We are interested in the existence of equivalent martingale measures and the detection of arbitrage opportunities in markets where several multi-asset derivatives are traded simultaneously. More specifically, we consider a financial market with multiple traded assets whose marginal risk-neutral distributions are known, and assume that several derivatives written on these assets are traded simultaneously. In this setting, there is a bijection between the existence of an equivalent martingale measure and the existence of a copula that couples these marginals. Using this bijection and recent results on improved Fréchet-Hoeffding bounds in the presence of additional information on functionals of a copula by Lux and Papapantoleon [18], we can extend the results of Tavin [33] on the detection of arbitrage opportunities to the general multi-dimensional case. More specifically, we derive sufficient conditions for the absence of arbitrage and formulate an optimization problem for the detection of a possible arbitrage opportunity. This problem can be solved efficiently using numerical optimization routines. The most interesting practical outcome is the following: we can construct a financial market where each multi-asset derivative is traded within its own no-arbitrage interval, and yet when considered together an arbitrage opportunity may arise.
We provide a critical analysis of the proof of the fundamental theorem of asset pricing given in the paper "Arbitrage and approximate arbitrage: the fundamental theorem of asset pricing" by B. Wong and C.C. Heyde (Stochastics, 2010) in the context of incomplete Itô-process models. We show that their approach can only work in the known case of a complete financial market model and give an explicit counterexample.
We consider a general class of continuous asset price models where the drift and the volatility functions, as well as the driving Brownian motions, change at a random time $τ$. Under minimal assumptions on the random time and on the driving Brownian motions, we study the behavior of the model in all the filtrations which naturally arise in this setting, establishing martingale representation results and characterizing the validity of the NA1 and NFLVR no-arbitrage conditions.
This paper does not suppose a priori that the evolution of the price of a financial asset is a semimartingale. Since possible strategies of investors are self-financing, previous prices are forced to be finite quadratic variation processes. The non-arbitrage property is not excluded if the class $\mathcal{A}$ of admissible strategies is restricted. The classical notion of martingale is replaced with the notion of $\mathcal{A}$-martingale. A calculus related to $\mathcal{A}$-martingales with some examples is developed. Some applications to no-arbitrage, viability, hedging and the maximization o…
We apply Geometric Arbitrage Theory to obtain results in mathematical finance for credit markets, which do not need stochastic differential geometry in their formulation. We obtain closed form equations involving default intensities and loss given defaults characterizing the no-free-lunch-with-vanishing-risk condition for corporate bonds, as well as the generic dynamics for credit market allowing for arbitrage possibilities. Moreover, arbitrage credit bubbles for both base credit assets and credit derivatives are explicitly computed for the market dynamics minimizing the arbitrage.
We explore the role that random arbitrage opportunities play in hedging financial derivatives. We extend the asymptotic pricing theory presented by Fedotov and Panayides [Stochastic arbitrage return and its implication for option pricing, Physica A 345 (2005), 207-217] for the case of hedging a derivative when arbitrage opportunities are present in the market. We restrict ourselves to finding hedging confidence intervals that can be adapted to the amount of arbitrage risk an investor will permit to be exposed to. The resulting hedging bands are independent of the detailed statistical character…
We prove the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing for a discrete time financial market where trading is subject to proportional transaction cost and the asset price dynamic is modeled by a family of probability measures, possibly non-dominated. Using a backward-forward scheme, we show that when the market consists of a money market account and a single stock, no-arbitrage in a quasi-sure sense is equivalent to the existence of a suitable family of consistent price systems. We also show that when the market consists of multiple dynamically traded assets and satisfies \emph{efficient friction}, …
We study the arbitrage opportunities in the presence of transaction costs in a sequence of binary markets approximating the fractional Black-Scholes model. This approximating sequence was constructed by Sottinen and named fractional binary markets. Since, in the frictionless case, these markets admit arbitrage, we aim to determine the size of the transaction costs needed to eliminate the arbitrage from these models. To gain more insight, we first consider only 1-step trading strategies and we prove that arbitrage opportunities appear when the transaction costs are of order $o(1/\sqrt{N})$. Nex…
We propose a unified analysis of a whole spectrum of no-arbitrage conditions for financial market models based on continuous semimartingales. In particular, we focus on no-arbitrage conditions weaker than the classical notions of No Arbitrage and No Free Lunch with Vanishing Risk. We provide a complete characterisation of the considered no-arbitrage conditions, linking their validity to the characteristics of the discounted asset price process and to the existence and the properties of (weak) martingale deflators, and review classical as well as recent results.
