Category: TRADING

Factor Investing Through Principal Component Analysis

Factor investing is a well-known investment strategy used mostly by quant funds. Even though the factors are well published, it’s important to distinguish 2 types of factors: Explicit factors: these are for example momentum, value, size, quality, etc. Implicit factors: these are statistical features determined by using e.g. maximum likelihood, …

Using an Autoregressive Model to Predict the Price-to-Earnings Ratio and Develop an Investment Strategy

In a previous post, we highlighted an article that showed how useful accounting numbers are. In this post, we will present a concrete example of an application of accounting numbers in portfolio management. Reference showed that the Price-to-Earnings ratio is a mean-reverting process, and it can be accurately estimated …

Momentum Trading Strategies Across Capital Markets

Momentum trading is a popular investment strategy. Loosely speaking, it consists of periodically buying groups of outperforming stocks and selling non-winning stock portfolios. We have presented studies that demonstrated the trending property of equity indices in the long term. This led to the possibility of developing profitable momentum investment strategies. …

Are Econometric Models Useful in Trading?

We have previously presented time series analysis for identifying autocorrelation properties of stock indices and econometric techniques such as ARIMA and GARCH for estimating volatilities. We also highlighted an article that demonstrated the usefulness of advanced volatility estimators in trading by reducing trading strategies’ turnover. On the same topic, …

Stop Losses in Options Trading

A financial option is a rather complex instrument. Unlike delta-one products, an option value depends not only on the underlying, but also on volatility, time to maturity, strike, interest rate, and dividends. Options have been used as hedging instruments, but they’re becoming a speculative vehicle these days thanks to a …

Is Cointegration the Best Method for Pairs Trading?

Pairs trading is a classic “market-neutral” trading strategy. Previously, we highlighted an article that claims that cointegration is a superior method for selecting pairs . On the same topic, Reference examined more pair selection methods. Specifically, it investigated the following approaches, Distance: Pairs are identified by using distance metrics. …

Do Arbitrage Opportunities Still Exist?

The arbitrage principle is one of the cornerstones of modern finance, and it’s being used widely, from derivative pricing to hedging, trading, and risk management. Theoretically, there is only one arbitrage principle. Practically, however, there are other types of arbitrage, some of which are relaxed forms of the strictest one. …

An Application of Volatility Estimators

Volatility estimators are a useful tool in volatility trading and risk management. We have discussed several types of volatility estimators, ranging from the simple Close-to-Close Historical Volatility to more complex ones like the Garman-Klass-Yang-Zhang volatility. As discussed in Reference , volatility estimators can also be used directly in delta-one trading …