Title Details

WILLIAM T. ZIEMBA is the Alumni Professor of Financial Modeling and Stochastic Optimization  (Emeritus), University of British Columbia. He is a well-known academic with books, research articles and talks on various investment topics. He has visited MIT, Chicago, Berkeley, UCLA, Cambridge, LSE, Oxford and the Reading ICMA Centre. He trades through William T Ziemba Investment Management Inc. He has consulted for various financial institutions on hedge funds and investments.

Preface.

About the authors.

PART I INVESTMENT STRATEGIES: USING THE KELLY CAPITAL GROWTH CRITERION.

1 Take a chance.

The colocation of money and math.

Changing a gamble into an investment.

2 The capital growth theory of investment.

Blackjack.

Commodity trading: Investing in the turn of the year effect with Index Futures.

3 Betting on unpopular lotto numbers using the Kelly criterion.

4 Good and bad properties of the Kelly criterion.

5 Calculating the optimal Kelly fraction.

How to stay above a given wealth path.

6 The great investors, their methods and how we evaluate them: Theory.

The various efficient/inefficient market camps: can you beat the stock market?

How do investors and consultants do in all these cases?

The importance of getting the mean right.

7 The Great Investors, a way to evaluate them.

8 The methods and results of managing top US university endowments.

PART II INVESTMENT STRATEGIES: HEDGE FUNDS.

9 Hedge fund concepts and a typical convergence trade: Nikkei put warrant risk arbitrage.

Gamblers as hedge fund managers.

A typical convergence trade: the Nikkei put warrant market of 1989–90.

NSA puts and calls on the Toronto and American stock exchanges, 1989–92.

10 The recipe for disaster: How to lose money in derivatives.

Derivative disasters.

11 Hedge Fund Risk, Disasters and Their Prevention: The Failure of Long Term Capital Management.

The failure of the top hedge fund team ever assembled.

12 The imported crash of October 27 and 28, 1997.

A week on the wild side.

Postscript.

13 The 2006 Amaranth Advisors natural gas hedge fund disaster.

Background.

The trade and the rogue trader.

Is learning possible?

Possible utility functions of hedge fund traders.

Winners and losers.

PART III TOWARDS SCENARIOS: COUNTRY STUDIES.

14 Letter from Cairo.

Some challenges: Currency depreciation.

The challenge in attracting investment.

Postscript: Riding the petrodollar boom: Is recent growth sustainable?

15 Threats, challenges and opportunities of China.

Costs of development.

Overseas investment.

Postscript.

16 Chinese investment markets: Hedge fund scenario analysis.

China’s economy.

The effect of Chinese demand for resources.

Chinese stock markets.

The share alphabet: Definitions of shares available in mainland Chinese Companies.

Estimating the returns on the Chinese stock markets: IPOs, ownership and returns.

How can one participate in this China boom period?

The future: Investing in China requires a leap of faith.

Postscript: Chinese equity markets.

Postscript on economic growth and development.

17 Springtime in Buenos Aires: prospects for investment, how deep is the recovery?

Devaluation of the Argentine peso.

Challenges for the financial sector.

The challenge of promoting long-term value-added production.

Postscript: The new Kirchner era.

18 Cyprus: On the outer edge of Europe, in the middle of the Mediterranean.

US and EU policies towards use of their currencies.

Cyprus: A model EU student.

Promoting Trade and Investment Across the Mediterranean: In Whose Interest?

Postscript.

19 Is Iceland’s growth spurt threatened by financial vulnerabilities?

Amid the strengths, there are issues of concern.

The current account deficit.

Debt.

Inflation.

The currency and interest rates.

Financial (in)stability?

Predicting GDP, recessions and the stock market.

Will the stock market crash and would it influence other markets?

Prospects for the Future.

Postscript.

20 Would a bridge connect Sicily’s economy to Europe’s heart?

Sicily’s Economic Challenges.

Sicily’s ties to the Mediterranean region.

PART IV SCENARIO ANALYSIS: THE STOCHASTIC PROGRAMMING APPROACH TO MANAGING RISK.

21 Hedge and pension fund risk, disasters and their prevention.

Fixed mix and strategic asset allocation.

Stochastic programming models applied to hedge and pension fund problems.

InnoALM, The Innovest Austrian Pension Fund Financial Planning Model.

22 Setting the scenario.

Extreme scenarios.

23 Hedge fund scenario analysis.

The effect of interest rates.

The 2000–2002 crash in the S&P500.

The effect of the 2004 presidential election.

Postscript.

24 Some approaches for scenario generation and reduction.

Vector autoregressive models.

25 Using economic fundamentals to generate scenarios.

Models to predict relative and absolute asset prices.

26 Some mathematical approaches for scenario generation and reduction.

Moment matching.

The Wasserstein distance minimization approach.

27 Minimizing the effects of disasters by planning ahead.

Planning in advance: stage one of a two period stochastic program.

How much hedging is there against various risks?

Some key markets: crude oil, the S&P500, short and long term interest rates and bond prices.

Volatility.

Future prospects and the 2006 outlook.

Lessons.

Appendix The great investors: some useful books.

William Poundstone.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

David F. Swensen.

Closing thoughts.

Postscript: The Renaissance Medallion Fund.

Bibliography.

Index.