Few papers provide research about options returns, and the few available are focused in the analysis from the perspective of the long side of the option contract, i.e. the buyer that pays the price and her expected and realized option return. The main point of our research work is to provide a...

How can we report returns for a swap that has zero value? How can we perform return optimization for a zero-value long-short portfolio? By introducing a suitable "basis", it is possible to extend the definition of returns to leveraged products in such a way that performance attribution and...

When analyzing options returns, most papers tend to focus on the expected and realized return from strategies where the investors are long on those financial instruments. We conduct a test searching for excess returns on passive options investment strategies resorting to a four factor model,...

Conventional financial theory considers ex-ante that risk, generally measured by the volatility, has to be appropriately rewarded by expected returns. In modern financial markets, there are countless quantitative and systematic strategies which may test and eventually lead to excess returns when...

Mean-variance portfolio theory remains frequently used as investment rationale because of its simplicity, its closed-form solution, and the availability of many well-performing robust estimators. At the same time, it is also frequently rejected on the grounds that it ignores the higher moments...

Modelling and forecasting of asset volatility and covariance is of prime importance in the construction of portfolios. In this paper, we present a generalised multi-factor model that incorporates heteroskedasticity and dependence in the idiosyncratic error terms. We apply this model to...

With the exception of naive methods for portfolio selection, such as the equal weighted approaches, all other methods of portfolio allocation are more or less sensitive to the quality of the inputs considered in constructing the models and risk measures utilised in the allocation framework. The...

This paper analyses the fundamental drivers of risk and return in portfolios of private equity fund investments. We draw on a large data set of 771 mature European and North American primary buyout funds with historic performance information from Preqin covering vintages from 1998-2007. Using...

Common research suggests that investor sentiment is negatively related to future stock returns and positively related to future volatility. I incorporate this idea in the asset allocation process by blending both views on the expected return and the conditional value at risk (CVaR) based on...