The main applications of financial engineering are to:
100-651: Financial engineering is a multidisciplinary field involving financial theory , methods of engineering , tools of mathematics and the practice of programming . It has also been defined as the application of technical methods, especially from mathematical finance and computational finance , in the practice of finance . Financial engineering plays a key role in a bank's customer-driven derivatives business — delivering bespoke OTC-contracts and "exotics" , and implementing various structured products — which encompasses quantitative modelling, quantitative programming and risk managing financial products in compliance with
200-527: A "heuristic way" by market participants, not by a model, and that models are "lecturing birds on how to fly". Teacher and author Pablo Triana has explored this topic with reference to Haug and Taleb. Triana has stated that Taleb might be correct in recommending that retail banks be treated as utilities , i.e. forbidden to take potentially disastrous risks, whereas hedge funds and other less-regulated investment entities need not be subject to similar restrictions. In his writings, Taleb has identified and discussed
300-507: A Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering since September 2008. He has also been a practitioner of mathematical finance and is currently an adviser at Universa Investments . The Sunday Times described his 2007 book The Black Swan as one of the 12 most influential books since World War II . Taleb criticized risk management methods used by
400-428: A broad range of subfields exists within finance. Asset- , money- , risk- and investment management aim to maximize value and minimize volatility . Financial analysis assesses the viability, stability, and profitability of an action or entity. Some fields are multidisciplinary, such as mathematical finance , financial law , financial economics , financial engineering and financial technology . These fields are
500-447: A broad term that covers any person who uses math for practical purposes, including financial engineers. Quant is often taken to mean "financial quant", in which case it is similar to financial engineer. The difference is that it is possible to be a theoretical quant, or a quant in only one specialized niche in finance, while "financial engineer" usually implies a practitioner with broad expertise. " Rocket scientist " ( aerospace engineer )
600-510: A financial engineering degree program at Columbia University. He blames over-reliance on models for financial problems; see Financial Modelers' Manifesto . Many other authors have identified specific problems in financial engineering that caused catastrophes: The financial innovation often associated with financial engineers was mocked by former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker in 2009 when he said it
700-409: A follow-up book on anti-fragility. Taleb's book The Bed of Procrustes summarizes the central problem: "we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas". Taleb disagrees with Platonic (i.e., theoretical) approaches to reality to the extent that they lead people to have
800-581: A full-time author. He describes the nature of his involvement as "totally passive" from 2010 on. Taleb considers himself less a businessman than an epistemologist of randomness , and says that he used trading to attain independence and freedom from authority. He advocated for tail risk hedging , which is intended to mitigate investors' exposure to extreme market moves. Tail risk hedging safeguards investors by reaping rewards from rare events, thus Taleb's investment management career has included several jackpots followed by lengthy dry spells. Taleb attended
900-431: A high degree of computational complexity and are slow to converge to a solution on classical computers. In particular, when it comes to option pricing, there is additional complexity resulting from the need to respond to quickly changing markets. For example, in order to take advantage of inaccurately priced stock options, the computation must complete before the next change in the almost continuously changing stock market. As
1000-532: A limited downside. Taleb asserts that by adopting these strategies, a portfolio can be "robust", i.e. gain a positive exposure to black swan events while limiting losses suffered by such random events. Together with Donald Geman and Hélyette Geman , he modeled a maximum entropy barbell "to constrain only what can be constrained (in a robust manner) and to maximize entropy elsewhere", based on an insight by E. T. Jaynes that economic life increases in entropy under regulatory and other constraints. Taleb also applies
1100-492: A loan or other debt obligations. The main areas of personal finance are considered to be income, spending, saving, investing, and protection. The following steps, as outlined by the Financial Planning Standards Board, suggest that an individual will understand a potentially secure personal finance plan after: Corporate finance deals with the actions that managers take to increase the value of
SECTION 10
#17327798181161200-738: A long-term strategic perspective regarding investment decisions that affect public entities. These long-term strategic periods typically encompass five or more years. Public finance is primarily concerned with: Central banks, such as the Federal Reserve System banks in the United States and the Bank of England in the United Kingdom , are strong players in public finance. They act as lenders of last resort as well as strong influences on monetary and credit conditions in
1300-570: A method of scientific discovery, by which he means that decentralized experimentation outperforms directed research. Taleb was born in Amioun , Lebanon , to Minerva Ghosn and Nagib Taleb, an oncologist and a researcher in anthropology . His parents were Greek Orthodox Christians , and had French citizenship . His maternal grandfather Fouad Nicolas Ghosn [ Wikidata ] and great-grandfather Nicolas Ghosn [ Wikidata ] were both deputy prime ministers of Lebanon in
