In quantitative finance we are used to measuring direct linear correlations or non-linear cross-bicorrelations among various time-series. For the former, by default, one adopts the calculation of Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients to quantify a linear relationship between two vectors.

One of the most relevant characteristics of digital assets is the high volatility observed in their prices. In this context, it is necessary that we have an adequate estimate of this parameter. In addition, there is great value in models that seek to predict future asset volatility values, which can

It is widely known that each time the Fed gives an announcement, the whole investing world is watching. So, one may wonder if those events can ruin their investments. Recently in this blog, we have studied a set of variables which might move the market. From this post one can extract that Fed

What is the role of factors in asset allocation? Should investors substitute factor exposures for asset classes in constructing strategic portfolios? Or should factors be used as an instrument to enhance the performance of asset class-based allocation schemes? There are still quite a few questions

A group of strategies, named statistical arbitrage or pairs trading strategies are well-known for being market-neutral gained their popularity among institutional and individual investors. In general, to develop a pairs trading strategy, one needs to figure out two aspects, the first is how to

Past equity market returns seem to predict currency returns Such a currency timing strategy may be interesting as a diversifier However, it is difficult to rationalize the results INTRODUCTION Bloomberg TV at 08:30 am EST: “The S&P 500 futures are trading lower as the US Dollar depreciated

Your biggest investment just took another move higher. It has gotten to the point that you start thinking about taking some profit off the table: it’s looking more and more enticing by the day! Do you do it? If you’re like most investors, you can’t resist taking some money today, even if it

Today we are going to check whether the diversification index proposed by Choueifaty and Coignard (2008) varies over time and some characteristics of this index. The construction of this analysis will be done using python. The Bovespa Index is the main stock index in the Brazilian market and is

Hendrik Bessembinder contributes to the literature on the returns to public equity investment diversification benefits with his study “Wealth Creation in the US Public Stock Markets 1926-2019,” published in the April 2021 issue of The Journal of Investing. The study updated his 2018 paper, “Do

In volatility modelling, a typical challenge is to keep the covariance matrix estimate valid, meaning (1) symmetric and (2) positive semi definite*. A new paper published in Econometrica (citing from the paper) “introduces a novel parametrization of the correlation matrix. The reparametrization

When carrying out systematic trading strategy research one of the main steps is to optimise a collection of strategy parameters to maximise or minimise some objective function. A simple example would be optimising the lookback parameters of the 'fast' and 'slow' moving averages

Let me kick off the series of QuantAtRisk’s podcasts Break into Finance. I address it to all of you who wish to join the financial industry but have no clue how to do it as well as to those of you who would like to make a change, improve your career, get better, and succeed within the industry.

Markov chains are well-known in the world of both mathematics and finance. It is common to describe the market as a group of states, for instance bull and bear. From these two there are different ways to create a great deal of other states. If you want to establish the transition relationship

Although Harry Potter’s world of magic exists on the same earth as our magic-less “Muggle” world, the worlds might as well be on different planets. Each world is governed by its own sets of rules and values, and their residents hardly ever cross each others’ paths. Academia and industry

The Put-Call ratio is often the most commonly used Options-Implied Indicator due to it's simplicity in calculation. However there exists several variations in methodology to calculate it. In this blogpost we give an overview of these different methods and their relevance. The Put-Call ratio can

In a previous post, I introduced the Hierarchical Risk Parity portfolio optimization algorithm1. In this post, I will present one of its variations, called Hierarchical Clustering-Based Risk Parity, first described in Papenbrock2 and then generalized in Raffinot34 and in Lohre et al.5, from which

Traditional pairs trading strategies are prone to failures when fundamental or economic reasons cause a structural break and the pair of assets that were expected to move together are no longer having a strong relationship. Such a break may result in asset price spread having abnormally high

Long volatility exposure is typically achieved via hedge funds A simple DIY strategy would have generated similar attractive diversification benefits Most of the returns are explained by risk-off currencies, government bonds, and gold INTRODUCTION Do-it-yourself is the best and worst financial

Standard performance statistics are insufficient and potentially misleading for evaluating algorithmic trading strategies. Metrics based on prediction errors mistakenly assume that all errors matter equally. Metrics based on classification accuracy disregard the magnitudes of errors. And traditional

We’ve been publishing papers, books and blog posts for over 15 years covering everything from asset allocation strategies and global value investing, to farmland investing, to startups, and even the question of whether or not institutions and endowments should just be managed by a robot. With

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates L.P. and the creator of the All-Weather investment strategy, recommends having some gold in a contemporary environment. He states, “In a world of ongoing pressure for policymakers across the globe to print and spend, zero interest rates, tectonic

Sustainable investing has grown substantially in recent years, demonstrating that investor demand can be driven by nonfinancial issues such as environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) characteristics. A full list of our posts on ESG can be found here. The demand from investors who have a

As an application to the windowing technique described the the previous article, John Ehlers proposed a new trend indicator that he claimed is robust and yet simple. The latter is certainly true, as the MAD (Moving Average Difference) oscillator is, as the name says, just the difference of two

Pairs trading or statistical arbitrage is a famous strategy among institutional and individual investors since the 1990s. The concept behind this kind of strategy is straightforward. If the prices of assets move together historically, this tendency is likely to continue in the future. When the

Okay, we can’t keep it a secret, we are fans of value investing 1 So when Cliff Asness and his team at AQR write about value, we get excited. The analysis reported in this research confirms the relationship between static value strategies and future returns while incorporating the notion that the

