Does the selection of a specific interest rate model to use for pricing, hedging, and risk-return analysis depend upon whether the user is a buy-side institution or a sell-side dealer bank? Sanjay Nawalkha and Riccardo Rebonato debate this question in this paper and provide some insightful...

This article derives a new formula for the yield elasticity of bond price. The formula provides accurate results without resorting to complex mathematics, and gives new meaning to the concept of duration in fixed-income analysis

We give explicit algorithms and source code for extracting factors underlying Treasury yields using (unsupervised) machine learning (ML) techniques, such as nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) and (statistically deterministic) clustering. NMF is a popular ML algorithm (used in computer...

Term premiums, defined as the excess return of long-dated contracts over short-dated contracts, in commodity futures are strongly predictable, both in the time series and in the cross section, by roll yield spreads. Strategies that exploit this predictability show sizable Sharpe ratios and are...

We derive expected bond return equations for various structural credit valuation models with alternative stochastic processes and boundary conditions for default given in Merton [1974], Merton [1976], Black and Cox [1976], Heston [1993], Longstaff and Schwartz [1995], and Collin-Dufresne and...

During the global financial crisis, stressed market conditions led to skyrocketing corporate bond spreads that could not be explained by conventional modeling approaches. This paper builds on this observation and sheds light on time-variations in the relationship between systematic risk factors...

The shape of the VIX term structure conveys information about the price of variance risk rather than expected changes in the VIX, a rejection of the expectations hypothesis. A single principal component, Slope, summarizes nearly all this information, predicting the excess returns of S&P 500...

Rational expectation models generally suggest that assets with more exposure to systematic risks should carry higher risk premia. However, several empirical findings challenge this result. I propose a novel generalized recursive smooth aversion model that allows agents to show different levels...

This paper studies the role of mutual fund yield in driving investor flows and performance of bond funds. Using two common measures, the SEC yield and 12-month distribution yield, we find strong evidence that investors tend to chase bond funds with higher yields, even after controlling for total...

Comparisons are made of the CBOE skew index with those derived from parametric skews of bilateral gamma models and from the differentiation of option implied characteristic exponents. Discrepancies may be attributed to strike discretization in evaluating prices of powered returns. The remedy...