1400-414: A mix of an art and science , and there are ongoing related efforts to organize a list of unsolved problems in finance . Managerial finance is the branch of finance that deals with the financial aspects of the management of a company, and the financial dimension of managerial decision-making more broadly. It provides the theoretical underpin for the practice described above , concerning itself with
1500-611: A postgraduate degree in this field require applicants to have a background in engineering as well. In the United States, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) does not accredit financial engineering degrees. In the United States, financial engineering programs are accredited by the International Association of Quantitative Finance . Quantitative analyst ("Quant") is
1600-535: A practitioner of mathematical finance as a hedge fund manager, and a derivatives trader . He has held the following positions: managing director and proprietary trader at Credit Suisse UBS , currency trader at First Boston , chief currency derivatives trader for Banque Indosuez , managing director and worldwide head of financial option arbitrage at CIBC Wood Gundy , derivatives arbitrage trader at Bankers Trust (now Deutsche Bank ), proprietary trader at BNP Paribas , independent option market maker on
1700-447: A result, the finance community is always looking for ways to overcome the resulting performance issues that arise when pricing options. This has led to research that applies alternative computing techniques to finance. Most commonly used quantum financial models are quantum continuous model, quantum binomial model, multi-step quantum binomial model etc. The origin of finance can be traced to the beginning of state formation and trade during
1800-486: A similar barbell-style approach to health and exercise. Instead of doing steady and moderate exercise daily, he suggests that it is better to do a low-effort exercise such as walking slowly most of the time, while occasionally expending extreme effort. He claims that the human body evolved to live in a random environment, with various unexpected but intense efforts and much rest. Taleb appeared with Ron Paul and Ralph Nader on their respective shows in support of Skin in
1900-446: A sophisticated mathematical model is required, and thus overlaps several of the above. As a specialized practice area, quantitative finance comprises primarily three sub-disciplines; the underlying theory and techniques are discussed in the next section: DCF valuation formula widely applied in business and finance, since articulated in 1938 . Here, to get the value of the firm , its forecasted free cash flows are discounted to
2000-516: A way to outperform directed research as a method of scientific discovery, an approach he terms convex tinkering. Taleb has called for discontinuation of the Nobel Prize in Economics , saying that the damage from economic theories can be devastating. He opposes top-down knowledge as an academic illusion. Together with Espen Gaarder Haug, Taleb asserts that option pricing is determined in
2100-398: A well-diversified portfolio, achieved investment performance will, in general, largely be a function of the asset mix selected, while the individual securities are less impactful. The specific approach or philosophy will also be significant, depending on the extent to which it is complementary with the market cycle . Risk management here is discussed immediately below. A quantitative fund
SECTION 20
#17327798181162200-549: Is a Greek Orthodox Christian . Taleb received Bachelor and Master of Science degrees from the University of Paris . He holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (1983), and a PhD in management science from the University of Paris (Dauphine) (1998), under the direction of Hélyette Geman . His dissertation focused on the mathematics of derivatives pricing. Taleb has been
2300-486: Is a Lebanese-American essayist, mathematical statistician , former option trader , risk analyst , and aphorist . His work concerns problems of randomness , probability , complexity , and uncertainty . Taleb is the author of the Incerto , a five-volume work on the nature of uncertainty published between 2001 and 2018 (notably, The Black Swan and Antifragile ). He has taught at several universities, serving as
2400-482: Is about performing valuation and asset allocation today, based on the risk and uncertainty of future outcomes while appropriately incorporating the time value of money . Determining the present value of these future values, "discounting", must be at the risk-appropriate discount rate , in turn, a major focus of finance-theory. As financial theory has roots in many disciplines, including mathematics, statistics, economics, physics, and psychology, it can be considered
2500-988: Is an older term, first coined in the development of rockets in WWII ( Wernher von Braun ), and later, the NASA space program; it was adapted by the first generation of financial quants who arrived on Wall Street in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While basically synonymous with financial engineer, it implies adventurousness and fondness for disruptive innovation . Financial "rocket scientists" were usually trained in applied mathematics, statistics or finance and spent their entire careers in risk-taking. They were not hired for their mathematical talents, they either worked for themselves or applied mathematical techniques to traditional financial jobs. The later generation of financial engineers were more likely to have PhDs in mathematics, physics , electrical and computer engineering, and often started their careers in academics or non-financial fields. One of
