Risk magazine/Technical paper
Bond execution models
While research on the optimal execution of equity trading has become popular, a study of this kind has not yet been done with regard to the bond market. In this article, Koichi Miyazaki presents a bond execution model that incorporates the strong…
Equity market impact
Cutting edge: Quantitative trading
Pricing equity default swaps
Claudio Albanese and Oliver Chen discuss the challenges of pricing equity default swaps, a credit-equity hybrid product. These structures straddle not only traditional asset classes such as equity derivatives and credit default swaps, but also…
Loss in translation
Ben De Prisco, Ian Iscoe and Alex Kreinin introduce a new analytical approach for valuing synthetic collateralised debt obligations. The approach differs from current analytical approaches by focusing on the tranche's loss distribution directly, as…
Portfolio skew and kurtosis
Cutting edge: Brief communication
Squaring factor copula models
Tight spreads in the credit markets have forced investors to turn to innovative structures in their search for yield. One such structure is the synthetic CDO of CDO tranches, also known as CDO2. Prasun Baheti, Roy Mashal, Marco Naldi and Lutz Schloegl…
Time to smile
Cutting edge: Option pricing
Modelling counterparty credit exposure for credit default swaps
Modelling counterparty credit exposure for credit derivatives is more complicated than for non-credit products, since the reference credit and counterparty can exhibit positive default correlation. Here, Christian Hille, John Ring and Hideki Shimamoto…
A Markovian approach to modelling correlated defaults
Vladyslav Putyatin, David Prieul and Svetlana Maslova unveil a simple dynamic binomial credit model with a Poissonian mixing distribution to satisfy the constraints faced by financial institutions assessing their credit exposure in a consistent manner…
A forward-looking adjustment
Cutting edge: Operational risk
The impact of PD/LGD correlations on credit risk capital
Guido Giese applies econometric estimates of correlations between default rates and loss given default rates to modern credit portfolio models to quantify their impact on the calculation of credit risk capital
Omega portfolio construction
The omega risk-adjusted performance measure with Johnson distributions accountscomprehensively and non-discretionarily for the first potentially persistent moments includingskewness and kurtosis. The Johnson-omega ratio thus overcomes the shortcomings of…
Replication of flexi-swaps
Ingmar Evers and Farshid Jamshidian describe a relatively new product known as a flexi-swap and discuss its application in securitisation. A flexi-swap gives a counterparty an option to amortise the interest rate swap at an accelerated pace. They show…
Rating properties and their implications for Basel II capital
Internal ratings
Common interests
Interest rates
Understanding variations in the risk of multi-strategy portfolios
Investors spend a great deal of time and effort setting a thoughtful risk budget for their portfolio,only to see all too frequently that the targeted risk will be missed by a wide margin when theinvestment process gets started. In this article, Gang…
Jumps as components in the pricing of credit and equity products
The equity and credit markets have become increasingly integrated over recent years. This has increased the need for models and tools that allow traders to hedge their risk simultaneously in the two markets. Here, Daniel Bloch presents an approach that…
Market models for CDS
In August 2004, Risk published an article on the pricing of credit default swap (CDS) options entitled A measure of survival by Phillip Schönbucher. Here, Damiano Brigo provides an alternative derivation of the CDS option pricing formula based on Cox
Estimating default correlations using a reduced-form model
Credit risk : Cuttingedge
Broadening horizons
When the investment horizon is of the order of a few years, such as in the context of personalfinancial planning, it becomes necessary to calculate and stress-test the exact distribution ofthe market at the given horizon, as the common first-order…
Excess yields in bond hedging
Litterman & Scheinkman (1991) showed that the term structure of interest rates is reliablymodelled by an affine three-factor model using principal component analysis. Such a modelis inconsistent with no arbitrage. Here, Haim Reisman and Gady Zohar derive…
Maximum likelihood estimate of default correlations
Estimating asset correlations is difficult in practice since there is little available data andmany parameters have to be found. Paul Demey, Jean-Frédéric Jouanin, Céline Roget andThierry Roncalli present a tractable version of the multi-factor Merton…