This paper addresses a situation wherein a retail investor must liquidate positions in her portfolio -- consisting of assets and European options on those assets -- to meet a margin call and wishes to do so with the least disruption to her portfolio. We address the problem by first generalizing...

This paper incorporates risk-based margin requirements into portfolio liquidation procedures in a novel fashion. The approach is analytic and, as a result, more efficient than conventional numerical liquidation methods. The margin requirement calculation is a self-contained inner optimization...

We find that the leverage factors of leveraged and inverse exchange traded funds can effect the "crookedness"' of volatility smiles. We model leveraged and inverse ETF option prices using partial differential equations (PDEs) and determine closed-form solutions for the option values following...

Exchange-traded products (ETPs) linked to futures contracts on the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) have grown in volume and assets under management in recent years, in part because of their perceived potential to hedge against stock market losses. In this paper we study whether VIX-related...