Winter 2020 Course description: Econometric and statistical techniques commonly used in quantitative finance. Use of estimation application software in exercises to estimate volatility, correlations, stability, regressions, and statistical inference using financial time series. Topic 1: Time series properties of stock market returns and prices  Class intro: Forecasting and Finance  The random walk hypothesis  Stationarity  Time-varying volatility and General Least Squares  Robust standard errors and OLS Topic 2: Time-dependence and predictability  ARMA models  The likelihood function, exact and conditional likelihood estimation  Predictive regressions, autocorrelation robust standard errors  The Campbell-Shiller decomposition  Present value restrictions  Multivariate analysis: Vector Autoregression (VAR) models, the Kalman Filter Topic 3: Heteroscedasticity  Time-varying volatility in the data  Realized Variance  ARCH and GARCH models, application to Value-at-Risk Topic 4: Time series properties of the cross-section of stock returns  Single- and multifactor models  Economic factors: Models and data exploration  Statistical factors: Principal Components Analysis  Fama-MacBeth regressions and characteristics-based factors