How do you determine the volatility of an unlisted entity, and more generally, how do you forecast volatility? These are non-trivial questions. There is an interesting discussion on Stackexchange: Here is a question I had for a long time but I never asked. Let’s take an easy example, AirBnb will …

In the previous post, we introduced the Garman-Klass volatility estimator that takes into account the high, low, open, and closing prices of a stock. In this installment, we present an extension of the Garman-Klass volatility estimator that also takes into consideration overnight jumps. Garman-Klass-Yang-Zhang (GKYZ) volatility estimator consists of using …

In the previous post, we introduced the Parkinson volatility estimator that takes into account the high and low prices of a stock. In this follow-up post, we present the Garman-Klass volatility estimator that uses not only the high and low but also the opening and closing prices. Garman-Klass (GK) volatility …

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 …

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. If you want to use the online version, go to Historical Volatility Online Calculator. Also referred to as statistical volatility, historical …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …