Description: Uses Blackrock's macroeconomic and style factors in asset allocation examples for an insurance portfolio and a pension portfolio.

Description: The impact of Fed’s QE program on the financial markets has been enormous and profound. The tapering and the eventual removal of the stimulus will be equally enormous and profound, and may be disruptive. To adapt to the potential regime change in near future, some investment strategies have been proposed: (1) shorten duration to focus on the short end of the yield curve and create laddered portfolios; (2) reduce allocation to high yield bonds; (3) rotate out interest rate sensitive sectors such as utilities; and (4) use interest rate derivatives to hedge the interest rate uncertainties lying ahead. On the other hand, contrarians who see the QE program continuing may stay the course and consider (1) adding duration, (2) gaining exposure to high yield bonds, and (3) increasing allocation to utilities and telecoms.

Description: The selection of a discount rate is one of the most important assumptions for the calculations of present values. The paper presents the basic properties of the key measurements of investment returns and the discount rates associated with these measurements.

Description: The article reviews recent investment performance of stable value compared to other low risk alternatives, discusses current criticisms of the option, and concludes that they are not well founded. Criticism reflects a lack of openness to the full range of stable value contracts available and manager bias against traditional GICs, not a real lack of wrap capacity. Stable value continues to be the pareto superior low risk option.

Description: Provides summary of qualitative factors in the current fiscal, economic and political environment that could lead to higher inflation.

Description: Reviews basic desirable features in an economic scenario generator. Discusses basics of model structure and validation process

Description: Provides an example of using numerical methods to estimate the credit risk spread curve from sparse historical data. Applies Baysian and Normal models. Uses Gibbs sampling and Rejection sampling methods for multivariate estimates. Critically evaluates these techniques.

Description: By necessity, attributions of financial processes require approximations. Tools used for approximations include Aumann-Shapley, time step, step-through, average step-through, partial derivative, and average partial derivative. Significantly non-linear paths can cause problems during attribution. Time (theta) and market factors must be handled concurrently. Typically contractual factors can be handled separately. Average Step-Through, Aumann-Shapley and Aumann-Shapley-3 points perform the best given the same time period. Attribution should be done with fairly small time steps as opposed to using a lot of points in the Aumann-Shapley calculation, but using Aumann-Shapley-3 points as a last step has some advantages.

Description: Part one of a two-part article, to be contined in Feb 2014. Provides useful rules of thumb for breaking out investment return into components of periodic arithmetic return, geometric return, the volatility of returns and the correlation of returns by asset class. Develops and relates these axiomatic concepts into rules of thumb for estimating quantiles of a range of stochastic returns.

Description: Introduction to option pricing, with special attention to issues in applying these tools to price equity-linked insurance products. Clear, accessible explanation of key results of mathematical finance including risk-neutral valuation.