Corporate insiders often have insight into a company’s private information, which might help them predict how the shares’ price will move in the coming days. However, laws and regulations are designed to keep them from trading based on this knowledge, as it would be unfair and hurt the

Emerging market mutual fund managers struggle to outperform EM hedge fund managers failed to generate meaningful alpha EM opportunities seem to come with proportional risks INTRODUCTION Students often ask me for career advice. It is not a particularly satisfying experience. On the one hand, these

There are many ways one can lose money when investing, and exchange rates are one of the potential risk factors. Luckily, there are several ways to minimize this type of loss in your portfolio. Systematic tactical FX hedging that uses currency factor strategies (for example currency carry, currency

Time-Varying Factor Allocation Stefan Vincenz and Tom Oskar Karl Zeissler (Vienna U. of Economics and Business) September 15, 2021 In this empirical study, we provide evidence on how predictive information can be utilized to profitably allocate a cross-asset factor portfolio, covering various

Because of the complexity inherent to ETF trading in the secondary market, there are frequent misunderstandings about the relationship between the liquidity of the underlying securities and the liquidity of ETFs. Sometimes we hear that ETFs have excess liquidity to the underlying and at others, ETFs

Order book information is crucial for traders, but it can be complex. With the numbers of stocks listed in stock exchanges, it is impossible to track all the available information for the human mind. Therefore, the order flows could be an interesting dataset for machine learning models. The novel

Previously, we have written about the Momentum of News, which highlights that lots of positive news can lead to future positive returns (without a look-ahead bias!). Today’s post builds on the concept that news (and sentiment?) are predictive for returns — which sounds intuitive. The writers of

A simple job ad was placed in a handful of major newspapers calling for participants to be trained as traders. Of the applicants, a total of 23 individuals were chosen to become Turtle Traders: systematic trend followers who simply followed rules and made millions in the process. These were average,

2021 is shaping up as a year of undifferentiated factor performance Value is the only factor with positive performance in year-to-date 2021 The Size factor has generated the most negative returns INTRODUCTION We present the performance of five well-known factors on an annual basis for the last 10

Friday saw the market bounce after several indices closing at multi-month lows on Thursday. Fridays are interesting in that they are the least likely day of the week for a selloff to end or a rally to begin. But when rallies do start on a Friday, they have shown the best odds of success of any day

This is the sixth (!) post in a (loosely defined) series about finding the best way to trade futures with a relatively small account size. This first (old) post, which wasn't conciously part of a series, uses an 'ugly hack': a non linear rescaling of forecasts such that we only take

Recent research, including the 2020 studies “Explaining the Recent Failure of Value Investing” and “Intangible Capital and the Value Factor: Has Your Value Definition Just Expired?,” have investigated the impact on U.S. value strategies of the increase in the relative importance of

A reader recently suggested leaving the limit orders for a mean reversion trade on for a couple of days. Typically, these orders are good only for one day unless the stock sets up again. I did not think that this would help but as I always tell my consulting clients when they ask me if an idea will

This is the third and final article from the clustering series. If you’ve missed the previous parts, here you can find the first and second parts of the series. This section examines trading strategies based on previously introduced clustering methods. The complete Portfolio Clustering report will

The shape of the US Treasury curve over the past five decades has provided investors with the opportunity to create more efficient long duration exposure than simply buying long-dated Treasuries. In this article we will show how the most efficient long duration exposure is often generated by

The CAPM model was a breakthrough for asset pricing, but the times where the market factor was most widely used are long gone. Nowadays, if we exaggerate a bit, we have as many factors as we want. Therefore, it might not be straightforward which factor model should be used. Hanauer et al. (2021)

The authors of this paper identify aggregate supply and aggregate demand shocks for the US economy utilizing macroeconomic data on inflation, real GDP growth, core inflation, and the unemployment gap. They then go on to extract how these shocks to supply and demand impact the term structure of

Options trading has increased to record highs Some data points indicate changes in the market structure However, these changes are likely temporary rather than structural INTRODUCTION During the 1954 recession in the U.S., Sir John Templeton wrote to his clients that “this time it’s different”

A mainstay of academic research into the market is the Random Walk Hypothesis (RWH). This is the idea that market moves are random and follow a normal distribution that can be easily described using a concept borrowed from physics called Brownian Motion. This makes the market mathematics manageable,

Today’s guest is Grzegorz Link, who professionally works as a quant for an investment fund. Grzegorz is a physicist by education, which may surprise some. However, the thing is that in building market models, skills such as programming and mathematics are the primary tools, which is the same for

My March 23, 2021, article for Alpha Architect addressed the issue that in recent years the field of empirical finance has faced challenges from papers arguing that there is a replication crisis because the majority of studies cannot be replicated and/or their findings are the result of multiple

Abstract: I examine trailing stops in real markets and various autocorrelation and volatility regimes using synthetic data. Exits are notoriously under-studied and may be a source of edge. I examine three key hypotheses using my take on Tom Basso’s random entry method to remove entry from the

Imagine you’re a relatively small, independent trader trying to turn trading from a hobby into a serious business. If that’s you, then there are a few concepts that will help you pick the right trades to get after. This is important because picking the right trades is most of the game. First,

Kris Longmore from RobotWealth joins us to discuss 4 key areas part-time traders need to take seriously to be successful, including: Why it’s important to understanding market participants and why they’re trading, 3 common things traders do that almost guarantee they will blow up, Setting

In this post we are going to examine two alternative methods of calculating the factor contribution to the performance of an equity portfolio. To evaluate the performance of an equity portfolio regarding the exposure to risk factors, it is common to calculate the contribution of each factor to the