2600-436: Is managed using computer-based mathematical techniques (increasingly, machine learning ) instead of human judgment. The actual trading is typically automated via sophisticated algorithms . Risk management , in general, is the study of how to control risks and balance the possibility of gains; it is the process of measuring risk and then developing and implementing strategies to manage that risk. Financial risk management
2700-444: Is mathematics that is actually important in this new scenario Finance theory is heavily based on financial instrument pricing such as stock option pricing. Many of the problems facing the finance community have no known analytical solution. As a result, numerical methods and computer simulations for solving these problems have proliferated. This research area is known as computational finance . Many computational finance problems have
2800-478: Is not taken seriously in academia. Haug and Taleb (2011) listed hundreds of research documents showing the Black–Scholes formula was not derived by Scholes, and argued that the economics establishment ignored literature by practitioners and mathematicians such as Ed Thorp , who many years earlier, had developed a more sophisticated version of the formula. Taleb's outspoken and directed commentary against parts of
2900-657: Is often indirect, through a financial intermediary such as a bank , or via the purchase of notes or bonds ( corporate bonds , government bonds , or mutual bonds) in the bond market . The lender receives interest, the borrower pays a higher interest than the lender receives, and the financial intermediary earns the difference for arranging the loan. A bank aggregates the activities of many borrowers and lenders. A bank accepts deposits from lenders, on which it pays interest. The bank then lends these deposits to borrowers. Banks allow borrowers and lenders, of different sizes, to coordinate their activity. Investing typically entails
3000-428: Is pointless, because risk is difficult, if not impossible to compute. His preferred strategy is to be both hyper-conservative and hyper-aggressive at the same time. For example, an investor might put 80 to 90% of their money in extremely safe instruments, such as treasury bills, with the remainder going into highly risky and diversified speculative bets. An alternative suggestion is to engage in highly speculative bets with
3100-497: Is referred to as "wholesale finance". Institutions here extend the products offered , with related trading, to include bespoke options , swaps , and structured products , as well as specialized financing ; this " financial engineering " is inherently mathematical , and these institutions are then the major employers of "quants" (see below ). In these institutions, risk management , regulatory capital , and compliance play major roles. As outlined, finance comprises, broadly,
Financial engineering - Misplaced Pages Continue
3200-471: Is the branch of economics that studies the interrelation of financial variables , such as prices , interest rates and shares, as opposed to real economic variables, i.e. goods and services . It thus centers on pricing, decision making, and risk management in the financial markets , and produces many of the commonly employed financial models . ( Financial econometrics is the branch of financial economics that uses econometric techniques to parameterize
3300-485: Is the practice of protecting corporate value against financial risks , often by "hedging" exposure to these using financial instruments. The focus is particularly on credit and market risk, and in banks, through regulatory capital, includes operational risk. Financial risk management is related to corporate finance in two ways. Firstly, firm exposure to market risk is a direct result of previous capital investments and funding decisions; while credit risk arises from
3400-400: Is then often referred to as "business finance". Typically, "corporate finance" relates to the long term objective of maximizing the value of the entity's assets , its stock , and its return to shareholders , while also balancing risk and profitability . This entails three primary areas: The latter creates the link with investment banking and securities trading , as above, in that
3500-652: The American Statistical Association devoted the August 2007 issue of The American Statistician to The Black Swan . The magazine offered a mixture of praise and criticism for Taleb's main points, with a focus on Taleb's writing style and his representation of the statistical literature. Robert Lund, a mathematics professor at Clemson University , writes that in Black Swan , Taleb is "reckless at times and subject to grandiose overstatements;
3600-588: The Black–Scholes–Merton formula . Taleb accused Scholes of being responsible for the 2007–2008 financial crisis , and suggested that "this guy should be in a retirement home doing Sudoku . His funds have blown up twice. He shouldn't be allowed in Washington to lecture anyone on risk." Scholes retorted that Taleb simply "popularises ideas and is making money selling books". Scholes claimed that Taleb does not cite previous literature, and for this reason Taleb
3700-665: The Bronze Age . The earliest historical evidence of finance is dated to around 3000 BCE. Banking originated in West Asia, where temples and palaces were used as safe places for the storage of valuables. Initially, the only valuable that could be deposited was grain, but cattle and precious materials were eventually included. During the same period, the Sumerian city of Uruk in Mesopotamia supported trade by lending as well as
3800-567: The Certificate in Quantitative Finance . Financial theory Finance refers to monetary resources and to the study and discipline of money , currency , assets and liabilities . As a subject of study, it is related to but distinct from economics , which is the study of the production , distribution , and consumption of goods and services . Based on the scope of financial activities in financial systems ,
