An introduction to the theory and methods of empirical asset pricing, integrating classical foundations with recent developments. This book offers a comprehensive advanced introduction to asset pricing, the study of models for the prices and returns of various securities. The focus is empirical, emphasizing how the models relate to the data. The book offers a uniquely integrated treatment, combining classical foundations with more recent developments in the literature and relating some of the material to applications in investment management. It covers the theory of empirical asset pricing, the main empirical methods, and a range of applied topics. The book introduces the theory of empirical asset pricing through three main paradigms: mean variance analysis, stochastic discount factors, and beta pricing models. It describes empirical methods, beginning with the generalized method of moments (GMM) and viewing other methods as special cases of GMM; offers a comprehensive review of fund performance evaluation; and presents selected applied topics, including a substantial chapter on predictability in asset markets that covers predicting the level of returns, volatility and higher moments, and predicting cross-sectional differences in returns. Other chapters cover production-based asset pricing, long-run risk models, the Campbell-Shiller approximation, the debate on covariance versus characteristics, and the relation of volatility to the cross-section of stock returns. An extensive reference section captures the current state of the field. The book is intended for use by graduate students in finance and economics; it can also serve as a reference for professionals.
Emerging Trends in Smart Societies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives” captures the essence of the groundbreaking initiative heralded by the inaugural International Conference on Humanities for Smart Societies 2023 (HMSS 23). This milestone event convenes a global cohort of scholars, policymakers, and thinkers, transcending geographical confines via a pioneering virtual platform. The book crystallizes the convergence of diverse disciplines – from humanities to management – fostering an exchange of innovative ideas vital for sustainable, digitally transformed societies. By orchestrating cross-disciplinary dialogues, this anthology unveils novel solutions and holistic approaches to contemporary challenges.
Toward the late 1990s, several research groups independently began developing new, related theories in mathematical finance. These theories did away with the standard stochastic geometric diffusion “Samuelson” market model (also known as the Black-Scholes model because it is used in that most famous theory), instead opting for models that allowed minimax approaches to complement or replace stochastic methods. Among the most fruitful models were those utilizing game-theoretic tools and the so-called interval market model. Over time, these models have slowly but steadily gained influence in the financial community, providing a useful alternative to classical methods. A self-contained monograph, The Interval Market Model in Mathematical Finance: Game-Theoretic Methods assembles some of the most important results, old and new, in this area of research. Written by seven of the most prominent pioneers of the interval market model and game-theoretic finance, the work provides a detailed account of several closely related modeling techniques for an array of problems in mathematical economics. The book is divided into five parts, which successively address topics including: · probability-free Black-Scholes theory; · fair-price interval of an option; · representation formulas and fast algorithms for option pricing; · rainbow options; · tychastic approach of mathematical finance based upon viability theory. This book provides a welcome addition to the literature, complementing myriad titles on the market that take a classical approach to mathematical finance. It is a worthwhile resource for researchers in applied mathematics and quantitative finance, and has also been written in a manner accessible to financially-inclined readers with a limited technical background.
Take a more active role in strategic asset allocation Goals-Based Wealth Management is a manual for protecting and growing client wealth in a way that changes both the services and profitability of the firm. Written by a 35-year veteran of international wealth education and analysis, this informative guide explains a new approach to wealth management that allows individuals to take on a more active role in the allocation of their assets. Coverage includes a detailed examination of the goals-based approach, including what works and what needs to be revisited, and a clear, understandable model that allows advisors to help individuals to navigate complex processes. The companion website offers ancillary readings, practice management checklists, and assessments that help readers secure a deep understanding of the key ideas that make goals-based wealth management work. The goals-based wealth management approach was pioneered in 2002, but has seen a slow evolution and only modest refinements largely due to a lack of wide-scale adoption. This book takes the first steps toward finalizing the approach, by delineating the effective and ineffective aspects of traditional approaches, and proposing changes that could bring better value to practitioners and their clients. Understand the challenges faced by the affluent and wealthy Examine strategic asset allocation and investment policy formulation Learn a model for dealing with the asset allocation process Learn why the structure of the typical advisory firm needs to change High-net-worth individuals face very specific challenges. Goals-Based Wealth Management focuses on how those challenges can be overcome while adhering to their goals, incorporating constraints, and working within the individual's frame of reference to drive strategic allocation of their financial assets.
