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Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 07/06/2015

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Monday, 07/06/2015. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Video: James Simons – Numberphile [YouTube]

    James Harris Simons has been described as "the world's smartest billionaire", amassing a fortune through the clever use of mathematics and computers. He is now a renowned philanthropist.
  • Adding a VIX Signal to Momentum [EconomPic]

    Michael Batnick, Director of Research at Ritholtz Wealth Management, and blogger of the always interesting Irrelevant Investor, recently shared the historical performance of U.S. stocks when they fall below their 200-day moving average, something that occurred early last week (bold mine, quotes Michael's). Increased odds at a material sell-off When bad
  • Efficient Frontier Portfolios Impractical But Still Useful [Capital Spectator]

    The concept of building optimal portfoliosmaximizing return and minimizing riskis a foundational concept in quantitative finance. Unfortunately, its not terribly practical. The problem, as many researchers have demonstrated over the years, is the elusive aspect of developing reliable estimates of return and risk. Mere mortals are notoriously ill-suited for such things. But crunchin
  • Practical academic paper related to #100 – Trading WTI/BRENT Spread [Quantpedia]

    #100 – Trading WTI/BRENT Spread Authors: Donninger Title: The Poverty of Academic Finance Research: Spread Trading Strategies in the Crude Oil Futures Market Link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2617585 Abstract: Harvey, Liu and Zhu argue that probably most of the Cross-Section of Returns literature is garbage
  • Backtesting in Excel: Adding position sizing [Quants Portal]

    In my previous article I started with an example of a vectorised backtest. In this one I will build on homework exercise 2 by adding position sizing. Please download this Excel document to follow the example, Click Here. Now there are many different ways in which to add position sizing and this would generally form part of the risk model. In this example Im going to pair p
  • Prices Convolution, A Practical Approach [Quant Dare]

    othing could be further from my intention than to give an extensive mathematical approach to this post but an slightly idea is desirable. In this post we will approach to the problem of convolution from a matricial point of view. Well, what we mean by convolution is about composing 2 different functions to have a third one. The particularity of the convolution is that we ha
  • China Market Analysis [John Orford]

    The core of capitalism is its extremely democratic nature. The masses crush wily contrarians on a daily basis, The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent Being correct in science however, is never democratic. One contrarian can commit mass killings amongst cherished beliefs. Science progresses
  • [Academic Paper] Can Anomalies Survive Insider Disagreements? [@Quantivity]

    Can Anomalies Survive Insider Disagreements?
  • [Academic Paper] Mispricing Factors [@Quantivity]

    Mispricing Factors

Best Links of the Week

The best links of the week ending Saturday, 07/04 as voted by our readers:

We need to vote more folks. About 1% of clickthroughs result in a vote. That’s just not enough. A vote doesn’t necessarily mean a link is the greatest of all time, it simply means that it’s good and deserves to be read by others. So let your voice be heard and encourage bloggers to write quality content. We do our part by providing this site gratis. All we ask is that you take a moment to participate in the process.

If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to register to vote. Once registered, you can choose to remain logged in indefinitely, making voting as simple and painless as possible.

Read on Readers!
Mike @ Quantocracy

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 07/02/2015

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Thursday, 07/02/2015. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Time series analysis and data gaps [EP Chan]

    Most time series techniques such as the ADF test for stationarity, Johansen test for cointegration, or ARIMA model for returns prediction, assume that our data points are collected at regular intervals. In traders' parlance, it assumes bar data with fixed bar length. It is easy to see that this mundane requirement immediately presents a problem even if we were just to analyze daily bars
  • For The VIX, It s All About The Recovery [Dana Lyons]

    We mentioned in a post yesterday on 90% Down Days that one of the challenges for risk managers is to correctly distinguish a minor market dip from something that is developing into a more serious decline. One potential aid in addressing that challenge comes from the behavior of the S&P 500 Volatility Index, the VIX. As most market observers are likely aware, the VIX tends to rise duri
  • Insuring tomorrow s decline, today [MKTSTK]

    As of pixel time the VIX is up over 7% and the S&P 500 is basically unchanged; we feel this situation arises when traders desire protection today for the possibility of danger tomorrow. In other words, the price of risk is rising and markets are stabilizing. Intuitively (i.e. the feeling our rat brains get from too many years spent scurrying around the markets) we feel this sets the sta
  • The First Academic Paper with a Shotgun Picture in it [Alpha Architect]

    Here is one of the figures in a Journal of Finance paper published in 2013 by N. Garleanu and L Pedersen. The figure depicts various portfolio optimizations under different assumptions and then has a visualization equivalent with hockey players, skeet shooters, and missile systems. Im not sure how many readers follow hard-core academic publications, but this i

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 06/30/2015

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Tuesday, 06/30/2015. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 06/28/2015

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Sunday, 06/28/2015. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Best Links of the Week [Quantocracy]

