Kovács, Márton András (Citi)

Generating Mid Prices with the Kalman Filter

In the era of Big Data, it might seem strange that in some areas of finance, the lack of reliable information is a still a challenge. Some of the products we want to model can stop being traded for days or weeks. Also, our goal is possibly to predict a price not directly observable in the market. On top of all this, consider that there are potentially thousands of products to price at every moment. We will introduce and explain the mechanics of a linear Kalman filter. We will discuss its strengths – e.g. its explainability, its stepwise nature, its ability to easily and omptimally combine numerous information sources, etc. But we will highlight its shortcomings as well – its high dimensionality, its linearity, its tendency to lag behind, etc. Furthermore, we will propose methods of expanding it to counter such shortcomings. Along the way, we will try – and most probably fail – to tackle some fundamental questions of modelling – what exactly do we want to model? How do we know if our model is ‘correct’? What does being ‘correct’ mean? Do we even care?, etc.

The talk is held in English!

Az elõadás nyelve angol!

Date: Nov 13, Tuesday 4:15pm

Place: BME, Building „Q”, Room QBF13

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