In this paper we provide some early evidence of a link between the iTraxx credit default swap (CDS) index market and the stock market. To our knowledge this is the first paper studying this relationship. Knowledge about the link between stock prices, stock return volatilities and CDS spreads is...

Numerous empirical studies have shown evidence of nonlinearities in financial time series, which can be of both a deterministic and a stochastic nature. Chaos is an example of the former, and heteroscedasticity in the conditional variance an example of the latter. We apply a test, the BDS test,...

This paper investigates the pricing bias in the Swedish OMX-Index Option market and how a stochastic volatility affects European call option prices. The market is purely European and without dividends for the period studied. A CIR square-root process for the volatility is estimated with...

A "compass rose" pattern sometimes appears when stock returns are plotted against themselves with a one-day lag, since stock prices move in discrete steps. In this paper, we perform a Monte Carlo study on simulated stock price series rounded in different ways to mirror the behavior of stocks on...

In this paper we discuss the potential for commercial microfinance in China. Particular emphasis is put on securitization of microloans and on structured microfinance in a China context. Three particular factors that we believe could support a strong growth in Chinese structured microfinance are...

This paper focuses on the many extreme credit default swap spread movements observed during the recent credit crisis and on how the tails of the spread (and price) change distribution significantly differ from those of the normal distribution even for diversified credit derivatives portfolios....

In this paper we employ the news aggregator GoogleTM News to demonstrate a strong link between the volatility in the stock market and the amount of news available to market participants. The paper also highlights some other areas, in finance and elsewhere, where news aggregators could be useful.

This paper looks at the asset correlation bias resulting from firms' assets and liabilities being denominated in different currencies. It focuses on the time-variation in the bias and on the dependency of the bias on currency movements. Both the volatility of the exchange rate and the...

This study discusses how to compute and forecast long-term stock return volatilities, typically with a 5-year horizon or longer, using credit derivatives, and how such volatilities can be used in different areas ranging from the valuation of employee stock options and other long-term derivatives...

I use Google News TM to study the relation between news volumes and stock market volatilities. More than nine million stock market-related news stories in English and (Mandarin) Chinese are collected and the dynamics of the news volume and the stock market volatility is compared in both the...