Research on the Improvement of Big Data Feature Investment Analysis Algorithm for Abnormal Trading in the Financial Securities Market

Traditional investment analysis algorithms usually only analyze the similarity between financial time series and financial data, which leads to inaccurate and inefficient analysis of investment characteristics. In addition, the trading volume of financial securities market is huge, the amount of investment data is also very large, and the detection of abnormal transactions is difficult. The aim of feature extraction is to obtain mathematical features that can be recognized by machine. Different from the traditional methods, this paper studies and improves the big data investment analysis algorithm of abnormal transactions in financial securities market. After processing the captured trading data of financial securities market, the big data feature of abnormal trading is extracted. Combined with the abnormal trading and the financial securities market, the investment strategy is determined. The optimization objective function is set and the genetic algorithm is used to improve the investment analysis algorithm. The simulation experiment verifies the improved investment analysis algorithm, and the average Accuracy of investment analysis is increased by at least 11.24%, the ROI is significantly improved, and the efficiency is higher, which indicates that the proposed algorithm has ideal application performance.

William Davenport, the Slave Trade, and Merchant Enterprise in Eighteenth-Century Liverpool

<p>This thesis examines the business history of William Davenport (1725-1797), a Liverpool slave trading merchant from 1748 until 1786. Through an examination of a recently discovered collection of Davenport's business papers and personal letters, this thesis places Davenport in the context of Liverpool's development as a slaving port, and the growth of the town's slaving merchant community. It explains how Davenport became one of the largest slaving merchants of his generation, and one of the wealthiest Guinea merchants in Liverpool's history. To explain Davenport's rise the thesis focuses on how he managed his slaving company. It studies two distinct areas of the Guinea coast where he traded for slaves - Old Calabar and Cameroon - and demonstrates how he cultivated merchant partners, and developed a supply chain of trading goods, to suit the unique conditions of both African markets. The thesis also explores Davenport's business profits by examining his returns from several different areas of investment, including the slave trade, the ivory trade and his speculation in financial securities. By building a composite picture of Davenport's diverse business concerns the thesis argues that the profits of the slave trade were crucial to his financial success. Davenport's enterprising expansion of the slave trade into the Cameroon in the 1750s was decisive in generating his slaving profits, and ultimately his wealth.</p>

William Davenport, the Slave Trade, and Merchant Enterprise in Eighteenth-Century Liverpool

<p>This thesis examines the business history of William Davenport (1725-1797), a Liverpool slave trading merchant from 1748 until 1786. Through an examination of a recently discovered collection of Davenport's business papers and personal letters, this thesis places Davenport in the context of Liverpool's development as a slaving port, and the growth of the town's slaving merchant community. It explains how Davenport became one of the largest slaving merchants of his generation, and one of the wealthiest Guinea merchants in Liverpool's history. To explain Davenport's rise the thesis focuses on how he managed his slaving company. It studies two distinct areas of the Guinea coast where he traded for slaves - Old Calabar and Cameroon - and demonstrates how he cultivated merchant partners, and developed a supply chain of trading goods, to suit the unique conditions of both African markets. The thesis also explores Davenport's business profits by examining his returns from several different areas of investment, including the slave trade, the ivory trade and his speculation in financial securities. By building a composite picture of Davenport's diverse business concerns the thesis argues that the profits of the slave trade were crucial to his financial success. Davenport's enterprising expansion of the slave trade into the Cameroon in the 1750s was decisive in generating his slaving profits, and ultimately his wealth.</p>

Spread Option Pricing on Single-Core and Parallel Computing Architectures

This paper introduces parallel computation for spread options using two-dimensional Fourier transform. Spread options are multi-asset options whose payoffs depend on the difference of two underlying financial securities. Pricing these securities, however, cannot be done using closed-form methods; as such, we propose an algorithm which employs the fast Fourier Transform (FFT) method to numerically solve spread option prices in a reasonable amount of short time while preserving the pricing accuracy. Our results indicate a significant increase in computational performance when the algorithm is performed on multiple CPU cores and GPU. Moreover, the literature on spread option pricing using FFT methods documents that the pricing accuracy increases with FFT grid size while the computational speed has opposite effect. By using the multi-core/GPU implementation, the trade-off between pricing accuracy and speed is taken into account effectively.

The Stock Market Game in Post-war Britain

After World War II, the financial sector took a back seat in Britain’s political economy and Labour’s nationalization programme initially wiped out significant areas of investment. In the post-war decades it was common for politicians of all parties to attack stock market operators as harmful gamblers. This anti-finance rhetoric has obscured our view of retail investment in those years in the way that it became almost invisible from public debate—and a historiography—that was dominated by nationalized industries, Keynesian demand management, and the welfare state. If anything, contemporaries were and scholars have been preoccupied with the ‘Cult of Equity’, the rapid growth of institutional investment at that time. While more private individuals ventured into the stock market—there were approximately 3 million direct shareholders by the early 1960s—their share of listed equity was declining. Hence, the small investor’s comeback went unnoticed in comparison with the shift of pension funds and life insurance companies from bonds into equities once markets had recovered by the mid-1950s. Investors small and large made and lost fortunes in two unprecedented boom markets while the burgeoning climate of affluence and permissiveness loosened traditional reservation against financial securities. More and more middle-class Britons not only invested in equities as a means of retirement planning, but also discovered the stock market as a hobby that offered thrills of risk and reward similar to gambling.

