The foundation for the subject of mathematical finance was laid nearly 100 years ago by Bachelier in his fundamental work, Theorie de la speculation. In this work, he provided the first treatment of Brownian motion. Since then, the research of Markowitz, and then of Black, Merton, Scholes, and Samuelson brought remarkable and important strides in the field. A few years later, Harrison and Kreps demonstrated the fundamental role of martingales and stochastic analysis in constructing and understanding models for financial markets. The connection opened the door for a flood of mathematical developments and growth. Concurrently with these mathematical advances, markets have grown, and developments in both academia and industry continue to expand. This lively activity inspired an AMS Short Course at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego (CA). The present volume includes the written results of that course. Articles are featured by an impressive list of recognized researchers and practitioners. Their contributions present deep results, pose challenging questions, and suggest directions for future research. This collection offers compelling introductory articles on this new, exciting, and rapidly growing field.
In Volatility Trading, Sinclair offers you a quantitative model for measuring volatility in order to gain an edge in your everyday option trading endeavors. With an accessible, straightforward approach. He guides traders through the basics of option pricing, volatility measurement, hedging, money management, and trade evaluation. In addition, Sinclair explains the often-overlooked psychological aspects of trading, revealing both how behavioral psychology can create market conditions traders can take advantage of-and how it can lead them astray. Psychological biases, he asserts, are probably the drivers behind most sources of edge available to a volatility trader. Your goal, Sinclair explains, must be clearly defined and easily expressed-if you cannot explain it in one sentence, you probably aren't completely clear about what it is. The same applies to your statistical edge. If you do not know exactly what your edge is, you shouldn't trade. He shows how, in addition to the numerical evaluation of a potential trade, you should be able to identify and evaluate the reason why implied volatility is priced where it is, that is, why an edge exists. This means it is also necessary to be on top of recent news stories, sector trends, and behavioral psychology. Finally, Sinclair underscores why trades need to be sized correctly, which means that each trade is evaluated according to its projected return and risk in the overall context of your goals. As the author concludes, while we also need to pay attention to seemingly mundane things like having good execution software, a comfortable office, and getting enough sleep, it is knowledge that is the ultimate source of edge. So, all else being equal, the trader with the greater knowledge will be the more successful. This book, and its companion CD-ROM, will provide that knowledge. The CD-ROM includes spreadsheets designed to help you forecast volatility and evaluate trades together with simulation engines.
An introduction to general theories of stochastic processes and modern martingale theory. The volume focuses on consistency, stability and contractivity under geometric invariance in numerical analysis, and discusses problems related to implementation, simulation, variable step size algorithms, and random number generation.
The book gives a systematical presentation of stochastic approximation methods for models of American-type options with general pay-off functions for discrete time Markov price processes. Advanced methods combining backward recurrence algorithms for computing of option rewards and general results on convergence of stochastic space skeleton and tree approximations for option rewards are applied to a variety of models of multivariate modulated Markov price processes. The principal novelty of presented results is based on consideration of multivariate modulated Markov price processes and general pay-off functions, which can depend not only on price but also an additional stochastic modulating index component, and use of minimal conditions of smoothness for transition probabilities and pay-off functions, compactness conditions for log-price processes and rate of growth conditions for pay-off functions. The book also contains an extended bibliography of works in the area. This book is the first volume of the comprehensive two volumes monograph. The second volume will present results on structural studies of optimal stopping domains, Monte Carlo based approximation reward algorithms, and convergence of American-type options for autoregressive and continuous time models, as well as results of the corresponding experimental studies.
This volume comprises selected papers presented at the 12th Winter School on Stochastic Processes and their Applications, which was held in Siegmundsburg, Germany, in March 2000. The contents include Backward Stochastic Differential Equations; Semilinear PDE and SPDE; Arbitrage Theory; Credit Derivatives and Models for Correlated Defaults; Three In
Risk control and derivative pricing have become of major concern to financial institutions, and there is a real need for adequate statistical tools to measure and anticipate the amplitude of the potential moves of the financial markets. Summarising theoretical developments in the field, this 2003 second edition has been substantially expanded. Additional chapters now cover stochastic processes, Monte-Carlo methods, Black-Scholes theory, the theory of the yield curve, and Minority Game. There are discussions on aspects of data analysis, financial products, non-linear correlations, and herding, feedback and agent based models. This book has become a classic reference for graduate students and researchers working in econophysics and mathematical finance, and for quantitative analysts working on risk management, derivative pricing and quantitative trading strategies.
Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.
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.
