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.

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 makes quantitative finance (almost) easy! Its new visual approach makes quantitative finance accessible to a broad audience, including those without strong backgrounds in math or finance. Michael Lovelady introduces a simplified but powerful technique for calculating profit probabilities and graphically representing the outcomes. Lovelady's "pictures" highlight key characteristics of structured securities such as the increased likelihood of profits, the level of virtual dividends being generated, and market risk exposures. After explaining his visual approach, he applies it to one of today's hottest investing trends: lower-volatility, higher-income strategies. Because of today's intense interest in alternative investments and structured securities, this book reviews their unique advantages to investors, managers and advisors of retail and institutional portfolios. Visual Quantitative Finance focuses on key topics directly related to the design, pricing and communication of structured securities, including stochastic price projections and the framework underlying options pricing formulas. The key is Lovelady's explicit use of probabilities in a spreadsheet format. By working directly with the underlying assumptions, he transforms the Black-Scholes framework into five columns of a simple Excel spreadsheet, with no complicated formulas -- making structured securities far more intuitive to design, evaluate and manage. For all investors, students, and financial professionals who are interested in quantitative finance, risk measurement, options pricing, structured securities, or financial model building - and for everyone who needs to explain these topics to someone else. For those with quantitative backgrounds, this guide offers powerful new tools for design and risk management, simplifying the design and evaluation of innovative instruments. For everyone else, Lovelady makes the subject comprehensible for the first time.

This book makes quantitative finance (almost) easy! Its new visual approach makes quantitative finance accessible to a broad audience, including those without strong backgrounds in math or finance. Michael Lovelady introduces a simplified but powerful technique for calculating profit probabilities and graphically representing the outcomes. Lovelady's "pictures" highlight key characteristics of structured securities such as the increased likelihood of profits, the level of virtual dividends being generated, and market risk exposures. After explaining his visual approach, he applies it to one of today's hottest investing trends: lower-volatility, higher-income strategies. Because of today's intense interest in alternative investments and structured securities, this book reviews their unique advantages to investors, managers and advisors of retail and institutional portfolios. Visual Quantitative Finance focuses on key topics directly related to the design, pricing and communication of structured securities, including stochastic price projections and the framework underlying options pricing formulas. The key is Lovelady's explicit use of probabilities in a spreadsheet format. By working directly with the underlying assumptions, he transforms the Black-Scholes framework into five columns of a simple Excel spreadsheet, with no complicated formulas -- making structured securities far more intuitive to design, evaluate and manage. For all investors, students, and financial professionals who are interested in quantitative finance, risk measurement, options pricing, structured securities, or financial model building - and for everyone who needs to explain these topics to someone else. For those with quantitative backgrounds, this guide offers powerful new tools for design and risk management, simplifying the design and evaluation of innovative instruments. For everyone else, Lovelady makes the subject comprehensible for the first time.

"The provision of annuities and other benefits during the decumulation phase DC pension plans raises major policy issues. As the private markets for annuities and disability benefits are not well developed even in the most advanced OECD countries, the resolution of these issues is likely to be a gradual process, with both countries and markets learning through experience" -- title page.