Finance refers to monetary resources and to the study and discipline of money, currency, assets and liabilities. As a subject of study, it is related to but distinct from economics, which is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Based on the scope of financial activities in financial systems, the discipline can be divided into personal, corporate, 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.
Value at risk (VaR) is a measure of the risk of loss of investment/capital. It estimates how much a set of investments might lose, given normal market conditions, in a set time period such as a day. VaR is typically used by firms and regulators in the financial industry to gauge the amount of assets needed to cover possible losses.
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.
In finance, a portfolio is a collection of investments.
Financial risk management is the practice of protecting economic value in a firm by managing exposure to financial risk - principally credit risk and market risk, with more specific variants as listed aside - as well as some aspects of operational risk. As for risk management more generally, financial risk management requires identifying the sources of risk, measuring these, and crafting plans to mitigate them. See Finance § Risk management for an overview.
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 is a postgraduate degree focused on 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.
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.
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, investment management and other related finance occupations. 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.
Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling in the financial field.
Riccardo Rebonato is Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School and EDHEC-Risk Institute, Scientific Director of the EDHEC Risk Climate Impact Institute (ERCII), and author of journal articles and books on Mathematical Finance, covering derivatives pricing, risk management, asset allocation and climate change. In 2022 he was granted the PRM Quant of the Year award for 'outstanding contributions to the field of quantitative portfolio theory'. Prior to this, he was Global Head of Rates and FX Analytics at PIMCO.
Marco Avellaneda (Ph.D.) was an Argentine-American mathematician and financial consultant. He was the director of the Division of Financial Mathematics at the Courant Institute at New York University.
