Download PDF Introduction Tail-risk hedging strategies were once again on investors mouths, following the March 2020 drawdowns. April 2020 headlines were dominated by tail-risk hedge funds performance numbers and tenfold returns were not uncommon. By mainly incorporating complex option-based and CDS strategies, the funds look to minimize portfolio drawdowns in Read more…
Download PDF United States Last week the S&P 500 went down by 0.63% and closed at 3,298.46, whilst Dow Jones registered a weekly loss of 1.75%, finishing at 27,173.96. These figures represent the fourth straight weekly fall for both indexes, the longest losing streak in over a year. Gloomy Read more…
Download PDF Introduction With the rise of High Frequency Trading (HFT), the market structure has evolved into a complex organism. The impact of HFT on markets in terms of altering dynamics, increasing volatility and in general, making markets fickler is indisputable. Whether this is for the better or worse for Read more…
Download as PDF SOFR On November 17, 2014, the Federal Reserve Bank established its own research group, the Alternative Reference Rates Committee, a commission composed by the major international banks, central counterparties and asset managers, with the support of the U.S. Department of Treasury, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Read more…
Download as PDF ICE LIBOR Nowadays, LIBOR is administered by ICE Benchmark Administration, which publishes the rate for seven tenors (overnight, 1-week, 1-month, 2-month, 3-month, 6-month and 1-year) in five currencies (Euro, U.S. Dollar, British Pound Sterling, Swiss Franc and Japanese Yen). Currently, twenty panel banks submit their estimates between Read more…
Download as PDF Introduction The BIS triennial survey held every 3 years indicated most recently in 2019 that the USD was on 88% of all transaction. This makes it the world most used currency and the main reserve currency of centralbanks and transaction. However, another currency has recently made great Read more…
Download as PDF Introduction The expected excess market return, or equity risk premium, is an unobservable element crucial in many financial applications ranging from corporate finance to asset pricing. Over the years, many researchers have studied the expected market return by tackling the estimation from different perspectives leading Welch, Goyal Read more…
Download as PDF The First Reaction One of the first institutional proposals for a reform of LIBOR came from the Weathley Review of LIBOR. Commissioned in late June 2012 by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, it has been driven by Martin Weathley, former managing director of the Financial Services Read more…
Download as PDF Introduction Since the 2008 Crisis, several events have undermined the global trust in the major financial benchmarks. Above all, the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) had its reputation impaired, and its role weakened. The spike in its value after the collapse and bail-out of leading banks posed Read more…
Download as PDF The purpose of this special report is to introduce the emerging class of rough volatility models. Rough volatility is a relatively new concept originating from the empirical observation that log-volatility essentially behaves as a fractional Brownian motion at any reasonable timescale. While rough volatility is found to Read more…
Download as PDF US US market ended another wild trading week with a slight gain after last Friday substantive losses. S&P500 closed at 2,972.37, with a weekly gain of 0.61%. Dow-Jones Industrial Average Index (DJIA) was up 1.79% reaching 25,864.78. The demand for haven assets is rising and the bets Read more…
Download as PDF Introduction Interest rates have been persistently low across several advanced economies since the Global Financial Crisis. As short- and medium-term rates approached zero, central banks were compelled to turn to increasingly forceful measures in order to provide an adequate monetary stimulus. In 2012, the Danish National Bank Read more…
Download as PDF Introduction Back in December we published an Article called “Democratic Primaries: A markets perspective” in which we provided an overview of the most significant Democratic candidates, namely Berny Sanders and Elizabeth Warren from a more liberal, left-wing side and Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg from a more Read more…
Download as PDF United States The US markets experienced the worst week since 2008 due to a massive sell off caused by coronavirus uncertainty. S&P500 closed at 2954.22 with a weekly loss of a staggering 11.50% whilst the Dow-Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Index finished the week at 25.409, down 12.00% Read more…
Download as PDF Introduction In many financial studies the default assumption is that changes in prices are random and independent between different financial instruments. Opposing studies, thus, are often concerned with discovering dependencies and whether they are driven by common economic factors. One approach to the problem are network graphical Read more…