3900-505: The Certificate in Quantitative Finance . He is also a faculty member of the New England Complex Systems Institute . Taleb's first non-technical book, Fooled by Randomness , about the underestimation of the role of randomness in life, published in 2001, was selected by Fortune as one of the smartest 75 books known. His second non-technical book, The Black Swan , about unpredictable events,
4000-544: The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and hedge fund manager for Empirica Capital . Taleb reportedly became financially independent after the crash of 1987 from his hedged short Eurodollar position while working as a trader for First Boston. Next, Taleb pursued work toward his PhD in Paris, completing the degree program in 1998 . He returned to New York City and founded Empirica Capital in 1999 . During
4100-545: The Roman Republic , interest was outlawed by the Lex Genucia reforms in 342 BCE, though the provision went largely unenforced. Under Julius Caesar , a ceiling on interest rates of 12% was set, and much later under Justinian it was lowered even further to between 4% and 8%. Nassim Taleb Nassim Nicholas Taleb ( / ˈ t ɑː l ə b / ; alternatively Nessim or Nissim ; born 12 September 1960)
Financial engineering - Misplaced Pages Continue
4200-529: The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos in 2009; at that event he had harsh words for bankers, suggesting that bankers' recklessness will not be repeated "if you have punishment". Taleb shifted his career emphasis to mathematical research in 2006. Since 2008, he has taught classes at New York University Tandon School of Engineering , as Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering. and
4300-446: The managerial application of the various finance techniques . Academics working in this area are typically based in business school finance departments, in accounting , or in management science . The tools addressed and developed relate in the main to managerial accounting and corporate finance : the former allow management to better understand, and hence act on, financial information relating to profitability and performance;
4400-724: The numerical methods applied here. Experimental finance aims to establish different market settings and environments to experimentally observe and provide a lens through which science can analyze agents' behavior and the resulting characteristics of trading flows, information diffusion, and aggregation, price setting mechanisms, and returns processes. Researchers in experimental finance can study to what extent existing financial economics theory makes valid predictions and therefore prove them, as well as attempt to discover new principles on which such theory can be extended and be applied to future financial decisions. Research may proceed by conducting trading simulations or by establishing and studying
4500-542: The "black swan" idea, owned and managed by Spitznagel in Miami, Florida. Taleb attributed the 2007–2008 financial crisis , to the mismatch between reality and statistical distributions used in finance. Taleb's investing approach produced significant returns once again, with some Universa funds returning 65% to 115% in October 2008. In a 2007 Wall Street Journal article, Taleb claimed he retired from trading and would be
4600-604: The 1940s through the 1970s, and his four-times great grandfather was one of the board of directors to the administrator of Mount Lebanon . His paternal grandfather Nassim Taleb was a supreme court judge. Taleb attended a French school in Beirut, the Grand Lycée Franco-Libanais . His family saw its political prominence and wealth reduced by the Lebanese Civil War , which began in 1975. He
4700-510: The Game (2018). It was originally published in November 2016 including only the first four books. The fifth book was added in August 2019. Taleb's non-technical writing style has been described as mixing a narrative, often semi-autobiographical style with short philosophical tales and historical and scientific commentary. The sales of Taleb's first two books garnered an advance of $ 4 million, for
4800-484: The Game , which was dedicated to both men. After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine , however, Taleb publicly supported an aggressive response against Russia and denounced "naive libertarians, who think I'm like them because they like my books." Taleb wrote in Antifragile and in scientific papers that if the statistical structure of habits in modern society differ too greatly from the ancestral environment of humanity,
4900-561: The World Economic Forum at Davos, calling it the "International Association of Namedroppers" and stating "they think it's their mission to solve a problem they don't understand." Incerto is a group of works by Taleb as philosophical essays on uncertainty. It was bundled into a group of four works in November 2016 ISBN 978-0399590450 . A fifth book, Skin in the Game , was published in February 2018. This fifth book
5000-478: The above " Fundamental theorem of asset pricing ". The subject has a close relationship with financial economics, which, as outlined, is concerned with much of the underlying theory that is involved in financial mathematics: generally, financial mathematics will derive and extend the mathematical models suggested. Computational finance is the branch of (applied) computer science that deals with problems of practical interest in finance, and especially emphasizes
5100-459: The analysis of consumption should focus less on composition and more on frequency. In other words, studies that ignore the random nature of supply of nutrients are invalid. Taleb co-authored a paper with Yaneer Bar-Yam and Joseph Norman called Systemic risk of pandemic via novel pathogens – Coronavirus: A note . The paper, published on 26 January 2020, took the position that the SARS-CoV-2
SECTION 50
#17327798181165200-501: The behavior of people in artificial, competitive, market-like settings. Behavioral finance studies how the psychology of investors or managers affects financial decisions and markets and is relevant when making a decision that can impact either negatively or positively on one of their areas. With more in-depth research into behavioral finance, it is possible to bridge what actually happens in financial markets with analysis based on financial theory. Behavioral finance has grown over