The multi-volume set LNAI 12975 until 12979 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases, ECML PKDD 2021, which was held during September 13-17, 2021. The conference was originally planned to take place in Bilbao, Spain, but changed to an online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 210 full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 869 submissions. The volumes are organized in topical sections as follows: Research Track: Part I: Online learning; reinforcement learning; time series, streams, and sequence models; transfer and multi-task learning; semi-supervised and few-shot learning; learning algorithms and applications. Part II: Generative models; algorithms and learning theory; graphs and networks; interpretation, explainability, transparency, safety. Part III: Generative models; search and optimization; supervised learning; text mining and natural language processing; image processing, computer vision and visual analytics. Applied Data Science Track: Part IV: Anomaly detection and malware; spatio-temporal data; e-commerce and finance; healthcare and medical applications (including Covid); mobility and transportation. Part V: Automating machine learning, optimization, and feature engineering; machine learning based simulations and knowledge discovery; recommender systems and behavior modeling; natural language processing; remote sensing, image and video processing; social media.
A groundbreaking, authoritative introduction to how machine learning can be applied to asset pricing Investors in financial markets are faced with an abundance of potentially value-relevant information from a wide variety of different sources. In such data-rich, high-dimensional environments, techniques from the rapidly advancing field of machine learning (ML) are well-suited for solving prediction problems. Accordingly, ML methods are quickly becoming part of the toolkit in asset pricing research and quantitative investing. In this book, Stefan Nagel examines the promises and challenges of ML applications in asset pricing. Asset pricing problems are substantially different from the settings for which ML tools were developed originally. To realize the potential of ML methods, they must be adapted for the specific conditions in asset pricing applications. Economic considerations, such as portfolio optimization, absence of near arbitrage, and investor learning can guide the selection and modification of ML tools. Beginning with a brief survey of basic supervised ML methods, Nagel then discusses the application of these techniques in empirical research in asset pricing and shows how they promise to advance the theoretical modeling of financial markets. Machine Learning in Asset Pricing presents the exciting possibilities of using cutting-edge methods in research on financial asset valuation.
Portfolio risk forecasting has been and continues to be an active research field for both academics and practitioners. Almost all institutional investment management firms use quantitative models for their portfolio forecasting, and researchers have explored models' econometric foundations, relative performance, and implications for capital market behavior and asset pricing equilibrium. Portfolio Risk Analysis provides an insightful and thorough overview of financial risk modeling, with an emphasis on practical applications, empirical reality, and historical perspective. Beginning with mean-variance analysis and the capital asset pricing model, the authors give a comprehensive and detailed account of factor models, which are the key to successful risk analysis in every economic climate. Topics range from the relative merits of fundamental, statistical, and macroeconomic models, to GARCH and other time series models, to the properties of the VIX volatility index. The book covers both mainstream and alternative asset classes, and includes in-depth treatments of model integration and evaluation. Credit and liquidity risk and the uncertainty of extreme events are examined in an intuitive and rigorous way. An extensive literature review accompanies each topic. The authors complement basic modeling techniques with references to applications, empirical studies, and advanced mathematical texts. This book is essential for financial practitioners, researchers, scholars, and students who want to understand the nature of financial markets or work toward improving them.
This open access Pivot demonstrates how a variety of technologies act as innovation catalysts within the banking and financial services sector. Traditional banks and financial services are under increasing competition from global IT companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon and PayPal whilst facing pressure from investors to reduce costs, increase agility and improve customer retention. Technologies such as blockchain, cloud computing, mobile technologies, big data analytics and social media therefore have perhaps more potential in this industry and area of business than any other. This book defines a fintech ecosystem for the 21st century, providing a state-of-the art review of current literature, suggesting avenues for new research and offering perspectives from business, technology and industry.
