Computational Finance


Book Description

The book covers a wide range of topics, yet essential, in Computational Finance (CF), understood as a mix of Finance, Computational Statistics, and Mathematics of Finance. In that regard it is unique in its kind, for it touches upon the basic principles of all three main components of CF, with hands-on examples for programming models in R. Thus, the first chapter gives an introduction to the Principles of Corporate Finance: the markets of stock and options, valuation and economic theory, framed within Computation and Information Theory (e.g. the famous Efficient Market Hypothesis is stated in terms of computational complexity, a new perspective). Chapters 2 and 3 give the necessary tools of Statistics for analyzing financial time series, it also goes in depth into the concepts of correlation, causality and clustering. Chapters 4 and 5 review the most important discrete and continuous models for financial time series. Each model is provided with an example program in R. Chapter 6 covers the essentials of Technical Analysis (TA) and Fundamental Analysis. This chapter is suitable for people outside academics and into the world of financial investments, as a primer in the methods of charting and analysis of value for stocks, as it is done in the financial industry. Moreover, a mathematical foundation to the seemly ad-hoc methods of TA is given, and this is new in a presentation of TA. Chapter 7 reviews the most important heuristics for optimization: simulated annealing, genetic programming, and ant colonies (swarm intelligence) which is material to feed the computer savvy readers. Chapter 8 gives the basic principles of portfolio management, through the mean-variance model, and optimization under different constraints which is a topic of current research in computation, due to its complexity. One important aspect of this chapter is that it teaches how to use the powerful tools for portfolio analysis from the RMetrics R-package. Chapter 9 is a natural continuation of chapter 8 into the new area of research of online portfolio selection. The basic model of the universal portfolio of Cover and approximate methods to compute are also described.




Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics


Book Description

This book presents mathematical, programming and statistical tools used in the real world analysis and modeling of financial data. The tools are used to model asset returns, measure risk, and construct optimized portfolios using the open source R programming language and Microsoft Excel. The author explains how to build probability models for asset returns, to apply statistical techniques to evaluate if asset returns are normally distributed, to use Monte Carlo simulation and bootstrapping techniques to evaluate statistical models, and to use optimization methods to construct efficient portfolios.




Computational Finance with R


Book Description

This book prepares students to execute the quantitative and computational needs of the finance industry. The quantitative methods are explained in detail with examples from real financial problems like option pricing, risk management, portfolio selection, etc. Codes are provided in R programming language to execute the methods. Tables and figures, often with real data, illustrate the codes. References to related work are intended to aid the reader to pursue areas of specific interest in further detail. The comprehensive background with economic, statistical, mathematical, and computational theory strengthens the understanding. The coverage is broad, and linkages between different sections are explained. The primary audience is graduate students, while it should also be accessible to advanced undergraduates. Practitioners working in the finance industry will also benefit.




Tools for Computational Finance


Book Description

Tools for Computational Finance offers a clear explanation of computational issues arising in financial mathematics. The new third edition is thoroughly revised and significantly extended, including an extensive new section on analytic methods, focused mainly on interpolation approach and quadratic approximation. Other new material is devoted to risk-neutrality, early-exercise curves, multidimensional Black-Scholes models, the integral representation of options and the derivation of the Black-Scholes equation. New figures, more exercises, and expanded background material make this guide a real must-to-have for everyone working in the world of financial engineering.




Quantitative Finance with R and Cryptocurrencies


Book Description

The main objective of this book is to provide the necessary background to analyze cryptocurrencies markets and prices. To this end, the book consists of three parts: the first one is devoted to cryptocurrencies markets and explains how to retrieve cryptocurrencies data, how to compute liquidity measures with these data, how to calculate bounds for Bitcoin (and cryptocurrencies) fundamental value and how competing exchanges contribute to the price discovery process in the Bitcoin market. The second part is devoted to time series analysis with cryptocurrencies and presents a large set of univariate and multivariate time series models, tests for financial bubbles and explosive price behavior, as well as univariate and multivariate volatility models. The third part focuses on risk and portfolio management with cryptocurrencies and shows how to measure and backtest market risk, how to build an optimal portfolio according to several approaches, how to compute the probability of closure/bankruptcy of a crypto-exchange, and how to compute the probability of death of crypto-assets.All the proposed methods are accompanied by worked-out examples in R using the packages bitcoinFinance and bubble.This book is intended for both undergraduate and graduate students in economics, finance and statistics, financial and IT professionals, researchers and anyone interested in cryptocurrencies financial modelling. Readers are assumed to have a background in statistics and financial econometrics, as well as a working knowledge of R software.




Computational Finance


Book Description

Computational finance is increasingly important in the financial industry, as a necessary instrument for applying theoretical models to real-world challenges. Indeed, many models used in practice involve complex mathematical problems, for which an exact or a closed-form solution is not available. Consequently, we need to rely on computational techniques and specific numerical algorithms. This book combines theoretical concepts with practical implementation. Furthermore, the numerical solution of models is exploited, both to enhance the understanding of some mathematical and statistical notions, and to acquire sound programming skills in MATLAB®, which is useful for several other programming languages also. The material assumes the reader has a relatively limited knowledge of mathematics, probability, and statistics. Hence, the book contains a short description of the fundamental tools needed to address the two main fields of quantitative finance: portfolio selection and derivatives pricing. Both fields are developed here, with a particular emphasis on portfolio selection, where the author includes an overview of recent approaches. The book gradually takes the reader from a basic to medium level of expertise by using examples and exercises to simplify the understanding of complex models in finance, giving them the ability to place financial models in a computational setting. The book is ideal for courses focusing on quantitative finance, asset management, mathematical methods for economics and finance, investment banking, and corporate finance.