5300-579: The business's credit policy and is often addressed through credit insurance and provisioning . Secondly, both disciplines share the goal of enhancing or at least preserving, the firm's economic value , and in this context overlaps also enterprise risk management , typically the domain of strategic management . Here, businesses devote much time and effort to forecasting , analytics and performance monitoring . (See ALM and treasury management .) For banks and other wholesale institutions, risk management focuses on managing, and as necessary hedging,
5400-891: The capital raised will generically comprise debt, i.e. corporate bonds , and equity , often listed shares . Re risk management within corporates, see below . Financial managers—i.e. as distinct from corporate financiers—focus more on the short term elements of profitability, cash flow, and " working capital management " ( inventory , credit and debtors ), ensuring that the firm can safely and profitably carry out its financial and operational objectives; i.e. that it: (1) can service both maturing short-term debt repayments, and scheduled long-term debt payments, and (2) has sufficient cash flow for ongoing and upcoming operational expenses . (See Financial management and Financial planning and analysis .) Public finance describes finance as related to sovereign states, sub-national entities, and related public entities or agencies. It generally encompasses
5500-426: The data and algorithms that arise in financial modeling. Financial engineering draws on tools from applied mathematics , computer science , statistics and economic theory . In the broadest sense, anyone who uses technical tools in finance could be called a financial engineer, for example any computer programmer in a bank or any statistician in a government economic bureau. However, most practitioners restrict
5600-456: The discipline can be divided into personal , corporate , and public finance . In these financial systems, assets are bought, sold, or traded as financial instruments , such as currencies , loans , bonds , shares , stocks , options , futures , etc. Assets can also be banked , invested , and insured to maximize value and minimize loss. In practice, risks are always present in any financial action and entities. Due to its wide scope,
5700-461: The economy. Development finance , which is related, concerns investment in economic development projects provided by a (quasi) governmental institution on a non-commercial basis; these projects would otherwise not be able to get financing . A public–private partnership is primarily used for infrastructure projects: a private sector corporate provides the financing up-front, and then draws profits from taxpayers or users. Climate finance , and
5800-456: The error of comparing real-world randomness with the "structured randomness" in quantum physics (where probabilities are computable) or games of chance such as casino gambling, in which the probabilities are purposefully constructed by casino management. Taleb calls this the " ludic fallacy ". He argues that predictive models suffer from Platonism , gravitating towards mathematical purity and failing to take certain key ideas into account such as
5900-672: The excess, intending to earn a fair return. Correspondingly, an entity where income is less than expenditure can raise capital usually in one of two ways: (i) by borrowing in the form of a loan (private individuals), or by selling government or corporate bonds ; (ii) by a corporation selling equity , also called stock or shares (which may take various forms: preferred stock or common stock ). The owners of both bonds and stock may be institutional investors —financial institutions such as investment banks and pension funds —or private individuals, called private investors or retail investors. (See Financial market participants .) The lending
6000-510: The field is referred to as quantitative finance and / or mathematical finance, and comprises primarily the three areas discussed. The main mathematical tools and techniques are, correspondingly: Mathematically, these separate into two analytic branches : derivatives pricing uses risk-neutral probability (or arbitrage-pricing probability), denoted by "Q"; while risk and portfolio management generally use physical (or actual or actuarial) probability, denoted by "P". These are interrelated through
6100-416: The field. Quantum finance is an interdisciplinary field, in which theories and methods developed by quantum physicists and economists are applied to solve financial problems. It represents a branch known as econophysics. Although quantum computational methods have been around for quite some time and use the basic principles of physics to better understand the ways to implement and manage cash flows, it
SECTION 60
#17327798181166200-417: The field. The financial engineering program at New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering was the first curriculum to be certified by the International Association of Financial Engineers . The number, and variation, of these programs has grown over the decades subsequent (see Master of Quantitative Finance § History ); and lately includes undergraduate study, as well as designations such as
6300-534: The finance industry and warned about financial crises , subsequently profiting from the Black Monday (1987) and the 2007–2008 financial crisis . He advocates what he calls a "black swan robust" society, meaning a society that can withstand difficult-to-predict events. He proposes what he has termed " antifragility " in systems; that is, an ability to benefit and grow from a certain class of random events, errors, and volatility, as well as "convex tinkering" as