This book is an introduction to financial mathematics. It is intended for graduate students in mathematics and for researchers working in academia and industry. The focus on stochastic models in discrete time has two immediate benefits. First, the probabilistic machinery is simpler, and one can discuss right away some of the key problems in the theory of pricing and hedging of financial derivatives. Second, the paradigm of a complete financial market, where all derivatives admit a perfect hedge, becomes the exception rather than the rule. Thus, the need to confront the intrinsic risks arising from market incomleteness appears at a very early stage. The first part of the book contains a study of a simple one-period model, which also serves as a building block for later developments. Topics include the characterization of arbitrage-free markets, preferences on asset profiles, an introduction to equilibrium analysis, and monetary measures of financial risk. In the second part, the idea of dynamic hedging of contingent claims is developed in a multiperiod framework. Topics include martingale measures, pricing formulas for derivatives, American options, superhedging, and hedging strategies with minimal shortfall risk. This fourth, newly revised edition contains more than one hundred exercises. It also includes material on risk measures and the related issue of model uncertainty, in particular a chapter on dynamic risk measures and sections on robust utility maximization and on efficient hedging with convex risk measures. Contents: Part I: Mathematical finance in one period Arbitrage theory Preferences Optimality and equilibrium Monetary measures of risk Part II: Dynamic hedging Dynamic arbitrage theory American contingent claims Superhedging Efficient hedging Hedging under constraints Minimizing the hedging error Dynamic risk measures
The global fixed income market is an enormous financial market whose value by far exceeds that of the public stock markets. The interbank market consists of interest rate derivatives, whose primary purpose is to manage interest rate risk. The credit market primarily consists of the bond market, which links investors to companies, institutions, and governments with borrowing needs. This dissertation takes an optimization perspective upon modeling both these areas of the fixed-income market. Legislators on the national markets require financial actors to value their financial assets in accordance with market prices. Thus, prices of many assets, which are not publicly traded, must be determined mathematically. The financial quantities needed for pricing are not directly observable but must be measured through solving inverse optimization problems. These measurements are based on the available market prices, which are observed with various degrees of measurement noise. For the interbank market, the relevant financial quantities consist of term structures of interest rates, which are curves displaying the market rates for different maturities. For the bond market, credit risk is an additional factor that can be modeled through default intensity curves and term structures of recovery rates in case of default. By formulating suitable optimization models, the different underlying financial quantities can be measured in accordance with observable market prices, while conditions for economic realism are imposed. Measuring and managing risk is closely connected to the measurement of the underlying financial quantities. Through a data-driven method, we can show that six systematic risk factors can be used to explain almost all variance in the interest rate curves. By modeling the dynamics of these six risk factors, possible outcomes can be simulated in the form of term structure scenarios. For short-term simulation horizons, this results in a representation of the portfolio value distribution that is consistent with the realized outcomes from historically observed term structures. This enables more accurate measurements of interest rate risk, where our proposed method exhibits both lower risk and lower pricing errors compared to traditional models. We propose a method for decomposing changes in portfolio values for an arbitrary portfolio into the risk factors that affect the value of each instrument. By demonstrating the method for the six systematic risk factors identified for the interbank market, we show that almost all changes in portfolio value and portfolio variance can be attributed to these risk factors. Additional risk factors and approximation errors are gathered into two terms, which can be studied to ensure the quality of the performance attribution, and possibly improve it. To eliminate undesired risk within trading books, banks use hedging. Traditional methods do not take transaction costs into account. We, therefore, propose a method for managing the risks in the interbank market through a stochastic optimization model that considers transaction costs. This method is based on a scenario approximation of the optimization problem where the six systematic risk factors are simulated, and the portfolio variance is weighted against the