A stochastic model is developed to explain how the early unwinding propensity of market participants in financial futures markets can lead to a strong concentration of the trading volume on the nearby contract. In this model the position closing behavior of the market participants is captured by...

Risk capital allocation is based on the assumption that the risk of a homogeneous portfolio is scaled up and down with the portfolio size. In this article we show that this assumption is true for large portfolios, but has to be revised for small ones. On basis of numerical examples we calculate...

While the academic world is still discussing if charting works or if it is more or less something like "Voodoo finance", the practical orientated world has been using technical analysis for decades. One argument of practitioners is, that technical analysis is useful to "disciplinate" the trader...

This paper considers the financial optimization problem of a firm with several sub-businesses striving for its optimal RORAC. An insightful example shows that the implementation of classical gradient capital allocation can be suboptimal if division managers are allowed to venture into all...

This article analyses the initial public offering (IPO) underpricing issue of 237 new A-shares from 2002 to 2004, shortly before the IPO suspension in the Chinese domestic market. The data set comes out with an initial return mean of 88.67%, an average market-adjusted initial return of 89.61%...

The aim of this paper is to expand the methodological spectrum of socially responsible investing by introducing stochastic sustainability returns into safety first models for portfolio choice. We provide a foundation of the notion of sustainability in portfolio theory and establish a general...

High microcredit interest rates cause fierce debates among practitioners, scholars and even the general public. To objectify these discussions, this article investigates determinants of microcredit interest rates by using a worldwide data set of 712 microfinance institutions (MFIs). We examine...

We complement standard portfolio theory à la Markowitz by adding a social dimension. We distinguish between two main setups, taking social returns as stochastic in the first, but as deterministic in the second. Two main features need to be introduced: Every asset must be assigned a...