Quantitative analysis
A false sense of security
Credit portfolio models often assume that recovery rates are independent of defaultprobabilities. Here, Jon Frye presents empirical evidence showing that such assumptions arewrong. Using US historical default data, he shows that not only are recovery…
Unexpected recovery risk
For credit portfolio managers, the priority is to properly incorporate recovery rates into existing models. Here, Michael Pykhtin improves upon earlier approaches, allowing recovery rates to depend on the idiosyncratic part of a borrower’s asset return,…
Valuing exploration and production projects
Lukens Energy Group’s Hugh Li sets out an option method for valuing exploration and production projects, using a practical example
A false sense of security
Recovery rates - Cutting edge
Ultimate recoveries
Recovery rates - Cutting edge
Unexpected recovery risk
For credit portfolio managers, the priority is to properly incorporate recovery rates into existing models. Here, Michael Pykhtin improves upon earlier approaches, allowing recovery rates to depend on the idiosyncratic part of a borrower’s asset return,…
Market-implied ratings
There has been much debate over the respective merits of credit ratings and market-based indicators. Ludovic Breger, Lisa Goldberg and Oren Cheyette present a new approach that tries to incorporate the benefits of both approaches.
Correlation evidence
Like ratings, default correlation is an area of fierce industry debate. But any fundamental, long-terminvestor searching for fair value in credit correlation will want to understand what the historical dataactually says.
Overcoming the hurdle
How should capital be allocated to different business lines in a financial institution? ThomasWilson explores this question from an investor's perspective by constructing a statisticalmodel that measures the risk of individual business types.
Operational risk modelling: aggregating loss distributions using copulas
Capturing the dependence structure between business line/risk event types is an extremely important step for any serious attempt to model operational risk. In this article we show how this can be achieved by using a powerful statistical technique known…
Backwardation and contango change indicators for seasonal commodities
In the first part of this two-part article, Svetlana Borovkova introduced two indicators for detecting changes between backwardation and contango market states. Here, in the second part, she applies the indicators to seasonal commodities and introduces a…
Market-implied ratings
There has been much debate over the respective merits of credit ratings and market-based indicators. Ludovic Breger, Lisa Goldberg and Oren Cheyette present a new approach that tries to incorporate the benefits of both approaches. Starting with agency…
Overcoming the hurdle
How should capital be allocated to different business lines in a financial institution? Thomas Wilson explores this question from an investor’s perspective by constructing a statistical model that measures the risk of individual business types. The…
Correlation evidence
Like ratings, default correlation is an area of fierce industry debate. But any fundamental, long-term investor searching for fair value in credit correlation will want to understand what the historical data actually says. Here, Arnaud de Servigny and…
Risk USA 2003: Schachter hits out at hedge fund disclosure
Barry Schachter, head of risk management at US hedge fund Sac Capital Advisors, believes quantitative hedge fund information disclosure to investors is relatively meaningless, and that they would be better served by disclosures about the risk management…
Operational risk: a practitioner's view
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision ("the Committee") released aconsultative document that included a regulatory capital charge for operationalrisk. Since the release of the document, the complexity of the concept of "operationalrisk" has led to…
I will survive
Jon Gregory and Jean-Paul Laurent apply an analytical conditional dependence framework to the valuation of default baskets and synthetic CDO tranches, matching Monte Carlo results for pricing and showing significant improvement in the calculation of…
Bidding principles
Robert Almgren and Neil Chriss show how principal bid programme trades can be priced and evaluated as part of a trading business. By annualising the price impacts and variances of such trades, they construct an information ratio measure that can be used…
Credit barrier models
Claudio Albanese, Giuseppe Campolieti, Oliver Chen and Andrei Zavidonov construct an analytic credit barrier model driven by credit ratings, constrained to fit the term structure of credit spreads
Detecting market transitions: from backwardation to contango and back
Svetlana Borovkova looks at detecting market transitions between backwardation and contango states using the forward curve. In this first part of a two-part article, she introduces two change indicators, which she applies to oil futures prices. Next…
Trying to model reality
Credit Risk
Black smirks
Fei Zhou presents a simple stochastic volatility extension of the Black interest rate option pricing model widely used by traders. Using a perturbative expansion in volatility of volatility, he derives modified Black formulas that correctly fit the…
Real option valuation and equity markets
Many non-financial assets can be viewed as ‘real options’ linked to some underlying variable such as a commodity price. Here, Thomas Dawson and Jennifer Considine show that the stock price of a well-known electricity generating company is significantly…
Pitfalls and alternatives
Correlation