This paper analyzes immunization strategies in the mean-variance framework. We characterize the efficient portfolio allocations and identify the minimum variance immunization strategy. We show that the efficient allocations can be superior or inferior to the minimum variance allocation as time...

Currency total return swaps (CTRS) are hybrid derivatives instruments that allow to simultaneously hedge against credit and currency risks. We develop a structural credit risk model to evaluate CTRS premia. Empirical test on a sample of 23,005 price observations from 59 underlying issuers yields...

In this primer, we review the classical methods for assessing the performance of a financial portfolio. The analysis relies on benchmarking the return on the portfolio with that of a peer group. We define and discuss the pros and cons of four performance metrics that are theoretically consistent...

This study uses the universe of US public firms to examine the impact of credit default swap (CDS) trading on a firm's cost of capital during the period 2001–2018. Our results robustly show that the inception of CDSs causes a significant reduction in a firm's weighted average cost of capital...

Options can be dynamically replicated using model-free Greeks extracted from the volatility smile. However, smile-implied delta and delta-gamma hedging do not achieve minimum variance in the presence of price-volatility correlation, and these strategies have shown poor performance relative to...

This paper reviews the main dimensions underlying the selection of a classical portfolio performance measure, namely the Sharpe Ratio, Jensen's alpha, the Modified Jensen's alpha, the Treynor Ratio, and the Information Ratio. We first examine how they differ from each other according to the risk...