Time series of financial asset values exhibit well known statistical features such as heavy tails and volatility clustering. Strongly present in some series, nonstationarity is a feature that has been somewhat overlooked. This may however be a highly relevant feature when estimating extreme...

Much of the trading activity in Equity markets is directed to brokerage houses. In exchange they provide so-called quot;soft dollarsquot; which basically are amounts spent in quot;researchquot; for identifying profitable trading opportunities. Soft dollars represent about USD 1 out of every USD...