Quantitative analysis

Arbitrage under power

When one knows the correct value of a tradable asset and the asset price diverges from that value, future convergence may present a good trading opportunity. However, the trader still has to decide when and how aggressively to open the position, and when…

Generalising universal performance measures

Performance and risk measurement are fundamental quantitative activities in finance, andnew ways of measuring them are always of interest. A recently proposed procedure is theuniversal performance measure. Theofanis Darsinos and Stephen Satchell show…

Correlated defaults: let’s go back to the data

Estimates of asset value correlation are a key element of Merton-style credit portfolio models. Many practitioners have access to asset value data for a large universe of listed firms, so estimation is within reach. Alan Pitts describes a statistical…

Smile at the uncertainty

Smile-consistent alternatives to the Black-Scholes model are often too cumbersome to be used for large portfolios of exotic options. Damiano Brigo, Fabio Mercurio and Francesco Rapisarda propose an intuitive stochastic volatility model that is easy to…

An arbitrage-free interpolation of volatilities

Nabil Kahalé describes a new construction of an implied volatilities surface from a discrete set of implied volatilities that is arbitrage-free and satisfies some smoothness conditions. His method provides an excellent fit to the smile of the local…

Practical relative-value volatility trading

The rapid growth of fixed-income hedge funds has resulted in increased interest in identifying relative-value trade opportunities. Here, the author presents a consistent framework for finding value within interest rate options markets.

Cross-market valuation

This article takes the guesswork out of what credit margin to use when valuing credit-risky derivatives, and also sheds light on how relative value trading and capital structure arbitrage may be analysed quantitatively.

PD estimates for Basel II

One of the main issues banks will have to face to comply with the new Basel II internal ratings-based approach is to prove that the long-run average probabilities of default they assign to their clients, which will be used as the basis for regulatory…

An integrated framework for the governance of companies

Cases of insolvencies, losses and internal frauds have been increasing of late. As a result, the question is asked more and more often whether such cases could have been avoided with better governance of companies or a clearer organisational handbook. In…

Constructing an operational event database

Michael Haubenstock of US bank Capital One outlines a framework for an event database, formulated with current US regulatory guidance on the subject in mind. The text is an abstract from The Basel Handbook, which has just been published by Risk Books.

The score for credit

Jorge Sobehart and Sean Keenan discuss the benefits and limitations of model performance measures for default and credit spread prediction, and highlight several common pitfalls in the model comparison found in the literature and vendor documentation. To…

Unifying volatility models

This article introduces a method for building analytically tractable option pricing models that combine state-dependent volatility, stochastic volatility and jumps. The eigenfunction expansion method is used to add jumps and stochastic volatility to…

Multi-factor adjustment

The author presents an analytical method for calculating portfolio value-at-risk and expected shortfall in the multi-factor Merton framework. This method is essentially an extension of the granularity adjustment technique to a new dimension.

Swap vega in BGM: pitfalls and alternatives

Raoul Pietersz and Antoon PelsserPractitioners who are developing the Libor BGM model for risk management of a swap-based interest rate derivative be warned: for certain volatility functions the estimate of swap vega may be poor. This may occur for time…

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