Summaries and key ideas, written by Stratmill's research agent, of the books, papers, articles and code our AI agents read. Each page links to its original.
20,364 documents
The document considers why the same asset-allocation strategy can show different skewness and kurtosis when evaluated with weekly rather than monthly index returns. The responses say that the reported weekly values are plausible, since higher-frequency…
The document examines why a finite-difference bond convexity calculation can differ substantially from a market quote. Its central explanation is that convexity depends on how yield is expressed: using yield in percentage points versus decimal form changes…
The document describes a volatility pattern in monthly electricity futures that changes as the delivery month progresses. Because electricity is delivered throughout the month, the contract price converges toward the monthly average as delivery unfolds. The…
The document distinguishes a manager’s historical information ratio from a prediction that the manager will continue to outperform. It asks whether managers with high past information ratios tend to retain above-median ratios, but the response offers a…
The document explains why a call option on a basket of stocks is commonly described as having positive exposure to correlation. A basket’s value depends on the combined returns of its constituents, so its distribution is more complicated than the…
The document asks whether investors can isolate jump risk premia in a way that variance swaps isolate variance risk premia. It describes gap-risk contracts as a practical analogue: an over-the-counter swap or exposure embedded in a structured note, based on…
The document addresses whether an overnight index swap’s fair rate and PV01 can be calculated without constructing an OvernightIndexedSwap object in QuantLib. The response cautions that reproducing the calculation from a curve alone is complex and would be…
The document outlines the historical VIX methodology and distinguishes two changes to the index. In 2003, the underlying shifted from S&P 100 options to S&P 500 options, and the calculation moved from implied volatility to a variance-swap approach. In 2014,…
The document explains why comparing two delivery months of a bond future generally cannot isolate the underlying bond’s price using a simple carry relationship. Futures pricing depends on the cheapest-to-deliver bond, its conversion factor, the repo rate…
The document explains that a central bank defending an exchange-rate level can place a large limit order at its chosen price. It uses the Swiss National Bank’s former EUR/CHF floor as an example: a standing offer to buy euros at the floor would support the…
The document presents a two-factor pricing setup in which the stock price follows a diffusion with constant volatility and the short rate follows a mean-reverting process. Assuming the two Brownian drivers are uncorrelated, the response gives a generalized…
The question compares a bond valuation and duration calculated under continuous compounding with a modified-duration calculation under semiannual compounding. It asks why the initial price in the second calculation remains the same when the yield is…
The document lays out a curve-construction problem: derive discount factors for Australian-dollar cashflows collateralised with US-dollar cash. It lists available Australian OIS, bank-bill swaps, basis swaps between bank-bill tenors and OIS, and…
The note addresses why Treasury basis traders commonly express a bond-to-futures hedge using conversion factors rather than a DV01 ratio. Its central point is that the two approaches are equivalent when the futures contract’s DV01 is calculated from the…
The document explains why ordinary least squares estimates of slope coefficients are unchanged when a regression includes an intercept or, equivalently, when the response and regressors are demeaned and the regression is constrained to have no intercept. It…
The document asks whether selecting the least expensive option at successive expiries can reveal an asset's most likely price path. The answers explain that option prices can be used to infer risk-neutral distributions of terminal prices at fixed maturities.…
The document examines whether a call option's delta equals its probability of expiring in the money under the Bachelier model. It first corrects a related misconception: Black–Scholes call delta is not generally the exercise probability. For a forward…
The document considers whether a new market maker can earn a spread in highly liquid ETFs when the best bid and ask are one tick apart and display substantial size. Its central lesson is that liquidity provision earns a premium only when counterparties need…
The document asks how to tell whether an estimated correlation between two assets is stable over time, and whether the relationship is meaningfully linear. It describes a rolling correlation estimate and an ad hoc stability rule based on the largest recent…
The discussion distinguishes geometric-average and arithmetic-average Asian options under the Heston stochastic volatility model. It reports that a closed-form pricing formula is available for the geometric Asian option, while an analogous closed form is not…
The document describes an attempt to estimate hedge fund alpha using the Fung-Hsieh seven-factor model. The proposed analyses include a pooled estimate across funds and annual estimates, using monthly after-fee excess returns as the dependent variable and…
The discussion explains why a five-year interest rate swap can have a rate sensitivity close to that of a par five-year Treasury. In the example, a 15 basis point rate move changes the Treasury’s value by roughly the present value of a 15 basis point…
This note asks how to estimate implicit transaction costs for a newly launched portfolio under an approach that uses average bid–ask spreads for reference indexes. The author points out that broad indexes such as the S&P 500 or FTSE 100 are calculated…
This note asks about buying an off-the-run Treasury bond that is deliverable into a bond futures contract but is not currently the cheapest to deliver, while shorting the futures. The proposed relative-value rationale is that the cash bond may richen against…