6400-559: The finance industry—e.g., saying at Davos in 2009 that he was "happy" that Lehman Brothers collapsed—was followed by reports of threats and personal attacks. Taleb is known for his uncensored criticism of public figures and institutions. He has referred to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as "a very dishonourable fellow" and Blair's successor, Gordon Brown as "an idiot". He has criticized prominent economists like Larry Summers, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, stating that "they cause more crises than they solve". He has also been critical of
6500-410: The firm to the shareholders, the sources of funding and the capital structure of corporations, and the tools and analysis used to allocate financial resources. While corporate finance is in principle different from managerial finance , which studies the financial management of all firms rather than corporations alone, the concepts are applicable to the financial problems of all firms, and this area
6600-451: The first scholarly work in this area. The field is largely focused on the modeling of derivatives —with much emphasis on interest rate- and credit risk modeling —while other important areas include insurance mathematics and quantitative portfolio management . Relatedly, the techniques developed are applied to pricing and hedging a wide range of asset-backed , government , and corporate -securities. As above , in terms of practice,
6700-627: The flows of capital that take place between individuals and households ( personal finance ), governments ( public finance ), and businesses ( corporate finance ). "Finance" thus studies the process of channeling money from savers and investors to entities that need it. Savers and investors have money available which could earn interest or dividends if put to productive use. Individuals, companies and governments must obtain money from some external source, such as loans or credit, when they lack sufficient funds to run their operations. In general, an entity whose income exceeds its expenditure can lend or invest
6800-400: The foundation of business and accounting . In some cases, theories in finance can be tested using the scientific method , covered by experimental finance . The early history of finance parallels the early history of money , which is prehistoric . Ancient and medieval civilizations incorporated basic functions of finance, such as banking, trading and accounting, into their economies. In
6900-712: The fundamental risk mitigant here, investment managers will apply various hedging techniques as appropriate, these may relate to the portfolio as a whole or to individual stocks . Bond portfolios are often (instead) managed via cash flow matching or immunization , while for derivative portfolios and positions, traders use "the Greeks" to measure and then offset sensitivities. In parallel, managers — active and passive — will monitor tracking error , thereby minimizing and preempting any underperformance vs their "benchmark" . Quantitative finance—also referred to as "mathematical finance"—includes those finance activities where
7000-506: The heart of investment management is asset allocation — diversifying the exposure among these asset classes , and among individual securities within each asset class—as appropriate to the client's investment policy , in turn, a function of risk profile, investment goals, and investment horizon (see Investor profile ). Here: Overlaid is the portfolio manager's investment style —broadly, active vs passive , value vs growth , and small cap vs. large cap —and investment strategy . In
7100-492: The impossibility of possessing all relevant information; that small unknown variations in the data can have a huge impact; and flawed theories/models based on empirical data and that fail to consider events that have not taken place but could take place. Discussing the ludic fallacy in The Black Swan , he writes, "The dark side of the moon is harder to see; beaming light on it costs energy. In the same way, beaming light on
7200-641: The insults to get the "important philosophic and mathematical truths." Taleb replied in the second edition of The Black Swan that "One of the most common (but useless) comments I hear is that some solutions can come from 'robust statistics.' I wonder how using these techniques can create information where there is none". In 2007, Westfall and Hilbe complained that Taleb's criticism is "often unfounded and sometimes outrageous." Taleb, writes John Kay , "describes writers and professionals as knaves or fools, mostly fools ... Yet beneath his rage and mockery are serious issues. The risk management models in use today exclude
7300-444: The last few decades to become an integral aspect of finance. Behavioral finance includes such topics as: A strand of behavioral finance has been dubbed quantitative behavioral finance , which uses mathematical and statistical methodology to understand behavioral biases in conjunction with valuation. Quantum finance involves applying quantum mechanical approaches to financial theory, providing novel methods and perspectives in
7400-423: The late 19th century, the global financial system was formed. In the middle of the 20th century, finance emerged as a distinct academic discipline, separate from economics. The earliest doctoral programs in finance were established in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, finance is also widely studied through career -focused undergraduate and master's level programs. As outlined, the financial system consists of
7500-427: The latter, as above, are about optimizing the overall financial structure, including its impact on working capital. Key aspects of managerial finance thus include: The discussion, however, extends to business strategy more broadly, emphasizing alignment with the company's overall strategic objectives; and similarly incorporates the managerial perspectives of planning, directing, and controlling. Financial economics
