This chapter comes from ETF Strategies & Tactics, which provides a detailed account of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), covering how they work, their distinctive characteristics, who trades them, who owns them, and their advantages and disadvantages. The authors present techniques for determining the viability of specific ETF funds, including their value in sector investing and international investing. This authoritative reference will keep you on top of your game by providing focused decision-making techniques that help determine the viability of any ETF, including its value in sector and international investing.

The Science of Algorithmic Trading and Portfolio Management, with its emphasis on algorithmic trading processes and current trading models, sits apart from others of its kind. Robert Kissell, the first author to discuss algorithmic trading across the various asset classes, provides key insights into ways to develop, test, and build trading algorithms. Readers learn how to evaluate market impact models and assess performance across algorithms, traders, and brokers, and acquire the knowledge to implement electronic trading systems. This valuable book summarizes market structure, the formation of prices, and how different participants interact with one another, including bluffing, speculating, and gambling. Readers learn the underlying details and mathematics of customized trading algorithms, as well as advanced modeling techniques to improve profitability through algorithmic trading and appropriate risk management techniques. Portfolio management topics, including quant factors and black box models, are discussed, and an accompanying website includes examples, data sets supplementing exercises in the book, and large projects. - Prepares readers to evaluate market impact models and assess performance across algorithms, traders, and brokers. - Helps readers design systems to manage algorithmic risk and dark pool uncertainty. - Summarizes an algorithmic decision making framework to ensure consistency between investment objectives and trading objectives.

The book provides detailed descriptions, including more than 550 mathematical formulas, for more than 150 trading strategies across a host of asset classes and trading styles. These include stocks, options, fixed income, futures, ETFs, indexes, commodities, foreign exchange, convertibles, structured assets, volatility, real estate, distressed assets, cash, cryptocurrencies, weather, energy, inflation, global macro, infrastructure, and tax arbitrage. Some strategies are based on machine learning algorithms such as artificial neural networks, Bayes, and k-nearest neighbors. The book also includes source code for illustrating out-of-sample backtesting, around 2,000 bibliographic references, and more than 900 glossary, acronym and math definitions. The presentation is intended to be descriptive and pedagogical and of particular interest to finance practitioners, traders, researchers, academics, and business school and finance program students.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have become in their 25-year history one of the fastest growing segments of the investment management business. These funds provide liquid access to virtually every financial market and allow large and small investors to build institutional-caliber portfolios. Yet, their management fees are significantly lower than those typical of mutual funds. High levels of transparency in ETFs for holdings and investment strategy help investors evaluate an ETF’s potential returns and risks. This book covers the evolution of ETFs as products and in their uses in investment strategies. It details how ETFs work, their unique investment and trading features, their regulatory structure, how they are used in tactical and strategic portfolio management in a broad range of asset classes, and how to evaluate them individually.

This publication aims to fill the void between books providing an introduction to derivatives, and advanced books whose target audience are members of quantitative modelling community. In order to appeal to the widest audience, this publication tries to assume the least amount of prior knowledge. The content quickly moves onto more advanced subjects in order to concentrate on more practical and advanced topics. "A master piece to learn in a nutshell all the essentials about volatility with a practical and lively approach. A must read!" Carole Bernard, Equity Derivatives Specialist at Bloomberg "This book could be seen as the 'volatility bible'!" Markus-Alexander Flesch, Head of Sales & Marketing at Eurex "I highly recommend this book both for those new to the equity derivatives business, and for more advanced readers. The balance between theory and practice is struck At-The-Money" Paul Stephens, Head of Institutional Marketing at CBOE "One of the best resources out there for the volatility community" Paul Britton, CEO and Founder of Capstone Investment Advisors "Colin has managed to convey often complex derivative and volatility concepts with an admirable simplicity, a welcome change from the all-too-dense tomes one usually finds on the subject" Edmund Shing PhD, former Proprietary Trader at BNP Paribas "In a crowded space, Colin has supplied a useful and concise guide" Gary Delany, Director Europe at the Options Industry Council

The true meaning of investment discipline is to trade only when you rationally expect that you will achieve your desired objective. Accordingly, managers must thoroughly understand why they trade. Because trading is a zero-sum game, good investment discipline also requires that managers understand why their counterparties trade. This book surveys the many reasons why people trade and identifies the implications of the zero-sum game for investment discipline. It also identifies the origins of liquidity and thus of transaction costs, as well as when active investment strategies are profitable. The book then explains how managers must measure and control transaction costs to perform well. Electronic trading systems and electronic trading strategies now dominate trading in exchange markets throughout the world. The book identifies why speed is of such great importance to electronic traders, how they obtain it, and the trading strategies they use to exploit it. Finally, the book analyzes many issues associated with electronic trading that currently concern practitioners and regulators.