdf). The problem I want to solve is much simpler ...
AnUser's user avatar
  • 81
6 votes
2 answers
676 views

Transformation to reduce standard deviation without changing median

Consider some negative skew and high kurtosis return time-series $X_t$. I do not know the functional form of the pdf of $X_t$ and have about 150,000 data points. Suppose that I was to create an ...
james's user avatar
  • 61
6 votes
2 answers
637 views

Do futures follow physical or risk-neutral distributions

I've spent a while looking for an answer to this question and while I feel it is a simple question I have not found an answer. I know prices of option contracts follow an implied, risk-neutral ...
Joe Yurkanin's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
492 views

What is the distribution of the risk-free asset?

If the risk-free asset has a volatility of $0$, therefore making its mean equal to the risk-free rate, $r_f$, does this mean that it has no probability distribution, and therefore there is no reason ...
develarist's user avatar
  • 2,980
5 votes
1 answer
317 views

Density of Geometric BM via Fokker-Planck

Attempting to derive density of a GBM (which we know is log-normal) the long way, using the Fokker Planck-equation. Can't figure out where I went wrong - would appreciate a few sets of extra eyes! ...
bcf's user avatar
  • 2,778
5 votes
2 answers
115 views

Approach to add scenarios to OpRisk loss distribution

There is quite a lot of literature on OpRisk modelling. My question focuses on a loss distribution approach (LDA). Let's look at a basic model. A Poisson-distributed $N$ and loss sizes $X_i$ and from ...
Richi Wa's user avatar
  • 13.6k
5 votes
0 answers
1k views

Fitting Student t-distributions to log-returns

It seems that some tail-risk centric groups are bent on using Paretian and t-distributions to account for tail risk when fitting log-returns. It has been observed, however, that with and without ...
user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
182 views

Reconciling Two Claims About Volatility Under Fat Tails

I have read the Wikipedia article on volatility, and Nassim N. Taleb's Incerto, and found two statements attributed to Mandelbrot's views, which appear to be in contradiction. Taleb (who was mentored ...
user1337's user avatar
  • 143
4 votes
2 answers
994 views

Is it possible to deal with non-normal distribution in Black-Litterman model?

Suppose that I know that the normality assumption about my data is unrealistic (as it is very frequently): is it possible to apply any distribution that I judge the right one to the Black-Litterman ...
simmy's user avatar
  • 575
4 votes
1 answer
230 views

Change of measure

I am looking at the derivation of the Hill estimator. It is $ \bar{F}(x) = 1 - F(x)$ the right tail of the distribution. In the derivation they use the equation $$ \frac{1}{\bar{F}(u)}\int\limits_u^\...
SmurfAcco's user avatar
  • 103
4 votes
2 answers
1k views

Brownian Bridge's first passage time distribution

Let's say we have a Brownian Bridge $Y_{b,T}(t)$ such that $Y_{b,T}(0)=0$, $Y_{b,T}(T)=b$. Let's say we are interested in the first passage time of $Y_{b,T}(t)$ at level $b$: $\tau_b = \{\min \tau; ...
athos's user avatar
  • 2,211
4 votes
1 answer
222 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 ...
shabbychef's user avatar
  • 2,836
4 votes
1 answer
2k views

Value at Risk Monte-Carlo using Generalized Pareto Distribution(GPD)

I have created a VBA program to calculate VaR by using Monte Carlo, I have simulated Brownian Motion. This method might be ok for 100% equity portfolio, but let's say this portfolio may have fixed ...
pmr's user avatar
  • 325
4 votes
1 answer
189 views

Ito integrals and copulas

Let $X_{t}$ and $Y_{t}$ be two brownian motions and let their joint distribution be given by $F$. So in regularly correlated BM's where $dX_{t}dY_{t}=\rho dt$, we have a bivariate normal distribution ...
Math Girl's user avatar
  • 407
4 votes
0 answers
99 views

Modeling orderbook shapes as distribution

What are different distribution models typically used for generating orderbooks under high volatility, illiquidity, and multiple exchanges with different fees?
keon6's user avatar
  • 61
4 votes
0 answers
143 views

Alternative Method for Determining Option-Implied pdf

As I am refining a pricing model to incorporate skew, and not just ATM volatilities, I need to create random realizations of the underlying consistent with the skew-implied pdf. When searching, one ...
ZRH's user avatar
  • 1,651
3 votes
2 answers
295 views

Produce the random variable for an asset from a uniformly distributed random varible

I'm working on a quant interview question from the book called Quant Job Interview Questions And Answers (by Mark Joshi and other authors). I cannot understand the following question(not the answer, ...
M00000001's user avatar
  • 627
3 votes
2 answers
204 views

Compare two distributions for forecasting returns

Let's imagine that we have two separate models, both used to forecast the return for the next period. Both models are estimated everyday, and both models outputs a probability distribution. How can we ...
DomingoBrown's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
257 views