7600-573: The market downturn in 2000, at the end of the dot com bubble and burst , Empirica's Empirica Kurtosis LLC fund was reported to have made a 56.86% return. Taleb's investing strategies continued to be highly successful during the Nasdaq dive in 2000 Several consecutive years of low market volatility and less spectacular returns followed, and Empirica closed in 2004. In 2007, Taleb joined his former Empirica partner, Mark Spitznagel , as an adviser to Universa Investments , an asset management company based on
7700-402: The most effective (that is, least fragile) risk management approach: what he calls the " barbell strategy " which is based on avoiding the middle in favor of linear combination of extremes, across all domains from politics to economics to one's personal life. These are deemed by Taleb to be more robust to estimation errors. For instance, he suggests that investing money in 'medium risk' investments
7800-444: The present using the weighted average cost of capital for the discount factor. For share valuation investors use the related dividend discount model . Financial theory is studied and developed within the disciplines of management , (financial) economics , accountancy and applied mathematics . Abstractly, finance is concerned with the investment and deployment of assets and liabilities over "space and time"; i.e., it
7900-401: The problem statistical undecidability (Douady and Taleb, 2010). Taleb has described his main challenge as mapping his ideas of "robustification" and " antifragility ", that is, how to live and act in a world we do not understand and build robustness to black swan events. Taleb introduced the idea of the "fourth quadrant" in the exposure domain. One of its applications is in his definition of
8000-462: The professional statistician will find the book ubiquitously naive." However, Lund acknowledges that "there are many points where I agree with Taleb," and writes that "the book is a must" for anyone "remotely interested in finance and/or philosophical probability." Taleb and Nobel laureate Myron Scholes have traded personal attacks, particularly after Taleb's paper with Espen Gaarder Haug [ no ] , in which Taleb alleged that nobody uses
8100-400: The prominent critics of financial engineering is Nassim Taleb , a professor of financial engineering at Polytechnic Institute of New York University who argues that it replaces common sense and leads to disaster. A series of economic collapses has led many governments to argue a return to "real" engineering from financial engineering. A gentler criticism came from Emanuel Derman who heads
8200-409: The purchase of stock , either individual securities or via a mutual fund , for example. Stocks are usually sold by corporations to investors so as to raise required capital in the form of " equity financing ", as distinct from the debt financing described above. The financial intermediaries here are the investment banks . The investment banks find the initial investors and facilitate the listing of
8300-749: The rate of 20 percent per year. By 1200 BCE, cowrie shells were used as a form of money in China . The use of coins as a means of representing money began in the years between 700 and 500 BCE. Herodotus mentions the use of crude coins in Lydia around 687 BCE and, by 640 BCE, the Lydians had started to use coin money more widely and opened permanent retail shops. Shortly after, cities in Classical Greece , such as Aegina , Athens , and Corinth , started minting their own coins between 595 and 570 BCE. During
8400-425: The regulations and Basel capital/liquidity requirements. An older use of the term "financial engineering" that is less common today is aggressive restructuring of corporate balance sheets . Mathematical finance is the application of mathematics to finance. Computational finance and mathematical finance are both subfields of financial engineering. Computational finance is a field in computer science and deals with
8500-724: The related Environmental finance , address the financial strategies, resources and instruments used in climate change mitigation . Investment management is the professional asset management of various securities—typically shares and bonds, but also other assets, such as real estate, commodities and alternative investments —in order to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of investors. As above, investors may be institutions, such as insurance companies, pension funds, corporations, charities, educational establishments, or private investors, either directly via investment contracts or, more commonly, via collective investment schemes like mutual funds, exchange-traded funds , or REITs . At
8600-413: The relationships suggested.) The discipline has two main areas of focus: asset pricing and corporate finance; the first being the perspective of providers of capital, i.e. investors, and the second of users of capital; respectively: Financial mathematics is the field of applied mathematics concerned with financial markets ; Louis Bachelier's doctoral thesis , defended in 1900, is considered to be
8700-475: The securities, typically shares and bonds. Additionally, they facilitate the securities exchanges , which allow their trade thereafter, as well as the various service providers which manage the performance or risk of these investments. These latter include mutual funds , pension funds , wealth managers , and stock brokers , typically servicing retail investors (private individuals). Inter-institutional trade and investment, and fund-management at this scale ,
8800-458: The term to someone educated in the full range of tools of modern finance and whose work is informed by financial theory. It is sometimes restricted even further, to cover only those originating new financial products and strategies. Despite its name, financial engineering does not belong to any of the fields in traditional professional engineering even though many financial engineers have studied engineering beforehand and many universities offering
