G17 - Financial Forecasting and SimulationNávrat zpět

Although it is notoriously difficult to utilize financial ratios to forecast the crude oil market prices, our study challenges this perception and reveals that the second risk premium principal component analysis (RP-PCA) factor may contain statistically significant information for both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts of future crude oil prices. Our evidence illustrates that the second RP-PCA factor substantially outperforms many other popular predictors (approximately 30 conventional predictors) in forecasting crude oil prices and generating adequate higher values of economic profits. We conduct a range of informative tests, including bootstrap simulation, success ratio tests, alternative out-of-sample evaluation periods, and structure break tests. Furthermore, we illustrate that the forecasting ability of the second RP-PCA factor may stem from its ability to forecast oil market sentiment. Our study presents a novel and indicatable financial instrument for policymakers to predict crude oil prices robustly. The theoretical motivation of this study links to Cochrane's (2005) framework for general candidate factors in asset pricing.

Equity release contracts allow property owners to receive a financial benefit in exchange for surrendering their real estate to a company. The benefits depend on the life expectancy of owners, the real value of properties, and the rate of interest. These parameters are not the same throughout the years. The aim of the paper is to analyse varying payments of equity release contracts which have already been offered to customers for several years in Poland. A recalculation procedure year by year is proposed applying the actuarial and financial methods. This paper estimates the potential advantages of reverse annuity and reverse mortgage contracts in a changing economic environment. The calculations were made based on actual Polish market data, including the Svensson model of spot interest rate. It is shown that there is considerable scope for increasing retirement income; however, the exact amounts may be unknown. The advantages for customers resulting from changes in parameters and valorization are shown, as well as the risk associated with equity release.

An ageing European population and, therefore, a rising dependency ratio of retirees to the working population, strongly suggests that a pension funding gap will be a key social issue in future. Yet many older people have significant real estate assets that they could access using equity release products. They could sell their assets in exchange for lifelong or temporary monthly payments. Equity release products are relatively new to Poland, but are not yet offered by commercial banks in Czechia and Slovakia. This paper estimates the potential benefits of marriage reverse annuity, and reverse mortgage contracts, using the Svensson model function, and empirical property data from selected Czech, Slovak and Polish cities. The results are also compared to the average pension of inhabitants in the selected cities. It is shown that there is substantial scope for boosting retirement income in all the cases considered, though the precise size of the increase depends on factors such as contract buyers' age and life expectancy, the value of their assets, the payment consequences of a spouse's death, and contract suppliers' pricing policies.

We model the probabilistic structure and cash flows arising from marriage reverse annuity contracts in the case of the joint-life status and the last surviving status. In contrast to the classical approach, we take into consideration that future lifetimes between spouses are dependent. The structure of dependence of the length of spouses' lives is modelled using copulas. The term structure of interest rate is modelled using a time-dependent function. The numerical results are based on actual Polish data covering both the structure of the probabilistic model and the interest rate.

Profitability of a trading system based on the momentum-like effects of asset price jumps was tested on four currency markets (EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/CHF and USD/JPY) and three futures markets (Light Crude Oil, E-Mini S&P 500 and VIX), on 7 frequencies (1-minute to 1-day), over a period of more than 20 years. The proposed trading system entered long and short trades in the direction of asset price jumps and held the positions for a fixed horizon, optimized on the in-sample period. The system achieved statistically significant out-sample profits for the USD/CHF, EUR/USD and GBP/USD exchange rates, especially on the 15-minute, 30-minute and 1-hour frequencies, with expected returns of up to 20-30% p.a., including transaction costs. On the 1-day frequency, on the USD/JPY and on the three analysed futures markets, only insignificant profits or losses were achieved. On the 1-minute frequency, the system ended with a loss for all of the assets.

We estimate a financial stress index for the Czech Republic and examine its development during the 2002-2014 period. We find a marked increase in financial stress at the beginning of the global financial crisis with a decrease to nearly pre-crisis levels by the end of our study period. Next, we estimate vector autoregression models of the Czech economy and find that financial stress has systematic effects on output, prices and interest rates, with the maximum response occurring approximately one and a half years after the shock. Specifically, an increase in financial stress is associated with higher unemployment, lower prices and lower interest rates, indicating its detrimental effects on the real economy.

Electricity forward contracts can normally be traded in two ways in the Czech Republic: OTC forwards, which means bilaterally or bilaterally through a broker, and futures through the Power Exchange Central Europe. Each way has its own economic pros and cons. As the most crucial point, a counterparty risk and costs of funding are usually mentioned. Contracts traded on the power exchange bear less or no credit risk, as every deal is paired via central counterparty. On the other hand, the power exchange requires a margin deposit and daily profit and loss settlement which might increase funding costs. The fact that the counterparty risk is lower for exchange contracts with higher funding costs is well-known, but rarely quantified. We use the so-called Credit Value Adjustment concept in order to quantify the market value of the credit risk. We compare this value with potential funding costs. The aim of this paper is to compare both the OTC and exchange ways of trading using risk-adjusted economic characteristics.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) valuation based on data before and during the 2007-2009 global turmoil. We present the One Factor Gaussian Copula Model and examine five hypotheses regarding CDO sensitivity to entry parameters. For our modelling we used data of the CDX NA IG 5Y V3 index from 20 September 2007 until 27 February 2009 and we appropriately transform its quotes into CDO quotes. Based on the results we discovered four main deficiencies of the CDO market: i) an insufficient analysis of underlying assets by both investors and rating agencies; ii) investment decisions arise from the valuation model based on expected cash flows, they neglected other factors such as mark-tomarket losses; iii) mispriced correlation; and finally iv) obligation of the mark-to-market valuation. Based on the mentioned recommendations we conclude that the CDO market has a chance to be regenerated but in smaller volumes compared to the pre-crisis period. However, it would then be more conscious, driven by smarter motives rather than by pure arbitrage and profit incentives.

Exchange rate forecasting is an important financial problem that is receiving increasing attention nowadays especially because of its difficulty and host of practical applications in globalising world of today. The paper presents an enhanced MIA-GMDH-type network, discusses its design methodology and carries out some numerical experiments in the field of exchange rate forecasting. The method presented in this paper is an enhancement of self-organizing polynomial Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH) with several specific improved features - coefficient rounding and thresholding schemes and semi-randomized selection approach to pruning. The experiments carried out include exchange rate prediction and hedging case study where the predictions were used for financial management decision simulation of a virtual company. The results indicate, that the method shows promising potential of self-organizing network methodology. This implies that the proposed modelling approaches can be used as a feasible solution for exchange rate forecasting in financial management.

In this paper, we focus on thorough yield curve modelling. We build on extended classical NelsonSiegel model, which we further develop to accommodate unobserved regional common factors. We centre our discussion on Central European currencies' yield curves: CZK, HUF, PLN and SKK. We propose a model to capture regional dynamics purely based on state space formulation. The contribution of this paper is twofold: we examine regional yield curve dynamics and we quantify regional interdependencies amongst considered currencies' yield curves. We conclude that the CZK yield curve possesses its own dynamics corresponding to country specific features, whereas other currencies' yield curves are strongly influenced by the regional level, the regional slope factor or both.