We derive behavioral finance option pricing formulas consistent with the rational dynamic asset pricing theory. In the existing behavioral finance option pricing formulas, the price process of the representative agent is not a semimartingale, which leads to arbitrage opportunities for the option seller. In the literature on behavioral finance option pricing it is allowed the option buyer and seller to have different views on the instantaneous mean return of the underlying price process, which leads to arbitrage opportunities according to Black (1972). We adjust the behavioral finance option pr…
"Fundamental theorem of asset pricing" roughly states that absence of arbitrage opportunity in a market is equivalent to the existence of a risk-neutral probability. We give a simple counterexample to this oversimplified statement. Prices are given by linear forms which do not always correspond to probabilities. We give examples of such cases. We also show that arbitrage freedom is equivalent to the continuity of the pricing linear form in the relevant topology. Finally we analyze the possible loss of martingality of asset prices with lognormal stochastic volatility. For positive correlation m…
We give characterizations of asymptotic arbitrage of the first and second kind and of strong asymptotic arbitrage for large financial markets with small proportional transaction costs $\la_n$ on market $n$ in terms of contiguity properties of sequences of equivalent probability measures induced by $\la_n$--consistent price systems. These results are analogous to the frictionless case. Our setting is simple, each market $n$ contains two assets with continuous price processes. The proofs use quantitative versions of the Halmos--Savage Theorem and a monotone convergence result of nonnegative loca…
There is vast empirical evidence that given a set of assumptions on the real-world dynamics of an asset, the European options on this asset are not efficiently priced in options markets, giving rise to arbitrage opportunities. We study these opportunities in a generic stochastic volatility model and exhibit the strategies which maximize the arbitrage profit. In the case when the misspecified dynamics is a classical Black-Scholes one, we give a new interpretation of the classical butterfly and risk reversal contracts in terms of their (near) optimality for arbitrage strategies. Our results are …
In this paper a finite discrete time market with an arbitrary state space and bid-ask spreads is considered. The notion of an equivalent bid-ask martingale measure (EBAMM) is introduced and the fundamental theorem of asset pricing is proved using (EBAMM) as an equivalent condition for no-arbitrage. The Cox-Ross-Rubinstein model with bid-ask spreads is presented as an application of our results.
We generalize the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) to include the contribution of virtual arbitrage opportunities. We model the arbitrage return by a stochastic process. The latter is incorporated in the APT framework to calculate the correction to the APT due to the virtual arbitrage opportunities. The resulting relations reduce to the APT for an infinitely fast market reaction or in the case where the virtual arbitrage is absent. Corrections to the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) are also derived.
We show that the results of ArXiv:1305.6008 on the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing and the super-hedging theorem can be extended to the case in which the options available for static hedging (\emph{hedging options}) are quoted with bid-ask spreads. In this set-up, we need to work with the notion of \emph{robust no-arbitrage} which turns out to be equivalent to no-arbitrage under the additional assumption that hedging options with non-zero spread are \emph{non-redundant}. A key result is the closedness of the set of attainable claims, which requires a new proof in our setting.
Absence-of-Arbitrage (AoA) is the basic assumption underpinning derivatives pricing theory. As part of the OTC derivatives market, the CDS market not only provides a vehicle for participants to hedge and speculate on the default risks of corporate and sovereign entities, it also reveals important market-implied default-risk information concerning the counterparties with which financial institutions trade, and for which these financial institutions have to calculate various valuation adjustments (collectively referred to as XVA) as part of their pricing and risk management of OTC derivatives, t…
We introduce a multivariate diffusion model that is able to price derivative securities featuring multiple underlying assets. Each asset volatility smile is modeled according to a density-mixture dynamical model while the same property holds for the multivariate process of all assets, whose density is a mixture of multivariate basic densities. This allows to reconcile single name and index/basket volatility smiles in a consistent framework. Our approach could be dubbed a multidimensional local volatility approach with vector-state dependent diffusion matrix. The model is quite tractable, leadi…
We present an explicit hedging strategy, which enables to prove arbitrageness of market incorporating at least two assets depending on the same random factor. The implied Black-Scholes volatility, computed taking into account the form of the graph of the option price, related to our strategy, demonstrates the "skewness" inherent to the observational data.
