# CFA Level III: Implementation Shortfall

Good evening,

A quick post tonight to discuss a topic of Trading, Rebalancing and Monitoring part of the Level III curriculum called Implementation Shortfall. The reason why I chose to do this is because it took me some time to overcome the naming conventions of the CFA institute, which are, with all due respect, very counterintuitive in my opinion.

The idea is very simple: you would like to be able to measure the quality of the execution of a trade compared to an ideal execution.

From what I’ve seen in mock exams and exercises, they always give you a little story like the following one:

• At some point, the investment manager decides to buy 10 Manchester United stocks, which trades at 20.
• This is called the benchmark price (BP), for some reason.
• Then (usually the following day), a limit order is placed in the market, say at 19.95 and is not executed at all. The market closes on that day at 20.10. Too bad.
• You pay 0.05 per share of commission.
• The following day, the order is revised at like 20.15 and 8 stocks (i.e not the whole 10) are filled at that price, and the market closes at 20.20.

What happens there? Well, assume you are able to magically implement your trading ideas instantly at no cost: this is called the paper portfolio. What is your profit at the end of the story?

• You buy 10 shares at 20 for 200.
• At the end of the story, your stocks are worth 20.20 each, which gives you a total of 202.
• You earned 202 – 200 = 2

In the real world, it did not work out that way:

• You bought 8 stocks at 20.15 for 161.2
• You pay 0.4 in commission
• At the end of the story, your stocks are worth 20.20 each, which gives 161.6
• You earned 161.6 – 161.2 – 0.4 = 0

The implementation shortfall is defined as follows:

$$\frac{\text{paper portfolio gain}-\text{real portfolio gain}}{\text{paper portfolio investment}}=\frac{2}{200}=1.0\%$$

This means that 1.0% of the potential investment was lost (or, more precisely, not won)  in the implementation, due to different frictions.

The CFA Institute then provides a way to split this difference in different components.

First the explicit costs, which consists in all the obvious transaction costs that are expressed in the trade:

$$\frac{\text{commission}}{\text{paper portfolio investment}}=\frac{0.4}{200}=0.2\%$$

That’s fine. But then comes the bizarre naming conventions.

Some extra costs come from the fact between the moment when the investment manager decides to buy the stock and the day when the order is partially filled, the market moved.

The slippage or delay costs is the difference between the benchmark price and the closing price, the day before the execution day (which is called, poorly the decision price, I don’t understand why) divided by the benchmark price, times the percentage of the order that was filled. In order case we have:

$$\frac{20.10-20.00}{20} \cdot \frac{8}{10}=0.4\%$$

It is the portfolio of the implementation shortfall that was lost because of the delay between the time the manager saw the opportunity and the day the trade was partially executed.

Then, the realized loss is the difference between the execution price and the closing price the previous day (so-called decision price), divided by the benchmark price times the percentage of the order that was filled:

$$\frac{20.15-20.10}{20} \cdot \frac{8}{10}=0.2\%$$

This is what was lost during the execution day.

Finally the missed trade opportunity cost is the difference between the price at the end of the story and the benchmark price divided by the benchmark price time the proportion of the order that was not filled:

$$\frac{20.20-20.00}{20} \cdot \frac{2}{10}=0.2\%$$

This is what was lost by not being executed.

If you sum all the components, you get 0.2% + 0.4% + 0.2% + 0.2% = 1.0%, the total implementation shortfall.

So you are able to see that, in this example, the main component of the implementation shortfall is the delay between the trade idea and the trade execution day. The limit order at 19.95 was too ambitious and resulted in a loss.

Notice also that all the examples I saw are examples where the market goes in the trade direction (i.e. market goes up after a buy decision). It could be possible that the market goes adversely, which would result in a negative implementation shortfall… i.e a gain.

That’s all for today.

I’ll be back soon with more.

Cheers,

Jeremie

# CFA Level III: Interest Rate Parity

Hello everyone,

Today I’m gonna talk about some economic concepts that were mentioned at least since Level II and that are quite useful in the whole curriculum and in finance in general when it comes to dealing with currency management.

# Covered Interest Rate Parity

The idea is quite simple, we will compute the forward exchange rate between two currencies using an arbitrage argument, say EUR and USD. The spot exchange rate is denoted $S_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}}$: it corresponds to the number of euros you get today for 1 US dollar. Furthermore, the risk-free rate in USD is denoted $R_{\text{USD}}$ and the risk-free rate in EUR is denoted $R_{\text{EUR}}$. The question is, after some time $T$, how many euros will I get for 1 US dollar? This rate is called the forward rate and is denoted $F_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}}$.

Well, you can price that quite easily using an arbitrage argument! The idea is simple:

• I’m going to borrow today $\frac{1}{1+R_\text{USD}}$ USD which means that at time $T$, I will have to pay back 1 USD.
• Then I’m going to convert what I just borrowed in EUR, which gives me $S_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}} \cdot \frac{1}{1+R_\text{USD}}$ euros
• I then invest this at the risk-free rate in EUR, and I get at time $T$ $(1+R_\text{EUR}) S_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}} \cdot \frac{1}{1+R_\text{USD}}$ euros

What I wrote above means that:

$$F_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}}= S_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}} \cdot \frac{1+R_\text{EUR}}{1+R_\text{USD}}$$

That’s as simple as it sounds, we have determined the forward price of US dollars in euros at time $T$.

A very easy way of remembering the formula above is noticing that the rate in the numerator and in the denominator are from the same currency as is shown in the rate label: EUR/USD.

Also, recall from this post that in this case (EUR/USD), the US dollar is the asset being priced in euros; the US dollar is an asset like anything else.

Finally, we understand from the formula above that:

$$R_\text{EUR} > R_\text{USD} \implies F_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}}> S_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}}$$

This is very useful because you very often have to say what currency is trading at premium or at discount in another currency. First I used to always get that wrong. In fact, it’s very easy.  The currency being traded is the one in the denominator of the label, here USD. Then, if the forward price is higher (lower) than the spot price, it is of course trading at premium (discount).

So, if we say that the USD is trading at premium in EUR, it means that we can have more EUR in the forward market than in the spot market for 1 USD.

# Uncovered interest rate parity

This is in a sense an extension of the covered interest rate parity we just discussed which says that:

$$\mathbb{E}({S_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}}}_T)= {S_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}}}_0 \cdot \frac{1+R_\text{EUR}}{1+R_\text{USD}}$$

Notice that here the implication is different than previously, because we say that we expect that the spot rate at time $T$ will be equal to the forward price at today. This comes to says that the currency that has the higher (lower) interest rate is expected to depreciate (appreciate):

$$R_\text{EUR} > R_\text{USD} \implies \mathbb{E}({S_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}}}_T)> {S_{\text{EUR}/\text{USD}}}_0$$

Indeed, a higher spot rate in the future means that you would get more euros for the same amount of US dollars which means that the euro has depreciated!

A lot of traders disagree with that statement, and this comes to a very famous trading strategy called the carry trade. The idea is really simple as well: these traders do not think that the currency with the higher interest rate will depreciate. They hence short the currency with lower interest rate and invest in the currency with higher interest rate. In the curriculum, they say that this strategy tends to work most of the time, generating positive income. However, they say that, when for some reason, the interest rate goes in the expected direction, they tend to do so very violently and that it can lead to very large losses.

That’s it for today, I hope this little post will help you in mastering this concept, which is key to a lot of different topics at different levels of the CFA curriculum.

Cheers,

Jeremie