Interpretation of a uniform asset return distribution

Typically asset return distributions are bell-shaped with most mass occurring in and around the center, 0% returns, and less so in the tails, with the left tail representing the probability of large ...
develarist's user avatar
  • 2,980
3 votes
2 answers
2k views

Distribution for High Kurtosis

Can you please advise which distribution to follow when your skewness is 0.28 and Kurtosis value is 51. Since it's leptokurtic and positively skewed I would like to fit distribution and also wanted to ...
Add's user avatar
  • 1,397
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

Density plot of the skew-t distribution

I am using the sgt package in R to recreate the plot from Hansen's paper ( available here http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~bhansen/papers/ier_94.pdf on page 8) using random ...
Masher's user avatar
  • 491
3 votes
2 answers
937 views

Stock Returns Distribution in Heston Model

There is a paper by Dragulescu and Yakovenko (DY) in 2002 proposing a pdf for the stock returns in the Heston model. However, in a paper by Daniel, Bree and Joseph, they actually perform statistical ...
bcf's user avatar
  • 2,778
3 votes
2 answers
571 views

Distribution of simple returns vs logreturns

I understand that stock prices are conditionally modeled using a log normal distribution by the relationship $ y_t/y_{t−1}∼logN(μ_{daily},σ^2_{daily})$ $y_t∼logN(log(y_{t-1})+μ_{daily},σ^2_{daily}))$ ...
Sanju's user avatar
  • 39
3 votes
1 answer
589 views

Use NIG distribution to model stock path

I would like to use Monte Carlo simulation to price some options. First I use standard approach where stock price is discribed by the following process: $$S_T = S_0\exp \left[(r - 0.5\sigma^2)T + \...
tosik's user avatar
  • 456
3 votes
1 answer
448 views

Fitting stochastic variance distributions to index return data

I want to calculate option prices based on a realistic distribution of the underlying. The underlying is a liquid index such as Eurostoxx50. I think of two aproaches, both of them incorporate ...
user3276418's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
662 views

Is there an easily implementable alternative to lognormal growth (something with fatter tails)?

I have a toy model in Excel for the growth of a investment portfolio. I assume iid lognormal annual growth factors: =EXP(mu+sigma*NORM.S.INV(RAND())) where mu and ...
user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
360 views

What are $d_1$ and $d_2$ for Laplace?

What are the formulae for d1 & d2 using a Laplace distribution?
user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
432 views

Minimizing variance vs. expected shortfall: distributions where the difference is salient

In portfolio theory in finance, given a set of $n$ assets to choose from, one often selects portfolio weights so as to maximize expected return and minimize some measure of risk, e.g. variance or ...
Richard Hardy's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

Log-likelihood of skew-t distribution

I am trying to estimate GARCH models with the use of Hansen's (1994) skew-t distribution. I am using matlab's ARMAX-GARCH-K toolbox, where the log-likelihood is calculated as: ...
Masher's user avatar
  • 491
3 votes
0 answers
294 views

Large deviations theory in finance

In probability theory, the theory of large deviations concerns the asymptotic behavior of remote tails of sequences of probability distributions. A related post says: Large deviations theory is ...
develarist's user avatar
  • 2,980
3 votes
0 answers
326 views

Example how to model stock price with Pareto distribution according to Mandelbrot and Taleb

There's a paper by B. Mandelbrot and N. Taleb Mild vs Wild Randomness that says that Pareto distributions is a better fit for modelling price changes. ...
Alex Craft's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
172 views

VaR calculation accuracy/comparison/effectiveness through different R packages

My question is what would be the better( in terms of estimation accuracy) method of VaR calculation among below two:, also any small code snippet will be great as a starting point for me. 1st method: ...
pmr's user avatar
  • 325
3 votes
0 answers
144 views

What is the relation between return volatility and return rank volatility, and how can I control the latter?

I have no experience in finance, but I've been playing around with a virtual portfolio. I'm trying to control the "rank volatility" distribution - that is, the volatility of a stock's daily rank in ...
Elliot JJ's user avatar
  • 221
2 votes
1 answer
216 views

Is it always better to use the entire distribution of a financial returns series, not just $\mu$ and $\sigma$?

In finance models that use historical returns for inputs, including option pricing models, forecasting and portfolio optimization, only the statistical moments of the returns distribution, $\mu$ and $\...
develarist's user avatar
  • 2,980
2 votes
1 answer
449 views

Quantile normal and lognormal

Let's assume we have a normal distribution $X\sim \mathcal{N}(\mu,\sigma^2)$. In a normal distribution the quantile can be calculated as follows: \begin{equation} \Phi_X ^{-1}(p)=\mu +\sigma {\sqrt {...
silgon's user avatar
  • 123
2 votes
1 answer
95 views

Sampling from an empirical distribution

I want to sample from the empirical distribution of returns. To do so, I do not want to make the preliminary assumption of which distribution the returns follow, rather I would like to sample from the ...
Vitomir's user avatar
  • 801