Tag Archives: factor model
The guts of a statistical factor model
Specifics of statistical factor models and of a particular implementation of them. Previously Posts that are background for this one include: Three things factor models do Factor models of variance in finance The BurStFin R package The quality of variance matrix estimation The problem Someone asked me some questions about the statistical factor model in … Continue reading
Three things factor models do
Factor models are heavily used in finance to create variance matrices. Here’s why. Factor models: Provide non-degenerate estimates Save space Quantify sources of risk Non-degenerate estimates First off, what does this mean? The technical term is that you want your estimate of the variance matrix to be positive definite. In practical terms what that means … Continue reading
Posted in Quant finance
Tagged factor model, Ledoit-Wolf shrinkage, statistical factor model
3 Comments
Sensitivity of risk parity to variance differences
Equal risk contribution of assets determines the asset weights given the variance matrix. How sensitive are those weights to the variance estimate? Previously The post “Risk parity” gave an overview of the idea. In particular it distinguished the cases: the assets have equal risk contribution groups of assets have equal risk contribution A key difference … Continue reading
Posted in Quant finance, R language
Tagged equal risk contribution, factor model, Ledoit-Wolf shrinkage, risk parity
2 Comments
Highlights of the London Quant Group Technology Day
A summary of the high points of the day. Factor models and optimization Three of the talks formed a theme: factor models of variance — especially as applied to portfolio optimization. The basic problem is that variance matrices are created with error. A variance matrix is a key input to (some) portfolio optimizations. The optimizer … Continue reading
Again with Ledoit-Wolf and factor models
We come closer to a definitive answer on the relative merit of Ledoit-Wolf shrinkage versus a statistical factor model for variance matrices. Previously This post builds on the post entitled: A test of Ledoit-Wolf versus a factor model That post depended on some posts previous to it. New information Previously we generated random portfolios with … Continue reading
Posted in Quant finance, R language
Tagged covariance matrix, factor model, Ledoit-Wolf shrinkage, risk fraction, S&P 500, variance matrix
2 Comments
A test of Ledoit-Wolf versus a factor model
Statistical factor models and Ledoit-Wolf shrinkage are competing methods for estimating variance matrices of returns. So which is better? This adds a data point for answering that question. Previously There are past blog posts on: the idea of variance matrices factor models of variance The data in this post are from the blog posts: “Weight … Continue reading
Posted in Quant finance, R language
Tagged covariance matrix, factor model, Ledoit-Wolf shrinkage, risk fraction, S&P 500, variance matrix
1 Comment
Factor models of variance in finance
In “What the hell is a variance matrix?” I talked about the basics of variance matrices and highlighted challenges for estimating them in finance. Here we look more deeply at the most popular estimation technique. Models for variance matrices The types of variance estimates that are used in finance can be classified as: Sample estimate … Continue reading
Posted in R language, Risk
Tagged covariance matrix, factor model, risk model, variance matrix
10 Comments