Bucket Shops and Outside Brokers

In order to finance World War I, the British government sold war bonds to millions of investors and savers, thereby prompting a wider interest in financial securities including stocks and shares during the interwar period. Faced with a large intake of investment newcomers, the City of London was anxious of ‘amateur’ involvement in the market. The largest securities market, the London Stock Exchange, restricted access to small investors where possible, which pushed much of the new retail activity to the market fringes. Here, ‘outside brokers’ and ‘bucket shops’ catered for investment newcomers, the more gullible of which fell prey to fraudulent share pushers. Scholars have entirely overlooked this vibrant grey market for financial securities. But it was here—and not just at the organized exchanges—that ever more people made their first experiences with the ups and the downs of the stock market, most prominently in the great crash of 1929. This new perspective brings a sharper contour on some fundamental challenges that Britain’s financial landscape was facing in the interwar period: a large intake of new investors, a resurgence of financial fraud, and a new struggle over the distinction between speculation and gambling. The City’s response to these challenges can be described as financial paternalism. After a surge in political democratization, there was very little appetite to enfranchise ordinary people in the stock market. Instead, institutions like the Stock Exchange deliberately took a conservative stance on the ‘democratisation of investment’.

Playing the Market

At the dawn of World War I (WWI), the British stock market was the preserve of a wealthy elite, and most people in finance and politics agreed that it should stay this way. By the end of the century, Britain had more individual shareholders than trade union members. This book explores the financial, political, and cultural forces that brought about this dramatic change in British society. By capturing the voices and experiences of everyday investors, this study brings to life the history of Britain’s vibrant stock market culture: from the mass investment in war bonds during WWI, through the expansion of the financial press in the post-war decades, to the ‘popular capitalism’ of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party during the 1980s. Throughout the century, the stock market came to play an ever larger role in people’s lives through pension funds and life insurances. But as financial securities lost their age-old stigma of being either immoral or suitable only for the upper classes, the markets also became a popular pastime for millions of Britons who were seeking higher than average returns and a similar thrill of risk and reward to that of gambling on horses or the football pools. Playing the Market forcefully reminds us that gambling is not—as many financial professionals would have us believe—a parasitical element to the otherwise rational and prudent sphere of modern finance. Instead, it is one of its constituent features and explains why until this day, the stock market is either criticized or celebrated as a casino.

A Volatility Estimator of Stock Market Indices Based on the Intrinsic Entropy Model

Grasping the historical volatility of stock market indices and accurately estimating are two of the major focuses of those involved in the financial securities industry and derivative instruments pricing. This paper presents the results of employing the intrinsic entropy model as a substitute for estimating the volatility of stock market indices. Diverging from the widely used volatility models that take into account only the elements related to the traded prices, namely the open, high, low, and close prices of a trading day (OHLC), the intrinsic entropy model takes into account the traded volumes during the considered time frame as well. We adjust the intraday intrinsic entropy model that we introduced earlier for exchange-traded securities in order to connect daily OHLC prices with the ratio of the corresponding daily volume to the overall volume traded in the considered period. The intrinsic entropy model conceptualizes this ratio as entropic probability or market credence assigned to the corresponding price level. The intrinsic entropy is computed using historical daily data for traded market indices (S&P 500, Dow 30, NYSE Composite, NASDAQ Composite, Nikkei 225, and Hang Seng Index). We compare the results produced by the intrinsic entropy model with the volatility estimates obtained for the same data sets using widely employed industry volatility estimators. The intrinsic entropy model proves to consistently deliver reliable estimates for various time frames while showing peculiarly high values for the coefficient of variation, with the estimates falling in a significantly lower interval range compared with those provided by the other advanced volatility estimators.

An Investors’ Interest towards Mutual Funds: A Study of Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

The objective of this study is to assess the investor’s Mind-set towards mutual funds in Kathmandu valley. To fulfill the stated objectives, a total 230 potential respondents were selected purposively through questionnaire. The collected data are analyzed with the help of descriptive and correlation analysis. In terms of familiarity with the various financial securities currently available in the Nepalese financial market, most of investors familiar with fixed deposits, medium familiarity with shares and very low familiarity with bonds and debentures and money market instruments. The analysis of the results concluded that investors attracted towards mutual fund due to its flexibility, secured type of investment mechanism and Professional management Service in Nepal. Further, it is recommended that concern authority, regulations body, Issue Manager should conduct such training and awareness program showing the importance of mutual funds.