# All Questions

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2answers
6k views

### Regime-Switching Model for detecting market shifts

I'm always wondering whether anyone has utilized regime-switching models successfully in forecasting or trading. Academia has long discussed this topic in-depth, such as using Regime Switching ...
4answers
4k views

### When should you build your own equity risk model?

Commercial risk models (e.g., Barra, Axioma, Barclays, Northfield) have evolved to a very high level of sophistication. However, all of these models attempt to solve a very broad set of problems. ...
3answers
1k views

### Is there a way to estimate (predict) the half life of a quantitative trading system?

Usually even good performing quant trading strategies work for a while and then return start to shrink. I see two reasons for that which would probably give rise to different analysis: The Strategy ...
2answers
937 views

### How do you correct Max Draw-Down for auto-correlation?

When returns are auto-correlated, calculating a Sharpe ratio := $\frac {mean(x)}{\sqrt{var(x)}}$, (where $x$ are the returns) is complicated, but basically solved (see, e.g. Lo (2005)). Without the ...
3answers
3k views

### Cleansing covariance matrices via Random matrix theory

I am exploring de-noising and cleansing of covariance matrices via Random Matrix Theory. RMT is a competitor to shrinkage methods of covariance estimation. There are various methods expressed usually ...
2answers
4k views

### statistical arbitrage option overlay strategies / volatility trading

Here's an interesting trading puzzle that I would love to get the community's input on. Let's say there exists an alpha signal that does a good job of sorting equities expected excess returns over ...
5answers
21k views

### Why would an investor trade a variance swap over a volatility swap?

Why would an investor trade a variance swap over a volatility swap? Is it simply related to the leverage involved in a Var (i.e. sigma-squared) or is there something else to it?
8answers
36k 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?
10answers
10k views

### Usage of Random forests in Quantitative analysis of stocks

I have a question about Random forests and how they could be utilized in trading? I heard Random forests are used for classification, is that accurate? If so, could someone give an example of what ...
7answers
5k views

### Looking for a recommendation for a real life volatily trading book.

Recently I started working in an algotrading company as a programmer. After I studied that subject a little in the university and read a book or two in that field I gained a little knowledge in that ...
3answers
8k 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 ...
2answers
8k views

### Why dynamics of local volatility is wrong?

In Dupire's local volatility model, the volatility is is a deterministic function of the underlying price and time, chosen to match observed European option prices. To be more specific, given a ...
3answers
4k views

### How to incorporate technical indicators into neural networks?

I plan to develop a neural network to trade commodities futures, but while messing around with some code, a question came up. If I understand correctly, people use various technical indicators with ...
6answers
3k views

### George Soros models

Mr. Soros in his books talked about principles which are not used by today's financial mathematics — namely reflexivity of all actions on the market. Simply it can be given by following: ...
5answers
2k views

### How to estimate the probability of drawdown / ruin?

A fairly naive approach to estimate the probability of drawdown / ruin is to calculate the probabilities of all the permutations of your sample returns, keeping track of those that hit your drawdown / ...
5answers
7k 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" ...
2answers
5k views

### How to update an exponential moving average with missing values?

Say you have an Exponential Moving Average being continuously updated over a time series using 1-second-long time periods. What should happen if there is no value for the next second, e.g. there were ...
2answers
862 views

### Concentration risk in credit portfolio

How do you model concentration risk of credit portfolio in IRB/Basel II framework?
4answers
12k views

### Is statistical arbitrage on FX possible?

Do you know of any papers which consider pairs trading (or statistical arbitrage) on foreign exchange? I couldn't find any. I asked this question on several forums and got no reply. Thus, I guess ...
2answers
865 views

### How do you distinguish “significant” moves from noise?

How do you distinguish between losses that are within the normal range for day-to-day shifts and situations with a real potential for loss? The specific application I have in mind is pattern ...
4answers
18k views

### What is a Heat Rate Option?

I tried a search with google but I can't find a clear definition of what a Heat Rate Option is. I would appreciate if someone could explain to me what this type of option is. My understanding is ...
2answers
3k views

### Do you have historical tick data you want to donate?

Do you have historical market/pricing ticket data that you would like to donate to the Open Source Trader project (OST)?? Please: upload your files! Once we gather some data, we'll do our best to ...
0answers
297 views

### Is there a relationship between Risk Neutral Pricing framework and Nash Equilibria?

Based on the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing, the risk neutral price of a contingent claim on an asset in a liquid, arbitrage free market can be determined by switching to an equivalent $Q-$ ...
13answers
84k views

### What is the difference between Option Adjusted Spread (OAS) and Z-spread?

I am preparing for the CFA level 2 exam, I got confused by the concept Z-spread and OAS. When a call option is added to a bond, since it is not favorable to the bond buyer, they would require more ...
4answers
4k views

### How to optimally allocate capital among trading strategies?

I'm trying to find an optimal way to allocate capital among trading strategies. "Quantitative Trading" by Ernie Chan claims on page 97 that the optimal fraction of capital to allocate to a given ...
7answers
13k views

### Switching from Matlab to Python for Quant Trading and Research

Has anybody else out there made this switch? I'm considering it right now. What were the negatives and positives of the switch?
5answers
7k views

### Why is the Drawdown measure not used for portfolio optimization?

I was asked yesterday by a colleague why we are doing asset allocation using optimizers which target, for a minimum expected return: the portfolio with the minimum variance or the portfolio with ...
2answers
18k views

