In quantitative finance, factor models are essential for portfolio construction and risk management. Suppose you're a quant researcher tasked with building a statistical factor-based equity risk model.
First, walk me through how you would leverage Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify and extract these statistical factors. What are the key advantages and potential limitations of using PCA for this application?
Then, looking beyond the model's theoretical construction, what critical engineering and financial business considerations would you take into account when deploying such a model in a production environment?