Quantitative analysis
Standard Chartered names Oswald as global head of fixed-income research
The UK-based bank has named an emerging markets specialist with a strong quantitative pedigree to run global fixed-income research
World Cup trades hit fever pitch
As the dust settles on the World Cup and those that bought televisions on the basis that their national football team would win the tournament wonder how to match their rash expenditure with reality, Richard Jory reviews the copious research supporting…
Pricing distressed CDOs with base correlation and stochastic recovery rates
In 2008 and 2009, the calibration of the standard Gaussian copula model for collateralised debt obligations has frequently broken down. To overcome that problem, Martin Krekel has embedded the model with correlated stochastic recovery rates. He shows…
Factors on demand
Attilio Meucci introduces a multi-asset-class return decomposition framework that extends beyond the standard systematic-plus-idiosyncratic approach. This framework, which rests on the conditional link between flexible bottom-up estimation factor models…
A new direction for weather derivatives
Specialised quanto products are now driving demand in the weather derivatives markets. Alex Davis looks at why this is the case, and how improvements in data provision are making this possible
Expanded smiles
Implementing models with stochastic as well as deterministic local volatility can be challenging. Here, Jesper Andreasen and Brian Huge describe an expansion approach for such models that avoids the high-dimensional partial differential equations usually…
A dynamic model for leveraged funds
Guido Giese derives a model for the performance and Sharpe ratio of leveraged and inverse index funds that follow a dynamic leveraged trading strategy, that is, they are rebalanced on a daily basis to ensure a constant degree of leverage with respect to…
Fast correlation Greeks by adjoint algorithmic differentiation
Adjoint methods have recently been proposed as an efficient way to calculate risk through Monte Carlo simulation. Luca Capriotti and Mike Giles extend these ideas and show how adjoint algorithmic differentiation allows for fast calculation of price…
A dynamic model for correlation
Equity markets have experienced a significant increase in correlation during the crisis, resulting in exotic derivatives portfolios realising large losses. As larger correlations in downward scenarios are already implied in the index option market in the…
Cutting edge: Modelling the correlation function in the crude-oil futures market
Energy market participants often require the computation of coefficients of correlation in a multi-asset portfolio. Addressing crude oil futures contracts, Ehud Ronn proposes and implements a simple procedure to reduce the cross-maturity correlations in…
A rotationally invariant technique for rare event simulation
Because of their low probability, including extreme events in Monte Carlo calculations of the value-at-risk of a credit-risky portfolio requires many simulations. Here, Susanne Klöppel, Ranja Reda and Walter Schachermayer demonstrate a geometrically…
Cutting edge: Visualising value-at-risk
Risk transparency is an important yet elusive goal of any risk management process. One challenge is to understand the diversification effects of the portfolio elements. Wentao Zhao and Kevin Kindall introduce a graphical technique based on value-at-risk…
Shortfall: who contributes and how much?
Understanding risk contributions is a key part of successful risk management and portfolio optimisation. Richard Martin extends the discussion from value-at-risk to expected shortfall and shows that saddlepoint approximation preserves the convexity…
Credit spread shocks: how big and how often?
The second half of 2007 saw violent moves in credit spreads. In the fallout, there has been much discussion about how to estimate the probabilities of these severe events, but few conclusions have been obtained beyond the fact that historical data is…
The hybrid saddlepoint method for credit portfolios
Anthony Owen, Alistair McLeod and Kevin Thompson derive a practical analytic approach, which they call the hybrid saddlepoint method, to calculate the credit loss distribution for a heterogeneous portfolio of correlated obligors
Credit spread shocks: how big and how often?
The second half of 2007 saw violent moves in credit spreads. In the fallout, there has been much discussion about how to estimate the probabilities of these severe events, but few conclusions have been obtained beyond the fact that historical data is…
Model students
Mauro Cesa, Energy Risk's technical editor, talks to quants about how quantitative analysis for energy markets has developed and what they see as the most influential technical publications of the past 15 years
A framework for extrapolation of long-term interest rates
Technical papers
Simulations with exact means and covariances
Attilio Meucci presents a simple method to generate scenarios from multivariate elliptical distributions with given sample means and covariances, and shows an application to the risk management of a book of options
Stepping through Fourier space
Diverse finite-difference schemes for solving pricing problems with Levy underlyings appear in financial literature. Invariably, the integral and diffusive terms are treated asymmetrically, large jumps are truncated, and the methods are difficult to…
Fast Monte Carlo Bermudan Greeks
In recent years, much effort has been devoted to improving the efficiency of the Libor market model. Matthias Leclerc, Qian Liang and Ingo Schneider extend the pioneering work of Giles & Glasserman (2006) and show how fast calculations of Monte Carlo…
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…
Estimating intrinsic currency values
Forex market practitioners constantly talk about the strengthening or weakening of individual currencies. In this article, Jian Chen and Paul Doust present a new methodology to quantify these statements in a manner that is consistent with forex market…