RISK MANAGEMENT

by 0 comments on "Parkinson Historical Volatility Calculation – Volatility Analysis in Python"

In the previous post, we discussed the close-to-close historical volatility. Recall that the close-to-close historical volatility (CCHV) is calculated as follows, where xi are the logarithmic returns calculated based on closing prices, and N is the sample size. A disadvantage of using the CCHV is that it does not take into account the information about…

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by 0 comments on "Close-to-Close Historical Volatility Calculation – Volatility Analysis in Python"

In a previous post, we touched upon a stock’s volatility through its beta. In this post, we are going to discuss historical volatilities of a stock in more details. Also referred to as statistical volatility, historical volatility gauges the fluctuations of underlying securities by measuring price changes over predetermined periods of time. It is the…

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by 0 comments on "Value At Risk – Financial Risk Management in Python"

Value at Risk (VaR) is a tool for measuring a portfolio’s risk. Value at risk (VaR) is a measure of the risk of loss for investments. It estimates how much a set of investments might lose (with a given probability), given normal market conditions, in a set time period such as a day. … For…

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by 0 comments on "Another Misuse of Financial Derivatives"

Just like any financial derivatives that were initially designed for risk management purposes, interest rate swaps are an effective tool for managing and transferring interest rate risks as long as those risks are well understood.  But as banks and financial institutions are constantly trying to invent new financial products to sell to their consumers, sometimes…

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by 0 comments on "Are Collateralized Loan Obligations the New Debt Bombs? Part Two"

In a previous post, we discussed the risks of Collateralized Loan Obligations, a type of complex credit derivatives.  Since then, the trend in securitizing loans is still upward. Nowadays, not only performing loans but also non-performing loans are being securitized and sold to investors. A non-performing loan is a loan that is in default or…

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by 0 comments on "Stationarity and Autocorrelation Functions of VXX-Time Series Analysis in Python"

In the previous post, we presented a system for trading VXX, a volatility Exchange Traded Note. The trading system was built based on simple moving averages.  In this post, we are going to examine the time series properties of VXX in more details. The figure below shows the VXX and its 200-day moving average for…

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by 0 comments on "Merton Credit Risk Model, a Case Study"

In a previous post entitled Credit Risk Management Using Merton Model we provided a brief theoretical description of the Merton structural credit risk model. Note that, The Merton model is an analysis model – named after economist Robert C. Merton – used to assess the credit risk of a company’s debt. Analysts and investors utilize…

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by 0 comments on "Credit Risk Management Using Merton Model"

R. Merton published a seminal paper [1] that laid the foundation for the development of structural credit risk models. In this post, we’re going to provide an example of how it can be used for managing credit risks. Within the Merton model, equity of a firm is considered a call option on its asset, and…

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by 0 comments on "Are Collateralized Loan Obligations the New Debt Bombs?"

Last year, in a post entitled Credit Derivatives-Is This Time Different we wrote about credit derivatives and their potential impact on the markets. Since then, they have started attracting more and more attention. For example, Bloomberg recently reported that collateralized loan obligations (CLO), a type of complex credit derivatives, are becoming a favorite financing vehicle…

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by 0 comments on "Black Swan and Volatility of Volatility"

We have written many blog posts about the increase in volatility of volatility. See, for example Is Volatility of Volatility Increasing? What Caused the Increase in Volatility of Volatility? Similarly, last week Bloomberg reported, The sudden rise in volatility in February and March showed that even with strong growth fundamentals, financial markets remain vulnerable. Since…

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