The speculative activities of hedge funds are a hot topic among market agents and authorities. In September 2006, the activities of Amaranth Advisors, a large-sized Connecticut hedge fund sent menacing ripples through the natural gas market. By September 21, 2006, Amaranth had lost roughly...

The speculative activities of hedge funds are a hot topic among market agents and authorities. In September 2006, the activities of Amaranth Advisors, a large-sized Connecticut hedge fund sent menacing ripples through the natural gas market. By September 21, 2006, Amaranth had lost roughly...

This article examines the efficiency of a relatively new market, the weather derivatives market. The weather market is an especially interesting market to study, since it is relatively new and less liquid and whose underlying has no fundamental value. We examine the weather derivatives futures...

We document a robust pattern of beta declining over the age of a firm. We find that changes in systematic risk via firm characteristics and life-cycle stages are insufficient to explain this pattern. Moreover, standard proxies for the quantity and quality of information also explain this pattern...

The recent collapse of the brilliant hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, has caused a lot of concern in the financial community. The quants are saddened by the limits of critical thinking and some of the non-quants are claiming that LTCM is just like the rest of them. This article...

The price of oil has fluctuated wildly in the last few years and has placed a spotlight on oil investing vehicles. Of particular interest has been the discrepancy between oil investing returns and the hypothetical returns to spot oil. We attempt to understand the source of that discrepancy by...

In recent years, a new form of risk has been recognized. This risk is the risk of crowded spaces. That is, how the saturation of a particular trading strategy can lead to a mis-measurement of the future expected returns and risks of the trading strategy. The primary focus of this risk has to do...

With the advances in technology and lower costs to trading, separate account platforms and online brokers should be able to offer customized portfolio protection to their clients with the click of a button. This paper uses basic concepts from the option literature to show how this insurance...