Trade Strategy Perf Evaluation Flashcards
Trade Motivation
- Profit seeking
Active pm seek to capitalize on investment ahead of the market
- rate of alpha decay: detection in alpha once an investment decision has been made
is high when manager needs to trade in shorter time frames
Profit-seeking algorithms use real-time market data to determine which securities to buy and sell
trade agency: refers to how quickly or slowly the order is executed over the trading time horizon
- risk Management / hedge needs
- Portfolio needs to be traded to maintain target risk exposures
- Derivatives may be used to facilitate risk management - Cash flow needs
- trades are caused by investor subscription into, and redemption is out of the fund
- collateral and margin calls could require close-to-immediate liquidation, whereas a fund redemption entails a notice period
- to avoid cash drag, PM may engage in equalization strategy - corp. action, margin calls and index reconstitution
- M&A or spinoff may require portfolio trading or dividend reverting
- margin calls on leveraged positions that suffering losses may require urgent sale of portfolio holdings
- when the bank index is reconstituted, PM needed to executed trades to reflect the changes
trading strategy inputs
Side
if price increase, executing a buy order may take longer than executing a sell order
- herding effect
Size
the total absolute amount of the security being transacted. Large order have increase market impact cost.
Relative size
order size as a % of the security’s average daily volume (ADV)
ST alpha
alpha decay high
high urgency
increase rates of alpha decay require faster trading and associated higher trading costs
high alpha decay, high urgency
higher market impact cost
Greater trade urgency results in lower execution risk because the order is executed over a shorter period of time, which decreases the time the trade is exposed to price volatility and changing market conditions.
price volatility
increase price volatility implies increase execution risk
security liquidity
increase liquidity reduces execution risk and trading costs such as market impact
market crisis
market volatility and liquidity are negatively correlated
Liquidity is a key concern
Stock Index
During the normal market environment, a firm being added or removed from a stock index may directly affect its liquidity
High risk aversion
high urgency to trade
- more concentrated about market risk
- tend to trade with greater trade urgency to avoid the greater market exposure
market impact (size)
the adverse prices impact caused true trading a large volume order at one time.
To minimize info leakage, pM may choose trading in the dark pool or using market and limit orders.
execution risk
trading too slowly
the adverse price impact resulting from a change in the fundamental value of the security
trader’s dilemma:
all equity market impact causes execution risk and vice versa
tradeoff: urgency rise, market impact increase, execution risk decrease
urgency decline, market impact decline, execution risk increase
Reference prices
used to determine expected trading costs which enables managers/ traders to select the optional strategy for a trade
Pretrade benchmarks (before the start of trading)
A pre-trade benchmark is often specified by portfolio managers who are buying or selling securities seeking short-term alpha by buying undervalued or selling overvalued securities in the market.
decision price
previous close
use as proxy for decision price when it’s quantitative manager
opening price
subjective manager
arrival price: time the order is sent to the market for execution
intraday benchmark
based on prices during trading period, used by managers who trade passively over a day, or funds that maybe rebalancing or mining risk
VWAP
low order volume relative to avg. daily volume traded
narrow bid-ask
low urgency to complete
help achieve the objective of using the cash received from sell order to fund buy orders of the rebalancing
-equal weighted average price of all trades executed
Time-series average price
TWAP
average price ignore volume of all trade during trading horizon
best when there are outliers or if there is highly fluctuating volume during the day
appropriate for managers who wish to remove the impact of outliers since they believe they are less able to participate in extreme trades. It’s also appropriate in market environments with highly fluctuating volume throughout the day.
Post trade benchmark
determine after trading has been completed.
close-price used to reduce tracking error
Price target benchmark
base on manager’s view of fair value
Price used to profit-seeking managers aiming to earn short term alpha, related to the manager’s view of the fair value of the security
Trading Strategy Selection
ST alpha
trade ST mispricing in a liquid market
high urgency
price target Benchmark
LT alpha
trade over the LT due to change in fundamental conditions
low urgency
difficult to use
Risk rebalance
rebalance or hedge risk exposure
low urgency
TWAP
client redemption
liquidate the holdings to meet client redemption
EOD trading close price
New mandate
invest new client fund
low urgency
close price
trade implementation choices
high-touch approach
human
require for large trades (block trade), involving greater human engagement
low order volume relative to avg. daily volume
narrow bid-ask
high urgency
dealer market include: principle trade
dealer/ market makers assume all or some of the risk relating to executing the order, priced into spread.
Quarter-driven, OTC or exchange markets are primacy principal trade markets which also includes request-for-quote (RFQ) markets where market makers do not provide continuous quotes, but only does on request.
- broker market
agency trades dealers try to arrange trades by acting as agents (brokers) on behalf of client.
electronic trading
used for more liquid trades/market
involve direct market access (DMA) and/or algorithmic trading.
DMA allow buy side portfolio managers/ trades to access the order book of the exchange directly through a broker’s tech infrastructure.
algorithm trading
profit seeking & trade execution
Profit-seeking algorithms use real-time market data to determine which securities to buy and sell
execution algorithms focus on how to trade manager orders.
scheduled algorithms % of volume (POV)
Vwap
twap
POV (participation algorithm)
send orders according to volume participation schedule
adv:
automatically exploit increased liquidity when available
disadvantage:
they continue to trade at any potentially adverse price, and may not fill the order in a specific time if there’s a lack of trading
trading cost increase
VWAP & TWAP
time-slicing algorithms
VWAP algorithms attempt to watch the vwap price for the period by carving up the trade and steady slice orders based in historical intraday volumes
adv:
ensure that a specific # of shares are executed in a specific time period
disadvantage:
they may force trades in times of low liquidity or trade too little in times of high liquidity
liquidity-seeking algorithms
opportunistic algorithms
if the trade is high ADV of the daily volume
arrival price
price when sent order to market
algorithms seek to trade close to market prices prevailing at the time the order is entered. Trade more aggressively
Dark strategies / liquidity aggregators
execute trades in dark pools, with aggregate algorithms attempting to optimize trading across multiple farm revenues
Dark aggregator algorithms appropriate for liquid or wide bid-ask spread, large order size. Good for avoid information leakage.
Smart order routers (SORs)
that determine the best destination to route an electronic order to get the best result.
Focus on getting the best price for market orders or the highest probability of execution for limited orders.
Clustering
ML technique whereby a computer learns to identify which algorithm is optimal for different types of traders based on the key features of trades.
High frequency makes forecast
attempt to model ST market direction.
LASSO is a ML technique that helps to reduce the # of explanatory variables to manageable # of significant variable
Equity
Stock exchange
Dark pools
most tech advanced
electronically executed
FI
low liquidity
large order size - dealer based quote driven market
High frequency execution for urgent trades, less urgent trade use broker-agent approach
OTC treasury can be traded algorithm
RFP
Exchange trade derivative
most common electronic trading
using low touch approach
buy-side traders generally use DMA for small trade
CTC Derivatives
dealer quote driven market
high touch approaches
Spot fx currency
OTcmarket both electronic trading and high touch broker approaches
Small order use DMA
Explicit
commission and fess
implicit embedded
market impact/ execution risk