Skip to main content
  • Textbook
  • © 2014

Computational Finance

An Introductory Course with R

Authors:

  • Teaches how to use the statistical tools and methods available in the free software R, for processing and analyzing real financial data
  • Numerous step-by-step examples of programming in R will teach the reader how to build forecasting models of price and volatility (e.g. ARMA, GARCH, machine learning models such as neural networks and support vector machines); clustering of financial time series; do all type of option valuation with Monte Carlo simulations; construct technical analysis indicators, fundamental analysis of business, and portfolio management
  • Provides an easy-to-read review of the basic principles of finance, and an introduction to the basic tools of professional investors (Technical and Fundamental Analysis), hence making it partly accessible to a general audience (with mathematical and business inclinations)
  • Reviews the most fundamental optimization heuristics in finance, and some of the approximation algorithms for online portfolio selection that should motivate computer science students to research in Computational Finance
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Atlantis Studies in Computational Finance and Financial Engineering (ASCFFE, volume 1)

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
  2. An Abridged Introduction to Finance

    • Argimiro Arratia
    Pages 1-36
  3. Statistics of Financial Time Series

    • Argimiro Arratia
    Pages 37-70
  4. Correlations, Causalities and Similarities

    • Argimiro Arratia
    Pages 71-107
  5. Time Series Models in Finance

    • Argimiro Arratia
    Pages 109-143
  6. Trade on Pattern Mining or Value Estimation

    • Argimiro Arratia
    Pages 177-206
  7. Optimization Heuristics in Finance

    • Argimiro Arratia
    Pages 207-237
  8. Portfolio Optimization

    • Argimiro Arratia
    Pages 239-265
  9. Online Finance

    • Argimiro Arratia
    Pages 267-282
  10. Back Matter

    Pages 283-301

About this book

The book covers a wide range of topics, yet essential, in Computational Finance (CF), understood as a mix of Finance, Computational Statistics, and Mathematics of Finance. In that regard it is unique in its kind, for it touches upon the basic principles of all three main components of CF, with hands-on examples for programming models in R. Thus, the first chapter gives an introduction to the Principles of Corporate Finance: the markets of stock and options, valuation and economic theory, framed within Computation and Information Theory (e.g. the famous Efficient Market Hypothesis is stated in terms of computational complexity, a new perspective). Chapters 2 and 3 give the necessary tools of Statistics for analyzing financial time series, it also goes in depth into the concepts of correlation, causality and clustering. Chapters 4 and 5 review the most important discrete and continuous models for financial time series. Each model is provided with an example program in R. Chapter 6 covers the essentials of Technical Analysis (TA) and Fundamental Analysis. This chapter is suitable for people outside academics and into the world of financial investments, as a primer in the methods of charting and analysis of value for stocks, as it is done in the financial industry. Moreover, a mathematical foundation to the seemly ad-hoc methods of TA is given, and this is new in a presentation of TA. Chapter 7 reviews the most important heuristics for optimization: simulated annealing, genetic programming, and ant colonies (swarm intelligence) which is material to feed the computer savvy readers. Chapter 8 gives the basic principles of portfolio management, through the mean-variance model, and optimization under different constraints which is a topic of current research in computation, due to its complexity. One important aspect of this chapter is that it teaches how to use the powerful tools for portfolio analysis from  the  RMetrics R-package. Chapter 9 is a naturalcontinuation of chapter 8 into the new area of research of online portfolio selection. The basic model of the universal portfolio of Cover and approximate methods to compute are also described.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Computer Science, Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Argimiro Arratia

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access