Quantitative analysis
A bridge between mortgage TBA options and swaptions
Interest Rates
Valuing CDOs of ABSs
Charles Smithson and Neil Pearson discuss the valuation of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), with a close look at CDOs of subprime residential mortage-backed securities
Portfolio modelling of counterparty reinsurance default risk
Technical papers
Information derivatives
This paper considers the problem of creating derivatives to provide tailored exposure to volatility risk
Counterparty risk and CCDSs under correlation
Counterparty risk under correlation is relatively unexplored in the financial literature. Damiano Brigo and Andrea Pallavicini extend previous analysis beyond swap portfolios. A stochastic-intensity jump-diffusion model is adopted for the default event,…
Vix option pricing in a jump-diffusion model
Artur Sepp discusses Vix futures and options and shows that their market prices exhibit positive volatility skew. To better model the market behaviour of the S&P 500 index and its associated volatility skew, he introduces the stochastic dynamics of the…
Information derivatives
Andrei Soklakov considers the problem of creating derivatives to provide tailored exposure to volatility risk. Information theory leads us to a whole class of such products. This class of 'information derivatives' includes the standard volatility…
Modelling default rate in a retail portfolio and the estimation of portfolio risk
Considering correlation as the major driving factor for portfolio risk, Farshad Mashayekhi and Joy Wang present a methodology for the estimation of correlation among retail exposures based on historical default rates in pools of retail accounts. The…
Geometric mean variance
It is argued that a constrained mean variance framework is superior to Black-Litterman asset allocation, and can help an investor determine the mean excess return vector given their market views
Confidence intervals for corporate default rates
Rating agency default studies provide estimates of mean default rates over multiple time horizons but have never included estimates of the standard errors of the estimates. This is due at least in part to the challenge of accounting for the high degree…
A trick of the credit tail
Credit derivatives
Interest rate risk of mortgage servicing rights
Dick Boswinkel and Kent Westerbeck examine the behaviour of mortgage servicing rights' duration and convexity and explain how they relate to the prepayment assumptions used in valuing MSRs
Future mortality improvements in the ^G7 countries
Technical papers
The determinants of corporate credit spreads
Credit default swaps (CDSs) are an integral tool used for the management of credit risk by financial institutions. Despite their importance, good models for the determination of CDS spreads, also called corporate credit spreads, are not readily available…
Factor models for credit correlation
Stewart Inglis and Alex Lipton describe dynamic and static factor models for credit correlation, and show how the static model can be calibrated to the market and used for the pricing of standard and bespoke tranches, including tranchelets
Cash-settled swaptions and no-arbitrage
Brief Communication
Geometric mean variance
Asset Allocation
Counterparty risk and CCDSs under correlation
Hybrid Products
Calibration of CDO tranches with the dynamical GPL model
Consistent calibration of a credit index and its tranches across maturities with a single arbitrage-free model is a difficult problem. Here, Damiano Brigo, Andrea Pallavicini and Roberto Torresetti show that a simple loss dynamics based on the…
The contractual trust arrangement
Technical papers
Assets relative risk for long-term investors
Technical papers
The probability approach to default probabilities
Default estimation for low-default portfolios has attracted attention as banks contemplate the requirements of Basel II's internal ratings-based rules. Here, Nicholas Kiefer applies the probability approach to uncertainty and modelling to default…
Market-implied Archimedean copulas
Computations of implied copulas are a central element in producing loss distributions of bespoke portfolios and pricing their tranches. This process is made feasible by the availability of index tranche pricing data. Luigi Vacca shows how it is possible…
Uncovering PD/LGD liaisons
Francisco Sanchez, Roland Ordovas, Elena Martinez and Manuel Vega consider the presence of correlation between default and recovery through the familiar variance of loss formula. Business cycle dependence permits a neat decomposition of the variance…