Financial Modeling and Analysis

Description Topics

• Analyzing and Modeling Financial Data
• Rapidly Deploying Financial Applications
• Why Use MATLAB®
• Introduction to MATLAB in Finance

Why Use MATLAB^®

Introduced in 1984, MATLAB® is a technical computing and application development environment used today by more than 500,000 engineers and scientists and by more than 2,000 financial companies worldwide. Financial professionals rely on MATLAB to reduce development time, minimize costs and risks, and integrate new models.

Reduce Development Time MATLAB lets financial professionals develop algorithms up to 90% faster than traditional programming methods like Visual C++, Visual Basic, and Excel. This is because MATLAB offers capabilities such as matrix-based programming, advanced mathematical functions, and a simplified, flexible language that lets you focus more on solving problems and less on programming.

MATLAB offers a wide range of functionality for creating financial applications. Click on image to see enlarged view.

"Creating models in MATLAB takes 10% of the time we used to take programming in C."

Yanis Kassimatis,
financial analyst at DMG's Global Markets Arbitrage Group

Minimize Costs and Risks
With MATLAB, you can minimize your implementation costs and risks by reusing your C/C++ and Fortran functions. This lets you test your proven functions against the wide range of MATLAB functions. Most importantly, since all of the MATLAB functions are viewable source, you can also view the code and customize functions.

Integrate New Models
MATLAB lets you integrate new models into your systems in hours versus days or weeks when compared to other math applications. This is possible because MathWorks offers a unique set of tools to deploy MATLAB code outside of MATLAB, and integrates with other programming languages. MATLAB algorithms can be deployed as standalone executables, or as components in Excel, Java, C/C++, or any .NET language. Ultimately, MATLAB lets you develop and deploy new decision-making models more quickly — significantly reducing the impact on your IT resources.

MATLAB add-on tools specifically for financial professionals can help you develop models in areas such as:

• Bond pricing and yield and sensitivity analysis
• Portfolio optimization and analysis
• Asset allocation
• Financial time series analysis
• Option pricing and sensitivity analysis
• Cash flow analysis
• Risk management
• Forecasting and simulation
• Interest rate curve fitting and term structure modeling
• Monte Carlo simulation
• GARCH-based volatility analysis