### Fama-Macbeth second step confusion

I am confused on how to run the second step of the Fama Macbeth (1973) two step procedure. I have monthly stock returns and monthly Fama-French factors, for around 10,000 stocks. This creates an ...
3answers
4k views

### Why do expected return models and risk models use different factors?

This is a question responding to weekly topic challenge. I happen to see an interesting question from SYMMYS by Michael Kapler. I always approached expected return and risk modeling as separate ...
4answers
1k views

### HFT: What is the big differentiator in comparison to other time scales?

High Frequency Trading (HFT) seems to be the big money making mystery machine these days. The purported source of unlimited floods of gelt pouring into the investment shops using it. For me, HFT is ...
5answers
24k views

### What is the implied volatility skew?

I often hear people talking about the skew of the volatility surface, model, etc... but it appears to me that a clear standard definition is not unanimously in place among practitioners. So here is ...
6answers
55k views

### How to fit ARMA+GARCH Model In R?

I am currently working on ARMA+GARCH model using R. I am looking out for example which explain step by step explanation for fitting this model in R. I have time series which is stationary and I am ...
7answers
6k views

### Formal proof for risk-neutral pricing formula

As you know, the key equation of risk neutral pricing is the following: $$\exp^{-rt} S_t = E_Q[\exp^{-rT} S_T | \mathcal{F}_t]$$ That is, discounted prices are Q-martingales. It makes real-sense ...
5answers
2k views

### Resources for finding scholarly research on topics in quantitative finance?

A friend and I are starting from scratch—neither of us have backgrounds in finance. Currently when we have a question, e.g. What variations on the Slow Stochastic Oscillator have been explored, ...
3answers
4k views

### Is Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) coherent?

When the risk is defined by a discrete random variable, is CVaR a coherent risk measure? I stick to the following definition of CVaR:  CVaR_\alpha(R) = \min_v \quad \left\{ v + \frac{1}{1-\alpha} \...
3answers
3k views

### How did you become a quant?

This question will serve as the definitive community wiki of career anecdotes. Future career questions can be pointed here. There are as many career paths as there are people. How did you get started ...
1answer
4k views

### academic papers about market making

I am looking for academic articles which model the p&L of market makers. I have read the Ho-Stoll (1984) article. Is there any recent article on this subject?
3answers
10k views

### What causes the call and put volatility surface to differ?

I currently have a local volatility model that uses the standard Black Scholes assumptions. When calculating the volatility surface, what causes the difference between the call volatility surface, ...
8answers
2k views

### Measuring liquidity

While liquidity is one of the key figure of financial markets, It seems to be very difficult to measure. Volume is sometime used as a proxy but can sometimes be completly irrelevant. Could you point ...
2answers
2k views

### From a high frequency point of view, with a price prediction and assuming infinite leverage, how do you determine optimal trade size?

I have read about something like Kelly criterion for long term expectation maximization assuming a fixed starting bankroll. But if one can assume unlimited leverage, and one has a signal for a price ...
7answers
2k views

### Are there ways to measure the risk aversion of a representative investor, based on publicly available market data?

Are there ways to measure the risk aversion of a representative investor, based on publicly available market data? Public available data could include asset price, volume, and flow data, and may be ...
3answers
3k views

### Hedging Covid-19 and other low probability high loss risks

Covid-19 and similar risks are low probability, high loss events. Does it make sense to utilize options to provide hedges for such events? For example, should one utilize long positions in deep out-...
1answer
2k views

### So many volatility models. Any comparisons of them?

Are there any papers that make an explicit contrast/comparison of the following (or other) vol models in terms of the suitability for addressing some empirical problem? Wavelet multiresolution ...
2answers
964 views

### Duality between constant rebalanced portfolio (CRP) and corresponding derivative

One of the greatest achievements of modern option pricing theory is finding corresponding dynamical trading strategies in linear instruments with which you can replicate and by that price derivative ...
3answers
2k views

### How does one analyze diversification if stock prices follow a Cauchy distribution?

How does diversification actually lead to less variance in a portfolio? I'm looking for a formal reason why this is the case. There are a number of explanations I have been able to find, but they make ...
4answers
843 views

### Why do Human traders make money?

Over the years I met a couple of dozen of (human) traders who I'd consider good (being in the business for several years, generating a reasonably steady income). I had chances to chat with some of ...
2answers
2k views

### How to forecast expected volatility from high-frequency equity panel data?

I'm wading through the vast sea of literature on realized volatility estimation and expected volatility forecasting (see, e.g. Realized Volatility by Andersen and Benzoni, which cites 120 other papers,...
3answers
4k views

### Papers about risk management in algorithmic trading?

I am currently doing my research for my master thesis, which will clearly focus on the question of risk managment in algorithmic trading systems. I have done research about this topic and found some ...
2answers
3k views

### How to build a regime-switching model which knows its own limits?

In recent months I've come to the conclusion that there are not only certain regimes in the markets (like bear or bull) but phases where all models fail because we are in uncharted territory. The ...
3answers
702 views

### Tests that any system must pass to be taken seriously

In an interview from '96 Bill Eckhardt points out that there are tests that any system must pass to be taken seriously. That is: tests for (1) overfitting, (2) post-dictiveness, (3) maldistribution ...

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