Technical paper
Inflation modelling with SABR dynamics
Fabio Mercurio and Nicola Moreni introduce a new forward Consumer Price Index model that is based on a multi-factor volatility structure and leads to SABR-like dynamics for forward inflation rates. Their approach reconciles zero-coupon and year-on-year…
A dynamic model for hard-to-borrow stocks
Traders with short positions in stocks that are subject to short-selling restrictions risk being 'bought in', in the sense that their positions may be closed out by the clearing firm at market prices. Marco Avellaneda and Mike Lipkin present a model for…
Index performance analysis gives strategy perspective
In a recent report (V Le Sourd, February 2009, Hedge Fund Performance in 2008, EDHEC Publication) an analysis of 12 years of data on EDHEC Alternative I for different hedge fund strategies provided some perspective on their performance.
Robust asset allocation under model risk
Financial investors often develop a multitude of models to explain financial securities' dynamics, none of which they can fully trust. Model risk (also referred to as ambiguity) prevents investors from using the classical framework of expected utility…
Joining the SABR and Libor models together
Fabio Mercurio and Massimo Morini propose a Libor market model consistent with SABR dynamics and develop approximations that allow for the use of the SABR formula with modified inputs. They verify that the approximations are acceptably precise, imply…
Pricing options on film revenue
This article illustrates two models for cumulative revenues from films, a time-changed gamma process and a compound Poisson process, and how these models can be used to price options. Don Chance, Eric Hillebrand and Jimmy Hilliard find that while both…
Managing diversification
Attilio Meucci introduces a diversification index that represents the effective number of bets in a portfolio. With this index, based on entropy and constrained principal component analysis, he performs mean-diversification management adjusted for…
Hedge fund reporting challenged
Investors in hedge funds are naturally interested in knowing how hedge fund managers allocate their initial investment and whether this allocation yields positive returns or not. Information on past investment returns is of particular interest, as is…
A stochastic model for pricing longevity-linked guarantees
Technical papers
Error of VAR by overlapping intervals
When overlapping intervals in time series are used, volatility and price changes' percentiles are underestimated. Consequently, value-at-risk is also underestimated. Heng Sun, Izzy Nelken, Guowen Han and Jiping Guo measure the size of this underestimation
Scaling conditional tail probability and quantile estimators
John Cotter presents a novel procedure for scaling relatively high-frequency tail probability and quantile estimates for the conditional distribution of returns
Factor models for credit correlation
Stewart Inglis, Alex Lipton and Artur Sepp present an extension of the static factor model for pricing credit correlation products introduced by Lipton (2006) and detailed in Inglis & Lipton (2007)
Accelerated ensemble Monte Carlo simulation
Traditional vanilla methods of Monte Carlo simulation can be extremely time-consuming if accurate estimation of the loss distribution is required. Kevin Thompson and Alistair McLeod show that the ensemble Monte Carlo method, introduced here,…
