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Na gestão de recursos financeiros, visualizar e gerenciar em tempo real os riscos inerentes a uma carteira de investimentos é uma tarefa crucial para que o objetivo de gerar lucro possa ser atingido, ou que pelo menos as perdas possam ser minimizadas. Uma das formas de realizar esse gerenciamento é submeter essas carteiras a simulações onde são definidos cenários contendo variações de fatores que possam influenciar os ativos nelas contidos. Dependendo da classe dos ativos financeiros analisados, essas simulações requerem uma ferramenta mais sofisticada, capaz de lidar com modelos complexos de precificação. O objetivo deste trabalho consiste em resolver uma demanda real de uma gestora de recursos onde este autor atua: o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta capaz de realizar testes de stress em uma carteira de investimentos contendo mais especificamente opções de moedas. Foi desenvolvido um sistema no formato de add-in de Excel em que os gestores podem definir cenários com as variações desejadas e, em conjunto com dados de mercado em tempo real, avaliar o impacto dessas variações em seu portfolio. O desenvolvimento foi realizado em etapas, e a versão atual da ferramenta trouxe ganhos no tempo de execução das simulações na ordem de dez vezes, quando comparado à versão anterior. Nesta dissertação serão mostrados detalhes da implementação do sistema, bem como o embasamento teórico utilizado no seu desenvolvimento. Será apresentada uma breve descrição sobre o mercado de câmbio e seus instrumentos, incluindo opções de moedas. Também será descrito um modelo para precificação e mensuração de risco desses instrumentos. / In the financial resources management, visualizing and handling risks inherent in an investment portfolio in real time are key tasks to ensure that the objective of profit is accomplished, or at least that the losses are mitigated. One way to perform this kind of management is to submit the portfolio to scenario simulations, in which factors that might affect the assets held in the portfolio are stressed. Depending on the class of these assets, there is the need of a more sophisticated tool, capable of handling complex pricing models. The main purpose of this work is to solve a real demand for an investment management company for which this author works: the development of a tool capable to perform stress tests in an investment portfolio containing more specifically Foreign eXchange options. An Excel add-in has been developed and managers can use it to define scenarios with the desired bumps and, along with real time market data, analyze the impact of these bumps in the portfolio. The development has been made in phases and the tools current version has brought a reasonable improvement to the execution time of the simulations. In this thesis we will discuss systems implementation details, as well as the theoretical basis used in its development. An overview of the FX market and its instruments will be presented, including FX options. Also, there will be a description of a model for pricing and risk measurement of these instruments.

This thesis applies entropy as a model independent measure to address research questions concerning the dynamics of various financial time series. The thesis consists of three main studies as presented in chapters 3, 4 and 5. Chapters 3 and 4 apply an entropy measure to conduct a bivariate analysis of drawdowns and drawups in foreign exchange rates. Chapter 5 investigates the dynamics of investment strategies of hedge funds using entropy of realised volatility in a conditioning model. In all three studies, methods from information theory are applied in novel ways to financial time series. As Information Theory and its central concept of entropy are not widely used in the economic sciences, a methodology chapter was therefore included in chapter 2 that gives an overview on the theoretical background and statistical features of the entropy measures used in the three main studies. In the first two studies the focus is on mutual information and transfer entropy. Both measures are used to identify dependencies between two exchange rates. The chosen measures generalise, in a well defined manner, correlation and Granger causality. A different entropy measure, the approximate entropy, is used in the third study to analyse the serial structure of S&P realised volatility. The study of drawdowns and drawups has so far been concentrated on their uni- variate characteristics. Encoding the drawdown information of a time series into a time series of discrete values, Chapter 3 uses entropy measures to analyse the correlation and cross correlations of drawdowns and drawups. The method to encode the drawdown information is explained and applied to daily and hourly EUR/USD and GBP/USD exchange rates from 2001 to 2012. For the daily series, we find evidence of dependence among the largest draws (i.e. 5% and 95% quantiles), but it is not as strong as the correlation between the daily returns of the same pair of FX rates. There is also dependence between lead/lagged values of these draws. Similar and stronger findings were found among the hourly data. We further use transfer entropy to examine the spill over and lead-lag information flow between drawup/drawdown of the two exchange rates. Such information flow is indeed detectable in both daily and hourly data. The amount of information transferred is considerably higher for the hourly than the daily data. Both daily and hourly series show clear evidence of information flowing from EUR/USD to GBP/USD and, slightly stronger, in the reverse direction. Robustness tests, using effective transfer entropy, show that the information measured is not due to noise. Chapter 4 uses state space models of volatility to investigate volatility spill overs between exchange rates. Our use of entropy related measures in the investigation of dependencies of two state space series is novel. A set of five daily exchange rates from emerging and developed economies against the dollar over the period 1999 to 2012 is used. We find that among the currency pairs, the co-movement of EUR/USD and CHF/USD volatility states show the strongest observed relationship. With the use of transfer entropy, we find evidence for information flows between the volatility state series of AUD, CAD and BRL.Chapter 5 uses the entropy of S&P realised volatility in detecting changes of volatility regime in order to re-examine the theme of market volatility timing of hedge funds. A one-factor model is used, conditioned on information about the entropy of market volatility, to measure the dynamic of hedge funds equity exposure. On a cross section of around 2500 hedge funds with a focus on the US equity markets we find that, over the period from 2000 to 2014, hedge funds adjust their exposure dynamically in response to changes in volatility regime. This adds to the literature on the volatility timing behaviour of hedge fund manager, but using entropy as a model independent measure of volatility regime. Finally, chapter 6 summarises and concludes with some suggestions for future research.

