Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - General, grade: 1.7, University of Frankfurt (Main), language: English, abstract: Risk aversion is a common trait among investors. While it is possible to reduce risk attributed to specific industries and regions by diversifying among different securities, market risk affects all securities on the market. Even a perfectly diversified portfolio is subject to systematic or market risk. It can be managed through diversification across asset classes, for example by shifting some of the funds invested into risk-free assets. For some investors, this yields unsatisfactory results as the expected return directly decreases linearly with an increase in the position in the risk-free asset. Portfolio insurance (PI) describes an alternative set of strategies that allows investors to reduce their exposure to market risk by guaranteeing the value of the portfolio to be above a certain value at the end of the investment period while allowing for participation in rising stock markets. Option-based portfolio insurance (OBPI) refers to a set of strategies in which either a conventional put option (protective put) or a replicated put option (synthetic put) is used to insure a portfolio against adverse price movements. In theory and assuming perfect market conditions, protective put (PP) and synthetic put (SP) yield identical payoffs and have the same cost. In practice, there are several important differences between the two strategies. On the one hand, PP seems to be an easy and uncomplicated strategy to implement, but the unavailability of listed options with desired maturities and strike prices are major issues. SP strategies, on the other hand, can suffer from obstacles like high transaction costs and jumps in stock prices.

This is a major new reference work covering all aspects of finance. Coverage includes finance (financial management, security analysis, portfolio management, financial markets and instruments, insurance, real estate, options and futures, international finance) and statistical applications in finance (applications in portfolio analysis, option pricing models and financial research). The project is designed to attract both an academic and professional market. It also has an international approach to ensure its maximum appeal. The Editors' wish is that the readers will find the encyclopedia to be an invaluable resource.

"How many stock positions have you entered after meticulous analysis, only to have the stock move in the opposite direction that you anticipated?" It has happened to every trader -- "the stock that got away." Now you can prevent it from happening again. The secret to minimizing your risk and meeting your goals is the use of the protective strategies you will find in this easy-to-use guide.

Options-based “synthetic annuities” give investors the ability to generate higher returns, provide better downside protection, and utilize risk more efficiently than pure stock and bond-based portfolios. Now, this strategy’s creator shows exactly how to use them to support a wide range of trading and investing goals. Hedge fund manager Michael Lovelady shows how synthetic annuities blend the best features of traditional portfolios with the risk management discipline of quantitative investing, increasing current yields while also reducing volatility. Michael presents this new strategy with unique graphics and simplified models that any investor or trader can use, and demonstrates its value in the context of today’s key market trends. He illuminates the entire “ecosystem” of theories, products, and tools surrounding synthetic annuities, and shows exactly how to integrate them with other investment and portfolio management techniques.

This book combines academic research and practical expertise on alternative assets and trading strategies in a unique way. The asset classes that are discussed include: credit risk, cross-asset derivatives, energy, private equity, freight agreements, alternative real assets (ARA), and socially responsible investments (SRI). The coverage on trading and investment strategies are directed at portfolio insurance, especially constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI) and constant proportion debt obligation (CPDO) strategies, robust portfolio optimization, and hedging strategies for exotic options.

With so much emphasis on calls (especially covered calls) many traders overlook the tremendous hedging and profit potential of the put. The Amazing Put demonstrates the many strategies based on the put option, including the risk hedge, a long put (often a long-term, or LEAPS put) that freezes market risk at the put’s strike (minus its premium); and the short uncovered put, which has market risk identical to the covered call. The author methodically lays out the case for using puts wisely, both as a cash generator with low risk, and as a risk hedge to reduce or eliminate market risk in equity positions. Every options trader will benefit from exploring these strategies, and novices will gain a starting point in developing a program to enhance their stock portfolio. Michael C. Thomsett is a market expert, author, speaker, and coach. His many books include Stock Market Math, Candlestick Charting, and Options, Tenth Edition.

Financial engineering is the utilization of mathematical techniques to analyse, predict, anticipate, and prevent financial market failures. It carries different meanings with respect to different sectors. It utilizes puppets and knowledge from the areas of computer science, statistics, political economy and applied mathematics to address current financial topics as easily as to formulate novel and innovative financial products. It is sometimes cited to as quantitative analysis and is practiced by regular commercial banks, investment banks, insurance offices and hedge funds. Financial engineering has led to the explosion of derivative trading that we experience today. Since the Chicago Board Options Exchange was formed in 1973 and two of the first financial engineers, Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, published their option pricing model, trading in options and other derivatives has grown dramatically. This report analyses the role of different option trading strategies as an efficient tool in Financial Engineering which are utilized as an efficient instrument for managing risk in both bullish and bearish markets.A secondary goal of this research is to introduce and evaluate an optimized set of dynamic portfolio insurance models under the condition of continuous time, based on Meton's optimal investment-consumption model, which combined the method of replicating dynamic synthetic put option using risk-free and risk assets. A practical application of such technique is to help alleviate investor's individual time-continuous dynamic portfolio insurance decision problems. Finally, we will compares the difference of strategies between this model and Merton model.