Category Archives: Fund management in general
What is volatility?
Some facts and some speculation. Definition Volatility is the annualized standard deviation of returns — it is often expressed in percent. A volatility of 20 means that there is about a one-third probability that an asset’s price a year from now will have fallen or risen by more than 20% from its present value. In … Continue reading
S&P that might have been
The S&P 500 returned 29.6% in 2013. How might that have varied? S&P weights There are many features that could vary — here we will keep the same constituents (almost) and weights with similar sizes but that are randomly assigned rather than based on market capitalization. That is, we want the large weights of our … Continue reading
An interview regarding social impact bonds
An interview with Russ Bubley: Russ is the founder of i for change, a social investment strategy consultancy working with charities, social enterprises, government and investor groups to bring innovative capital markets solutions to social and environmental problems. Pat: The last time I saw you in person you were doing risk management. How did you … Continue reading
On smart beta
A bit of perspective on a buzzword. The prompt The Axioma Quant Forum in London included a discussion of smart beta. I took two highlights from it: a point of view and a question. The point of view was stated by Gerben de Zwart: “Smart beta seems like a replay of simple quant strategies of the … Continue reading
Alternative equity indices and random portfolios
A study has come out of Cass Business School that investigates a number of ways of building equity indices. Andrew Clare, Nicholas Motson and Stephen Thomas, of course, include market capitalization weighting. A number of schemes that fall under the name of “smart beta” are also included. They compare the indices not only among themselves … Continue reading
Horses and volatility
Two items struck me as being connected. Maybe they are. The items: Payoff of betting on horses versus the odds The Missing Risk Premium by Eric Falkenstein As you can see there is a unicorn on the cover, but that is not the horse connection I had in mind. Horses The post at Thinking in … Continue reading
High frequency trading and the volume clock
A pictorial summary of “The Volume Clock: Insights into the High Frequency Paradigm” by David Easley, Marcos M. Lopez de Prado and Maureen O’Hara. “HFT” means “high-frequency trading/trader”, “LFT” means “low-frequency trading/trader”. Legend holds that Nathan Mayer Rothschild used racing pigeons to front run his competitors and trade on the news of Napoleon’s defeat at … Continue reading
Smoothing the market for alpha
How to get money to alpha, and vice versa. The problem Let’s focus on two groups: People who have money and want alpha People who have alpha and want money When there is a cross between those two groups, there is happiness. Identifying Group 1 is easy. Identifying people who want money is not difficult … Continue reading
Motivating retirement savings
You can win money by saying how to get people to treat themselves better. InnoCentive has a challenge: How do we best get people to understand how important it is to plan for, and take specific action steps today, to create a steady and reliable stream of income for their retirement years? What would be … Continue reading
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Low volatility investing and benchmarks
The focus on tracking error rules out a low volatility strategy. Simply put, most money managers are focused on outperforming their benchmarks without adding risk. And because risk is measured on a relative basis, a portfolio that moves up and down less than its benchmark is perceived as more risky on a relative basis because … Continue reading