The paper reacts to tremendous increase in popularity of FX trading among retail investors in recent years, caused mainly by easy accessibility through numerous online trading platforms and dramatic fall in trading costs. One of the accompanying trends along with increasing trading speed is a departure from fundamental analysis and shift towards more technical approach. In reaction to that, the paper aims to review the most popular technical trading rules and puts the findings in contrast with existing empirical literature and efficient market hypothesis. Although being far from discovering an ultimate trading formula, the paper concludes that selected trading strategies do demonstrate a certain degree of predictability of future exchange rate movements.

Na gestão de recursos financeiros, visualizar e gerenciar em tempo real os riscos inerentes a uma carteira de investimentos é uma tarefa crucial para que o objetivo de gerar lucro possa ser atingido, ou que pelo menos as perdas possam ser minimizadas. Uma das formas de realizar esse gerenciamento é submeter essas carteiras a simulações onde são definidos cenários contendo variações de fatores que possam influenciar os ativos nelas contidos. Dependendo da classe dos ativos financeiros analisados, essas simulações requerem uma ferramenta mais sofisticada, capaz de lidar com modelos complexos de precificação. O objetivo deste trabalho consiste em resolver uma demanda real de uma gestora de recursos onde este autor atua: o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta capaz de realizar testes de stress em uma carteira de investimentos contendo mais especificamente opções de moedas. Foi desenvolvido um sistema no formato de add-in de Excel em que os gestores podem definir cenários com as variações desejadas e, em conjunto com dados de mercado em tempo real, avaliar o impacto dessas variações em seu portfolio. O desenvolvimento foi realizado em etapas, e a versão atual da ferramenta trouxe ganhos no tempo de execução das simulações na ordem de dez vezes, quando comparado à versão anterior. Nesta dissertação serão mostrados detalhes da implementação do sistema, bem como o embasamento teórico utilizado no seu desenvolvimento. Será apresentada uma breve descrição sobre o mercado de câmbio e seus instrumentos, incluindo opções de moedas. Também será descrito um modelo para precificação e mensuração de risco desses instrumentos. / In the financial resources management, visualizing and handling risks inherent in an investment portfolio in real time are key tasks to ensure that the objective of profit is accomplished, or at least that the losses are mitigated. One way to perform this kind of management is to submit the portfolio to scenario simulations, in which factors that might affect the assets held in the portfolio are stressed. Depending on the class of these assets, there is the need of a more sophisticated tool, capable of handling complex pricing models. The main purpose of this work is to solve a real demand for an investment management company for which this author works: the development of a tool capable to perform stress tests in an investment portfolio containing more specifically Foreign eXchange options. An Excel add-in has been developed and managers can use it to define scenarios with the desired bumps and, along with real time market data, analyze the impact of these bumps in the portfolio. The development has been made in phases and the tools current version has brought a reasonable improvement to the execution time of the simulations. In this thesis we will discuss systems implementation details, as well as the theoretical basis used in its development. An overview of the FX market and its instruments will be presented, including FX options. Also, there will be a description of a model for pricing and risk measurement of these instruments.

[pt] O objetivo deste trabalho é comparar o mercado à vista e futuro de câmbio no Brasil, buscando identificar em qual dos mercados se dá a formação da taxa de câmbio. Analisa-se o funcionamento do mercado cambial no seu nível micro, isto é, nas suas instituições e nas assimetrias dos seus participantes, através da abordagem da microestrutura. Utiliza-se uma base de dados que contém 100% das propostas de compra, venda e dos negócios fechados dos pregões de dólar futuro e do mercado interbancário de dólar à vista entre 01/02/2006 a 31/05/2007. Mostra-se que o mercado de dólar futuro é muito mais líquido do que o mercado à vista no Brasil. Ademais, demonstra-se que a cotação da taxa de câmbio se forma primeiro no mercado futuro, sendo então transmitida por arbitragem para o mercado à vista. Por fim, utiliza-se a abordagem da microestrutura para realizar previsões intradiárias para a taxa de câmbio, obtendo resultados superiores às demais abordagens usualmente testadas na literatura, como a Paridade Descoberta da Taxa de Juros e o passeio aleatório. / [en] This paper compares the spot and futures FX markets in Brazil, trying to identify which one leads the price determination. FX markets are analyzed at the micro level, at the level of its institutions and the asymmetries of its players, through the microstructure approach. A database that contains 100% of the bids, asks and deals of the dollar futures and interbank spot markets from 02/01/2006 to 05/31/2007 is used. It is shown that the futures market is much more liquid than the spot market in Brazil. Moreover, it is shown that the quote is determined firstly in the futures market, being transmitted through arbitrage to the spot market. The microstructure approach is also used to make intraday forecasts to the FX rate with superior results to the other approaches usually tested in the literature, like the Uncovered Interest Rate Parity and the Random Walk.