Finance is a term for the management, creation, and study of money and investments. Specifically, it deals with the questions of how an individual, company or government acquires money – called capital in the context of a business – and how they spend or invest that money. Finance is then often divided into the following broad categories: personal finance, corporate finance, and public finance.
Financial economics is the branch of economics characterized by a "concentration on monetary activities", in which "money of one type or another is likely to appear on both sides of a trade". Its concern is thus the interrelation of financial variables, such as share prices, interest rates and exchange rates, as opposed to those concerning the real economy. It has two main areas of focus: asset pricing and corporate finance; the first being the perspective of providers of capital, i.e. investors, and the second of users of capital. It thus provides the theoretical underpinning for much of finance.
Financial engineering is a multidisciplinary field involving financial theory, methods of engineering, tools of mathematics and the practice of programming. It has also been defined as the application of technical methods, especially from mathematical finance and computational finance, in the practice of finance.
In finance, statistical arbitrage is a class of short-term financial trading strategies that employ mean reversion models involving broadly diversified portfolios of securities held for short periods of time. These strategies are supported by substantial mathematical, computational, and trading platforms.
Financial risk management is the practice of protecting economic value in a firm by using financial instruments to manage exposure to financial risk - principally operational risk, credit risk and market risk, with more specific variants as listed aside. Similar to general risk management, financial risk management requires identifying its sources, measuring it, and plans to address them. See Finance § Risk management. Financial risk management as a "science" can be said to have been born with modern portfolio theory, particularly as initiated by Professor Harry Markowitz in 1952 with his article, "Portfolio Selection"; see Mathematical finance § Risk and portfolio management: the P world.
Financial modeling is the task of building an abstract representation of a real world financial situation. This is a mathematical model designed to represent the performance of a financial asset or portfolio of a business, project, or any other investment.
Computational finance is a branch of applied computer science that deals with problems of practical interest in finance. Some slightly different definitions are the study of data and algorithms currently used in finance and the mathematics of computer programs that realize financial models or systems.
Emanuel Derman is a South African-born academic, businessman and writer. He is best known as a quantitative analyst, and author of the book My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance.
A master's degree in quantitative finance concerns the application of mathematical methods to the solution of problems in financial economics. There are several like-titled degrees which may further focus on financial engineering, computational finance, mathematical finance, and/or financial risk management.
Neil A. Chriss is a mathematician, academic, hedge fund manager, philanthropist and a founding board member of the charity organization "Math for America" which seeks to improve math education in the United States. Chriss also serves on the board of trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study.
Wilmott Magazine is a mathematical finance and risk management magazine, combining technical articles with humor pieces. Each copy of Wilmott is 11 inches square, runs about 100 pages, and is printed on glossy paper. The magazine has the highest subscription price of any magazine.
In finance, model risk is the risk of loss resulting from using insufficiently accurate models to make decisions, originally and frequently in the context of valuing financial securities. However, model risk is more and more prevalent in activities other than financial securities valuation, such as assigning consumer credit scores, real-time probability prediction of fraudulent credit card transactions, and computing the probability of air flight passenger being a terrorist. Rebonato in 2002 defines model risk as "the risk of occurrence of a significant difference between the mark-to-model value of a complex and/or illiquid instrument, and the price at which the same instrument is revealed to have traded in the market".
The Financial Modelers' Manifesto was a proposal for more responsibility in risk management and quantitative finance written by financial engineers Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott. The manifesto includes a Modelers' Hippocratic Oath. The structure of the Financial Modelers' Manifesto mirrors that of The Communist Manifesto of 1848.
A master's degree in Financial Economics provides a rigorous understanding of theoretical finance and the economic framework upon which that theory is based. The degree is postgraduate, and usually incorporates a thesis or research component. Programs may be offered jointly by the business school and the economics department.
Quantitative analysis is the use of mathematical and statistical methods in finance and investment management. Those working in the field are quantitative analysts (quants). Quants tend to specialize in specific areas which may include derivative structuring or pricing, risk management, algorithmic trading and investment management. The occupation is similar to those in industrial mathematics in other industries. The process usually consists of searching vast databases for patterns, such as correlations among liquid assets or price-movement patterns. The resulting strategies may involve high-frequency trading.
Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling of financial markets.
Riccardo Rebonato is Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School and EDHEC-Risk Institute, Scientific Director of the EDHEC Risk Cliamte Initiative Institiute (ERCII), and author of journal articles and books on Mathematical Finance, covering derivatives pricing, risk management, asset allocation and climate change. Prior to this, he was Global Head of Rates and FX Analytics at PIMCO.
Robert F. Almgren is an applied mathematician, academic, and businessman focused on market microstructure and order execution. He is the son of Princeton mathematician Frederick J. Almgren, Jr. With Neil Chriss, he wrote the seminal paper "Optimal execution of portfolio transactions," which Institutional Investor said "helped lay the groundwork for arrival-price algorithms being developed on Wall Street." In 2008 with Christian Hauff, he cofounded Quantitative Brokers, a financial technology company providing agency algorithmic execution in futures and interest rate markets. He is currently Chief Scientist at QB and a visiting professor in Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University.
Marco Avellaneda (Ph.D.) is an American mathematician and financial consultant. He is currently the director of the Division of Financial Mathematics at the Courant Institute at New York University.
