After posting good performance and impressive business growth for over two decades, quantitative equity investment managers have recently produced weak returns. We develop a measure of risk and show how changes in risk provide a common framework to explain past under-performance, as well as...

We derive the total variance risk premium for an index in the stochastic environment of Driessen, Maenhout and Vilkov (2009) and correct the previous authors omission of certain components which contribute significantly to index option expected returns. This study provides a mathematically...

A model of building and using synthetic straddles has been developed; it enables an investor to significantly reduce its individual equity risk related to its own basic assets, i.e. shares. The Black-Scholes model, which is regarded as a classical model, cannot be used for this purpose for the...

Investors often control risk exposure by trading options. This article studies the optimal strategy for liquidating an option position. Under both complete and incomplete market settings, we quantify the value of optimally timing to liquidate, and identify the situations where it is optimal to...