Validation of trading strategies in the foreign exchange

The aftermath of the recent financial crisis has caused the narrowing of investment opportunities for foreign exchange (FX) traders and investors. A debate about the profitability of trading strategies in FX has started among practitioners and academic researchers who have wondered whether is still possible to obtain positive excess returns (alpha). In this research I validate a set of trading strategies for FX. Seven experiments are carried out on macroeconomic market factors like trendfollowing, carry and value, separately. The outcome holds that the dissolution of synchronous monetary policies increases the probability of observing trends and carry opportunities in the FX. The failure of the uncovered interest rate parity by the so-called forward rate puzzle and that of the purchase parity power open opportunities for strategies like momentum, carry and value. Carry is not only applicable to spot rates as can also be used to trade FX options. Two experiments are performed to study the consistency of FX option premia and the performance of carry trade for options. For short-dated options, like the weekly ones, carry cannot produce material profits as the error implied by the forward rate is not large enough. Conversely, the premium earned from trading FX call options is a consistent source. A second line of research is dedicated to the analysis of trading strategies for FX highfrequency data. This study consists of implementing machine learning algorithms, like the exponentially-smoothing recurrent neural networks (RNN), to forecast future prices and derive a trading strategy from it. The training of these models appear to be computationally intensive but simpler than that of other neural networks like the long-short-term memory ones (LSTM). The accuracy of the forecast is adequate with no signs of over-fitting. The performance appears to be highly influenced by the presence of intra-day seasonality and jumps. A range of solutions are explored to address such a limitation

Il dialetto di Serra San Bruno (VV). Descrizione e analisi di alcuni aspetti fonologici e morfologici.

La ricerca si pone l'obiettivo di attestare ed analizzare le principali caratteristiche fonologiche e morfologiche del dialetto di Serra San Bruno, varietà calabrese collocata in un'area geografica molto conservativa e finora poco considerata dagli studiosi. Fornite informazioni preliminari utili alla contestualizzazione geografica e linguistica del dialetto serrese, l'elaborato passa ad analizzare quanto emerso nel corso della campagna d'inchiesta. In ambito fonologico, particolarmente complesso si è rivelato essere il funzionamento del meccanismo metafonetico. Inattesa è stata la scoperta delle due micro-varietà dialettali dei quartieri di Spinetto e Terravecchia. Anche per quanto riguarda la morfologia, il serrese ha dimostrato di avere caratteristiche del tutto peculiari. I vari capitoli sono corredati da un'ampia esemplificazione a cui si aggiunge, in appendice una sezione dedicata agli etnotesti

Progetto di una scuola media a Pontedera (PI)

La progettazione è stata affrontata partendo da un'analisi storico-sociale del territorio e delle sue caratteristiche. In accordo con quanto previsto dall'ordinamento sui lavori pubblici, sono stati esplicitati gli obiettivi da raggiungere, le norme da rispettare e le classi di esigenza. E' stata quindi formulata un'ipotesi di progetto preliminare, ponendo attenzione sul rapporto fra la scuola ed il contesto

Gotta face ‘em all: Pokémon, Japanese animated characters, and the emergence of playful visual animism

As a result of technological innovations and new cultural practices, the contemporary mediasphere is increasingly populated by digital(ized) faces. The phenomenon is not limited to human faces, but includes a vast universe of fictional animated faces, variously called ‘characters’, ‘mascots’ or ‘kyara’. In Japan, while certainly not new, kyara have been spreading thanks to globalization, digitalization and media-mix strategies. Through the connection between visual design, fictional narratives and socio-cultural consumption, kyara can be considered semiotic figures of in-betweenness, key symbolic mediators in the Japanese mediascape. Their anthropomorphic face design mediates the cultural boundaries between the human and the non-human, the animate and the inanimate, nature and culture. Furthermore, their post-modern narratives mix inspiration from the past and the present, from myths to science fiction. Lastly, they involve an encyclopedic reworking between fiction and reality, mythical references and secularization, between the domains of seriousness and playful make-believe. The article aims to explore the semiotic dimensions of kyara in contemporary Japan, with emphasis on their logic of representation and cultural outcomes. These will be investigated through the analysis of the Pokémon franchise, which will make it possible to describe the emergence of new semiotic patterns of ‘playful visual animism’ in the process of media facialization of everyday life.    &nbsp