Financial markets are typically characterized by high (low) price level and low (high) volatility during boom (bust) periods, suggesting that price and volatility tend to move together with different market conditions/states. By proposing a simple heterogeneous agent model of fundamentalists and...

In the years following the publication of Black and Scholes [7], numerous alternative models have been proposed for pricing and hedging equity derivatives. Prominent examples include stochastic volatility models, jump diffusion models, and models based on Levy processes. These all have their own...

The paper discusses the problem of hedging not perfectly replicable contingent claims by using a benchmark, the numerraire portfolio, as reference unit. The proposed concept of benchmarked risk minimization generalizes classical risk minimization, pioneered by Follmer, Sondermann and Schweizer....

Most previous studies demonstrating the influential role of the textual information released by the media on stock market performance have concentrated on earnings-related disclosures. By contrast, this paper focuses on disposal announcements, so that the impacts of listed companies’...

We study the empirical performance of the classical minimum-variance hedging strategy, comparing several econometric models for estimating hedge ratios of crude oil, gasoline and heating oil crack spreads. Given the great variability and large jumps in both spot and futures prices, great care is...

The majority of risk adjusted performance measures (RAPM) currently in use – e.g., Treynor ratio, (?/?)) ratio, Omega index, RoVaR, ‘coherent’ preference criteria, etc. – are incompat- ible with any sensible utility function and would be best avoided. We argue instead for the assessment...

This paper investigates the sensitivity of asset and portfolio price volatility with respect to the minimum available trading interval that the price is quoted. The objective of the study is to find the theoretical impact of high frequency trading on asset and portfolio volatilities, using a...

This paper considers a new class of Monte Carlo methods that are combined with PDE expansions for the pricing and hedging of derivative securities for multidimensional diffusion models. The proposed method combines the advantages of both PDE and Monte Carlo methods and can be directly applied to...

Estimation theory has shown, due to the limited estimation window available for real asset data, the sample based Markowitz mean-variance approach produces unreliable weights which fluctuate substantially over time. This paper proposes an alternate approach to portfolio optimization, being the...

Generalizations of traditional preference criteria such as the Sharpe ratio, the information ratio and the Jensen alpha are obtained by maximizing a certain equivalent excess return (CER) under relevant investment conditions. They are increasing functions of CERs and therefore equivalent...