    The best five links of the week ending Saturday, 06/27, as voted by our readers: Interview with Ernest Chan [Better System Trader] Think MPT Doesnt Work? Clearing Up Some Misconceptions [CSS Analytics] Creating an Open Source Hedge Fund Strategy [Quants Portal] Losing Streak Indicator [System Trader Success] A Random Ass Kicking
  • Interview with Andreas Clenow [Better System Trader]

    Andreas Clenow is a hedge fund manager who specialises in developing and trading quantitative strategies across all asset classes. He is currently a principal at ACIES Asset Management, which he joined after having successfully established his own hedge fund. Prior to his role as a hedge fund trader he had a lightning career with Reuters, where he, as Global Head of Equity
  • Lazy Backtesting Update [John Orford]

    The S&P Dow Jones data source is now available to use in the Lazy Backtesting IDE. All manner of interesting investable strategies and asset classes, including volatility and retirement date targeting; Vix contango & backwardation and other quant-style strategies; which you can combine, repurpose and benchmark against. Other than that, there is an ever growing
  • Bad Breadth Milestone A Warning For Stocks? [Dana Lyons]

    Weve been discussing the weakening market breadth recently, especially as it pertains to New Highs vs. New Lows. Again, our contention is that the more stocks participating in a rally, the healthier the rally is. The most recent example of this weak breadth was Wednesdays post on the fact that Nasdaq New Highs-New Lows have not hit a 52-week high in over 400 days. Today brings another

Best Links of the Week

The best five links of the week ending Saturday, 06/27, as voted by our readers:

We’ve given readers control over the content here at Quantocracy with the ability to vote on links in our Mashup. Readers can reward and encourage quality workmanship by deciding which links get visibility. If you haven’t done so already, we invite you to be a part of that by taking a minute to register to vote. Once registered, you can choose to remain logged in indefinitely, making voting as easy on you the reader as possible. Let your voice be heard!

Read on Readers!
Mike @ Quantocracy

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 06/26/2015

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Friday, 06/26/2015. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • The Decision Moose Asset Allocation Framework [CXO Advisory]

    A reader suggested a review of the Decision Moose asset allocation framework of William Dirlam. Decision Moose is an automated framework for making intermediate-term investment decisions. Decision Moose focuses on asset class momentum, as augmented by monetary policy, exchange rate and interest rate indicators. Its signals tell followers when to switch from one index fund
  • The Market For Lemons : A Lesson For Dividend Investors [Research Affiliates]

    Central banks the world over are buying high-quality bonds, thereby removing them from the market and forcing savers to find alternative strategies to meet their income needs. In this environment of financial repression and near-zero interest rates, dividend-yield (or equity income) investing has become increasingly popular. Investors are understandably reallocating their portfolios fro
  • Estimating Crash-Risk Potential For The US Stock Market [Capital Spectator]

    History shows rather clearly that the stock market is prone to extreme events, aka crashes. The challenge is deciding when the risk for a repeat performance is unusually high. The literature offers endless possibilities, which is a reminder that the market can crumble for any number of reasons. The leading factor, of course, is the business cycle. But internal market issues cant be ign
  • Risk Aversion, Information Choice, and Price Impact [Alex Chinco]

    Kyle (1985) introduces an information-based asset-pricing model where informed traders keep trading until the marginal benefit of holding one additional share of the asset is exactly offset by the marginal cost of this last trades price impact. This model has really nice intuition, but it also has some undesirable features. For instance, traders in Kyle (1985) are risk neutral and don

Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 06/25/2015

This is a summary of links featured on Quantocracy on Thursday, 06/25/2015. To see our most recent links, visit the Quant Mashup. Read on readers!

  • Think MPT Doesn t Work? Clearing Up Some Misconceptions [CSS Analytics]

    I have spent many years toiling with creating different asset allocation methodologies including the application of traditional and non-traditional portfolio optimization. Given the recent flare of articles on this topic in the blogosphere, I felt it was worthwhile to share my two cents. Applying optimization to a tactical approach is a topic that readers may already be familiar with,
  • Backtesting A Cautionary Example [Scott’s Investments]

    My previous article detailed backtest results for the ETFReplay.com portfolio. Aggregate, risk-adjusted results since 2004 were impressive when compared to a 60/40 Vanguard mutual fund. However, results over the past 2-3 years lagged the benchmark. The test below was conducted using Portfolio123 (P123?). It uses a similar ranking system to the ETFReplay 6/3/3 system but
  • Lazy PCA Site Update [John Orford]

    There's been a bunch of feature suggestions since the last update to the Lazy PCA site. All the code is on Github, if you have a little Javascript experience, I will gladly walk you through it. Please keep shooting feature ideas over too though. You know when you're done with an app when you can't remove any more features, and that's where my minds
  • How to Get a List of all NASDAQ Securities as a CSV file using Python? [Quant at Risk]

    This post will be short but very informative. You can learn a few good Unix/Linux tricks on the way. The goal is well defined in the title. So, whats the quickest solution? We will make use of Python in the Unix-based environment. As you will see, for any text file, writing a single line of Unix commands is more than enough to deliver exactly what we need (a basic text file processing)