The Nelson-Siegel-Svensson model is widely-used for modelling the yield curve, yet many authors have reported ‘numerical difficulties' when calibrating the model. We argue that the problem is twofold: firstly, the optimisation problem is not convex and has multiple local optima. Hence standard...

We construct portfolios with an alternative selection criterion, the Omega function, which can be expressed as the ratio of two partial moments of a portfolio's return distribution. The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the empirical performance of the selected portfolios, especially...

An alleged weakness of heuristic optimisation methods is the stochastic character of their solutions: instead of finding the truly optimal solution, they only provide a stochastic approximation of this optimum. In this paper we look into a particular application, portfolio optimisation. We...

Given a set of tick-by-tick data of five currency pairs we analyze several traditional asset allocation techniques as well as technical trading rule based models. In particular we explore appropriate levels of time aggregation and rebalancing frequencies. We also suggest a triggered...

As a result of the recent financial crises, equity markets have performed poorly in the last five years or so. In consequence, equity long-only strategies have generally been unattractive over this period. This motivates the investigation on whether better performance can be achieved by...

Linear regression is widely-used in finance. While the standard method to obtain parameter estimates, Least Squares, has very appealing theoretical and numerical properties, obtained estimates are often unstable in the presence of extreme observations which are rather common in financial time...

In practical portfolio choice models risk is often defined as VaR, expected short-fall, maximum loss, Omega function, etc. and is computed from simulated future scenarios of the portfolio value. It is well known that the minimization of these functions can not, in general, be performed with...

Modern finance, both theoretical and practical, makes extensive use of mathematical reasoning and modelling. But this reliance on exact methods comes with unfortunate side effects: numerical precision is emphasised, but without an equal insistence on empirical accuracy; methods that do not offer...