Handbook of Computational Finance


Book Description

Any financial asset that is openly traded has a market price. Except for extreme market conditions, market price may be more or less than a “fair” value. Fair value is likely to be some complicated function of the current intrinsic value of tangible or intangible assets underlying the claim and our assessment of the characteristics of the underlying assets with respect to the expected rate of growth, future dividends, volatility, and other relevant market factors. Some of these factors that affect the price can be measured at the time of a transaction with reasonably high accuracy. Most factors, however, relate to expectations about the future and to subjective issues, such as current management, corporate policies and market environment, that could affect the future financial performance of the underlying assets. Models are thus needed to describe the stochastic factors and environment, and their implementations inevitably require computational finance tools.




bookdown


Book Description

bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown presents a much easier way to write books and technical publications than traditional tools such as LaTeX and Word. The bookdown package inherits the simplicity of syntax and flexibility for data analysis from R Markdown, and extends R Markdown for technical writing, so that you can make better use of document elements such as figures, tables, equations, theorems, citations, and references. Similar to LaTeX, you can number and cross-reference these elements with bookdown. Your document can even include live examples so readers can interact with them while reading the book. The book can be rendered to multiple output formats, including LaTeX/PDF, HTML, EPUB, and Word, thus making it easy to put your documents online. The style and theme of these output formats can be customized. We used books and R primarily for examples in this book, but bookdown is not only for books or R. Most features introduced in this book also apply to other types of publications: journal papers, reports, dissertations, course handouts, study notes, and even novels. You do not have to use R, either. Other choices of computing languages include Python, C, C++, SQL, Bash, Stan, JavaScript, and so on, although R is best supported. You can also leave out computing, for example, to write a fiction. This book itself is an example of publishing with bookdown and R Markdown, and its source is fully available on GitHub.




Learning Quantitative Finance with R


Book Description

Implement machine learning, time-series analysis, algorithmic trading and more About This Book Understand the basics of R and how they can be applied in various Quantitative Finance scenarios Learn various algorithmic trading techniques and ways to optimize them using the tools available in R. Contain different methods to manage risk and explore trading using Machine Learning. Who This Book Is For If you want to learn how to use R to build quantitative finance models with ease, this book is for you. Analysts who want to learn R to solve their quantitative finance problems will also find this book useful. Some understanding of the basic financial concepts will be useful, though prior knowledge of R is not required. What You Will Learn Get to know the basics of R and how to use it in the field of Quantitative Finance Understand data processing and model building using R Explore different types of analytical techniques such as statistical analysis, time-series analysis, predictive modeling, and econometric analysis Build and analyze quantitative finance models using real-world examples How real-life examples should be used to develop strategies Performance metrics to look into before deciding upon any model Deep dive into the vast world of machine-learning based trading Get to grips with algorithmic trading and different ways of optimizing it Learn about controlling risk parameters of financial instruments In Detail The role of a quantitative analyst is very challenging, yet lucrative, so there is a lot of competition for the role in top-tier organizations and investment banks. This book is your go-to resource if you want to equip yourself with the skills required to tackle any real-world problem in quantitative finance using the popular R programming language. You'll start by getting an understanding of the basics of R and its relevance in the field of quantitative finance. Once you've built this foundation, we'll dive into the practicalities of building financial models in R. This will help you have a fair understanding of the topics as well as their implementation, as the authors have presented some use cases along with examples that are easy to understand and correlate. We'll also look at risk management and optimization techniques for algorithmic trading. Finally, the book will explain some advanced concepts, such as trading using machine learning, optimizations, exotic options, and hedging. By the end of this book, you will have a firm grasp of the techniques required to implement basic quantitative finance models in R. Style and approach This book introduces you to the essentials of quantitative finance with the help of easy-to-understand, practical examples and use cases in R. Each chapter presents a specific financial concept in detail, backed with relevant theory and the implementation of a real-life example.




Statistics and Data Analysis for Financial Engineering


Book Description

The new edition of this influential textbook, geared towards graduate or advanced undergraduate students, teaches the statistics necessary for financial engineering. In doing so, it illustrates concepts using financial markets and economic data, R Labs with real-data exercises, and graphical and analytic methods for modeling and diagnosing modeling errors. These methods are critical because financial engineers now have access to enormous quantities of data. To make use of this data, the powerful methods in this book for working with quantitative information, particularly about volatility and risks, are essential. Strengths of this fully-revised edition include major additions to the R code and the advanced topics covered. Individual chapters cover, among other topics, multivariate distributions, copulas, Bayesian computations, risk management, and cointegration. Suggested prerequisites are basic knowledge of statistics and probability, matrices and linear algebra, and calculus. There is an appendix on probability, statistics and linear algebra. Practicing financial engineers will also find this book of interest.