Leland's approach to the hedging of derivatives under proportional transaction costs is based on an approximate replication of the European-type contingent claim VT using the classical Black Scholes formulae with a suitably enlarged volatility. The formal mathematical framework is a scheme of...

We provide evidence that speculative capital of hedge funds is a key determinant for the profitability of optimal carry and momentum strategies in futures markets across asset classes. We construct optimal carry and momentum portfolios from the perspective of a utility maximizing risk averse...

Households that contemplate moving to different cities or trading up/down in the future are exposed to substantial housing risk. In order to mitigate this risk, we derive optimal portfolios using CME housing futures. Housing investment risk is hedged by selling housing futures amounting to the...

The aim of this paper is to determine whether forward-looking option-implied returns forecasts lead to better out-of-sample portfolio performance than conventional time series models. We consider a simple two-asset setting with a risk-free asset and the S&P 500 index the risky asset with monthly...

We study minute-by-minute behavior of the VIX index and trading activity in the underlying S&P 500 options to understand the impact of macro and microeconomic forces on risk neutral volatility. VIX often increases with macroeconomic news, reflects the credibility of Fed monetary stimulus, and...

This article investigates the portfolio selection problem of an investor with three-moment preferences taking positions in commodity futures. To model the asset returns, we propose a conditional asymmetric t copula with skewed and fat-tailed marginal distributions, such that we can capture the...

In this paper we develop a new family of estimators of the covariance matrix that relies solely on forward-looking information. These estimators only use current price information from a cross-section of plain-vanilla options and employ different higher moments of the implied return...

We consider evaluation methods for payoffs with an inherent financial risk as encountered for instance for portfolios held by pension funds and insurance companies. Pricing such payoffs in a way consistent to market prices typically involves combining actuarial techniques with methods from...

This paper studies dynamic risk taking by a risk-averse manager who receives a bonus; the company may default on its contractual obligations (debt, fixed compensation). We show that risk-taking is time-independent, and is summarized by the so-called risk-aversion of derived utility. We highlight...

Ratios that indicate the statistical significance of a fund's alpha typically appraise its performance. A growing literature suggests that even in the absence of any ability to predict returns, holding options positions on the benchmark assets or trading frequently can significantly enhance...