'P' Versus 'Q': Differences and Commonalities between the Two Areas of Quantitative Finance

GARP Risk Professional, pp. 47-50, February 2011

8 Pages Posted: 23 Jan 2011

See all articles by Attilio Meucci

Attilio Meucci

ARPM - Advanced Risk and Portfolio Management

Date Written: January 22, 2011

Abstract

There exist two separate branches of finance that require advanced quantitative techniques: the "Q" area of derivatives pricing, whose task is to "extrapolate the present"; and the "P" area of quantitative risk and portfolio management, whose task is to "model the future."

We briefly trace the history of these two branches of quantitative finance, highlighting their different goals and challenges. Then we provide an overview of their areas of intersection: the notion of risk premium; the stochastic processes used, often under different names and assumptions in the Q and in the P world; the numerical methods utilized to simulate those processes; hedging; and statistical arbitrage.

Keywords: Risk Neutral, Real Measure, Sell-Side, Buy-Side, Asset Pricing, No-Arbitrage, Martingale, Calibration, Estimation, Ito Calculus, PDE, Time-Series, Econometric, Portfolio Theory, Delta-Hedging, Alpha, Statistical Arbitrage, Levy Processes, ARMA, Ornstein-Uhlenbeck, GARCH, Stochastic, Heston

JEL Classification: C1, G11

Suggested Citation

Meucci, Attilio, 'P' Versus 'Q': Differences and Commonalities between the Two Areas of Quantitative Finance (January 22, 2011). GARP Risk Professional, pp. 47-50, February 2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1717163

Attilio Meucci (Contact Author)

ARPM - Advanced Risk and Portfolio Management ( email )

HOME PAGE: http://www.arpm.co/

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