transaction costs. This results in a method that is preferred over the traditional methods for all risk-averse investors. For the credit market, we use data from the bond market in combination with the interbank market to make accurate measurements of the financial quantities. We address the notoriously difficult problem of separating default risk from recovery risk. In addition to the previous identified six systematic risk factors for risk-free interests, we identify four risk factors that explain almost all variance in default intensities, while a single risk factor seems sufficient to model the recovery risk. Overall, this is a higher number of risk factors than is usually found in the literature. Through a simple model, we can measure the variance in bond prices in terms of these systematic risk factors, and through performance attribution, we relate these values to the empirically realized variances from the quoted bond prices. De globala ränte- och kreditmarknaderna är enorma finansiella marknader vars sammanlagda värden vida överstiger de publika aktiemarknadernas. Räntemarknaden består av räntederivat vars främsta användningsområde är hantering av ränterisker. Kreditmarknaden utgörs i första hand av obligationsmarknaden som syftar till att förmedla pengar från investerare till företag, institutioner och stater med upplåningsbehov. Denna avhandling fokuserar på att utifrån ett optimeringsperspektiv modellera både ränte- och obligationsmarknaden. Lagstiftarna på de nationella marknaderna kräver att de finansiella aktörerna värderar sina finansiella tillgångar i enlighet med marknadspriser. Därmed måste priserna på många instrument, som inte handlas publikt, beräknas matematiskt. De finansiella storheter som krävs för denna prissättning är inte direkt observerbara, utan måste mätas genom att lösa inversa optimeringsproblem. Dessa mätningar görs utifrån tillgängliga marknadspriser, som observeras med varierande grad av mätbrus. För räntemarknaden utgörs de relevanta finansiella storheterna av räntekurvor som åskådliggör marknadsräntorna för olika löptider. För obligationsmarknaden utgör kreditrisken en ytterligare faktor som modelleras via fallissemangsintensitetskurvor och kurvor kopplade till förväntat återvunnet kapital vid eventuellt fallissemang. Genom att formulera lämpliga optimeringsmodeller kan de olika underliggande finansiella storheterna mätas i enlighet med observerbara marknadspriser samtidigt som ekonomisk realism eftersträvas. Mätning och hantering av risker är nära kopplat till mätningen av de underliggande finansiella storheterna. Genom en datadriven metod kan vi visa att sex systematiska riskfaktorer kan användas för att förklara nästan all varians i räntekurvorna. Genom att modellera dynamiken i dessa sex riskfaktorer kan tänkbara utfall för räntekurvor simuleras. För kortsiktiga simuleringshorisonter resulterar detta i en representation av fördelningen av portföljvärden som väl överensstämmer med de realiserade utfallen från historiskt observerade räntekurvor. Detta möjliggör noggrannare mätningar av ränterisk där vår föreslagna metod uppvisar såväl lägre risk som mindre prissättningsfel jämfört med traditionella modeller. Vi föreslår en metod för att dekomponera portföljutvecklingen för en godtycklig portfölj till de riskfaktorer som påverkar värdet för respektive instrument. Genom att demonstrera metoden för de sex systematiska riskfaktorerna som identifierats för räntemarknaden visar vi att nästan all portföljutveckling och portföljvarians kan härledas till dessa riskfaktorer. Övriga riskfaktorer och approximationsfel samlas i två termer, vilka kan användas för att säkerställa och eventuellt förbättra kvaliteten i prestationshärledningen. För att eliminera oönskad risk i sina tradingböcker använder banker sig av hedging. Traditionella metoder tar ingen hänsyn till transaktionskostnader. Vi föreslår därför en metod för att hantera riskerna på räntemarknaden genom en stokastisk optimeringsmodell som också tar hänsyn till transaktionskostnader. Denna metod bygger på en scenarioapproximation av optimeringsproblemet där de sex systematiska riskfaktorerna simuleras och portföljvariansen vägs mot transaktionskostnaderna. Detta resulterar i en metod som, för alla riskaverta investerare, är att föredra framför de traditionella metoderna. På kreditmarknaden använder vi data från obligationsmarknaden i kombination räntemarknaden för att göra noggranna mätningar av de finansiella storheterna. Vi angriper det erkänt svåra problemet att separera fallissemangsrisk från återvinningsrisk. Förutom de tidigare sex systematiska riskfaktorerna för riskfri ränta, identifierar vi fyra riskfaktorer som förklarar nästan all varians i fallissemangsintensiteter, medan en enda riskfaktor tycks räcka för att modellera återvinningsrisken. Sammanlagt är detta ett större antal riskfaktorer än vad som brukar användas i litteraturen. Via en enkel modell kan vi mäta variansen i obligationspriser i termer av dessa systematiska riskfaktorer och genom prestationshärledningen relatera dessa värden till de empiriskt realiserade varianserna från kvoterade obligationspriser.
