How do we start handling a financial series. I mean where does arima, garch fit in and how does arima modeling compare with or complement distribution fitting? Wat if we have a time series with time varying volatility. Can we use GARCH to model the variance and then fit a distribution assuming that variance.

there is a new thread that has begun to list both free and commercial sources of financial data. there is also the thread that lists different sites for academic papers (freely available). i forward the idea of adding onto the faq these threads or simply the aggregation of links. perhaps the faq is not the right place. maybe a page of links would be better. but it seems to me that all or nearly all of the users of this site would have need to refer to one list or the other. and it is easier to see a reference page than search through threads and piece things together.oh, and thanks for putting this whole site together. i find it very useful.

Quote 2) What is ''approximate arb''?Some people would say that "Approximate arb" is an oxymoron. I think that's cruel. I think it refers to trades in which you're happy to lose just a little bit of money, but not much.

parametric vs. nonparametric methodsmeanings, differences, advantages/disadvantages, applications etc.

Dear sirs, could you please include in FAQ the term "White's Reality Check" It is used in Sulliwan, Timmermant, White's (1997) work on TA rules performance.Thank you

What is the difference between the HJM model and the LIBOR Market Model in practice?

What does the Harrison-Pliska result mean & what are its implications on quant finance?

how do you build an xll, or dll for excel, or excel plugin ?this seems to come up several times a week.

What is the dynamic programming principle?What is it's use in Mathematical Finance?

the different major approaches to credit risk modelling and how they work

Pricing Bermuda Options:How to price Bermudans compared to a European ? Why is the most expensive Black Scholes option European a "wrong" price ?What to incorporate (binomial trees, mean reversion) ? Different vols to be used ?

What are the most important unsolved problems in finance today?

What is spline methodology while fitting the yield curve?

Quotethe most important unsolved problems in finance todayall of them

1 Why is there a convexity adjustment when using eurodollar futures to build a zero coupon curve? Is it really that important to account for this so-called convexity?2 How can I build a term structure of volatilities given a set of cap/floor vols for various maturities from a broker?