Managed synthetic CDOs permit the dynamic substitution of credits in the reference portfolio. The expectation of investors in is that a skilled manager should be able to identify deteriorating credits before they experience a credit event and should therefore be able to remove the credit from...

The financial crisis has raised concerns throughout the industry on the possibility that hedging credit valuation adjustment (CVA) might become increasingly difficult should the long-standing correlation between singlename and index CDS products break down. So, we provide an estimation of the...

The challenge in long volatility strategies is to minimize the cost of carrying such insurance due to negative roll yields and negative volatility risk premia. This study proposes a hedging strategy for volatility as an asset class that provides substantial protection against market crashes,...

In order to analyze the pricing of portfolio credit risk – as revealed by tranche spreads of a popular credit default swap (CDS) index – we extract risk-neutral probabilities of default (PDs) and physical asset return correlations from single-name CDS spreads. The time profile and overall...

We investigate the effect of including variance derivatives as calibration and hedging instruments for pricing and hedging exotic structures. This is studied empirically using market data for SPX and VIX derivatives applied in a stochastic volatility jump diffusion model

We devise simulation/regression numerical schemes for pricing the CVA on CDO tranches, where CVA stands for Credit Valuation Adjustment, or price correction accounting for the defaultability of a counterparty in an OTC derivatives transaction. This is done in the setup of a continuous-time...

Traditionally derivatives and other assets have been valued in isolation. The balance sheet of which a derivative position is part, was not included in the valuation. Recently, aspects of the valuation have been revised to incorporate certain elements of the balance sheet in the valuation....

In his Berkshire Hathaway annual newsletter to investors c.20 years ago, Warren Buffett while discussing the Long Term Capital Management LTCM and Enron collapses, famously called derivatives: "financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially...

Classic option pricing theory values a derivative contract via dynamic replication, and views the derivative as redundant relative to the replicating portfolio. In practice, while dynamic replication proves highly effective in drastically reducing the risk in derivative investments, the...

Taking a portfolio perspective on option pricing and hedging, we show that within the standard Black-Scholes-Merton framework large portfolios of options can be hedged without risk in discrete time. The nature of the hedge portfolio in the limit of large portfolio size is substantially different...