8900-623: The three areas of personal finance, corporate finance, and public finance. These, in turn, overlap and employ various activities and sub-disciplines—chiefly investments , risk management, and quantitative finance . Personal finance refers to the practice of budgeting to ensure enough funds are available to meet basic needs, while ensuring there is only a reasonable level of risk to lose said capital. Personal finance may involve paying for education, financing durable goods such as real estate and cars, buying insurance , investing, and saving for retirement . Personal finance may also involve paying for
9000-440: The unseen is costly, in both computational and mental effort." In the second edition of The Black Swan , he posited that the foundations of quantitative economics are faulty and highly self-referential. He states that statistics is fundamentally incomplete as a field, as it cannot predict the risk of rare events, a problem that is acute in proportion to the rarity of these events. With the mathematician Raphael Douady , he called
9100-446: The use of interest. In Sumerian, "interest" was mas , which translates to "calf". In Greece and Egypt, the words used for interest, tokos and ms respectively, meant "to give birth". In these cultures, interest indicated a valuable increase, and seemed to consider it from the lender's point of view. The Code of Hammurabi (1792–1750 BCE) included laws governing banking operations. The Babylonians were accustomed to charging interest at
9200-635: The various positions held by the institution—both trading positions and long term exposures —and on calculating and monitoring the resultant economic capital , and regulatory capital under Basel III . The calculations here are mathematically sophisticated, and within the domain of quantitative finance as below. Credit risk is inherent in the business of banking, but additionally, these institutions are exposed to counterparty credit risk . Banks typically employ Middle office "Risk Groups" , whereas front office risk teams provide risk "services" (or "solutions") to customers. Additional to diversification ,
9300-488: The very events against which they claim to protect the businesses that employ them. These models import a veneer of technical sophistication ... " Berkeley statistician David Freedman said that efforts by statisticians to refute Taleb's stance have been unconvincing. Taleb contends that statisticians can be pseudoscientists when it comes to risks of rare events and risks of blowups, and mask their incompetence with complicated equations. This stance has attracted criticism:
9400-443: The world". Daniel Kahneman proposed the inclusion of Taleb's name among the world's top intellectuals, saying "Taleb has changed the way many people think about uncertainty, particularly in the financial markets. His book, The Black Swan , is an original and audacious analysis of the ways in which humans try to make sense of unexpected events." A book of aphorisms , The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms ,
9500-779: The wrong map of reality, rather than no map at all. He opposes most economic and grand social science theorizing, which in his view, suffers acutely from the problem of overuse of Plato's theory of forms . He has also proposed that biological, economic, and other systems exhibit an ability to benefit and grow from volatility—including particular types of random errors and events—a characteristic of these systems that he terms antifragility . Relatedly, he also believes that universities are better at public relations and claiming credit than generating knowledge. He argues that knowledge and technology are usually generated by what he calls " stochastic tinkering" rather than by top-down directed research, and has proposed option-like experimentation as
9600-767: Was a Distinguished Research Scholar at the Said Business School BT Center, University of Oxford from 2009 to 2013. Taleb also held positions at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences , the University of Massachusetts Amherst , and the London Business School . Taleb is Co-Editor in Chief of the academic journal Risk and Decision Analysis since September 2014, jointly teaches regular courses with Paul Wilmott in London, and occasionally participates in teaching courses toward
9700-453: Was a code word for risky securities, that brought no benefits to society. For most people, he said, the advent of the ATM was more crucial than any asset-backed bond . The first Master of Financial Engineering degree programs were set up in the early 1990s. The number and size of programs has grown rapidly, to the extent that some now use the term "financial engineer" to refer to a graduate in
9800-407: Was not being taken seriously enough by policy makers and medical professionals. Aaron Brown , a quantitative analyst and adjunct professor , said regarding The Black Swan that "the book reads as if Taleb has never heard of nonparametric methods , data analysis , visualization tools or robust estimation ." Nonetheless, he calls the book "essential reading" and urges statisticians to overlook
9900-546: Was published in 2007, selling close to three million copies, as of February 2011. It spent 36 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list , 17 as hardcover and 19 weeks as paperback, and was translated into 50 languages. The book has been credited with predicting the 2007–2008 financial crisis . In a 2008 article in The Times , journalist Bryan Appleyard described Taleb as "the hottest thinker in
10000-610: Was released in December 2010. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder was published in November 2012 and Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life was published in February 2018. Taleb's five volume philosophical essay on uncertainty, titled Incerto , includes Fooled by Randomness (2001), The Black Swan (2007–2010), The Bed of Procrustes (2010), Antifragile (2012), and Skin in
#115884