In this short note we show how virtual arbitrage opportunities can be modelled and included in the standard derivative pricing without changing the general framework.
A financial market model where agents trade using realistic combinations of buy-and-hold strategies is considered. Minimal assumptions are made on the discounted asset-price process - in particular, the semimartingale property is not assumed. Via a natural market viability assumption, namely, absence of arbitrages of the first kind, we establish that discounted asset-prices have to be semimartingales. In a slightly more specialized case, we extend the previous result in a weakened version of the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing that involves strictly positive supermartingale deflators rath…
We consider derivatives written on multiple underlyings in a one-period financial market, and we are interested in the computation of model-free upper and lower bounds for their arbitrage-free prices. We work in a completely realistic setting, in that we only assume the knowledge of traded prices for other single- and multi-asset derivatives, and even allow for the presence of bid-ask spread in these prices. We provide a fundamental theorem of asset pricing for this market model, as well as a superhedging duality result, that allows to transform the abstract maximization problem over probabili…
This work aims at a deeper understanding of the mathematical implications of the economically-sound condition of absence of arbitrages of the first kind in a financial market. In the spirit of the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing (FTAP), it is shown here that absence of arbitrages of the first kind in the market is equivalent to the existence of a finitely additive probability, weakly equivalent to the original and only locally countably additive, under which the discounted wealth processes become "local martingales". The aforementioned result is then used to obtain an independent proof of…
Motivated by applications to bond markets, we propose a multivariate framework for discrete time financial markets with proportional transaction costs and a countable infinite number of tradable assets. We show that the no-arbitrage of second kind property (NA2 in short), recently introduced by Rasonyi for finite-dimensional markets, allows us to provide a closure property for the set of attainable claims in a very natural way, under a suitable efficient friction condition. We also extend to this context the equivalence between NA2 and the existence of many (strictly) consistent price systems.
In this paper we derive an effective equation for derivative pricing which accounts for the presence of virtual arbitrage opportunities and their elimination by the market. We model the arbitrage return by a stochastic process and find an equation for the average derivative price. This is an integro-differential equation which, in the absence of the virtual arbitrage or for an infinitely fast market reaction, reduces to the Black-Scholes equation. Explicit formulas are obtained for European call and put vanilla options.
In this work, we aim to gain a better understanding of the volatility smile observed in options markets through microsimulation (MS). We adopt two types of active traders in our MS model: speculators and arbitrageurs, and call and put options on one underlying asset. Speculators make decisions based on their expectations of the asset price at the option expiration time. Arbitrageurs trade at different arbitrage opportunities such as violation of put-call parity. Difference in liquidity among options is also included. Notwithstanding its simplicity, our model can generate implied volatility (IV…
In this work, we identify the most general measure of arbitrage for any market model governed by Itô processes. We show that our arbitrage measure is invariant under changes of numéraire and equivalent probability. Moreover, such measure has a geometrical interpretation as a gauge connection. The connection has zero curvature if and only if there is no arbitrage. We prove an extension of the Martingale pricing theorem in the case of arbitrage. In our case, the present value of any traded asset is given by the expectation of future cash-flows discounted by a line integral of the gauge connectio…
The general method is proposed for constructing a family of martingale measures for a wide class of evolution of risky assets. The sufficient conditions are formulated for the evolution of risky assets under which the family of equivalent martingale measures to the original measure is a non-empty set. The set of martingale measures is constructed from a set of strictly nonneg ative random variables, satisfying certain conditions. The inequalities are obtained for the non-negative random variables satisfying certain conditions. Using these inequalities, a new simple proof of optional decomposit…
In this study we prove the existence of statistical arbitrage opportunities in the Black-Scholes framework by considering trading strategies that consists of borrowing from the risk free rate and taking a long position in the stock until it hits a deterministic barrier level. We derive analytical formulas for the expected value, variance, and probability of loss for the discounted cumulative trading profits. No-statistical arbitrage condition is derived for the Black-Scholes framework, which imposes a constraint on the Sharpe ratio of the stock. Furthermore, we verify our theoretical results v…
We consider an incomplete multi-asset binomial market model. We prove that for a wide class of contingent claims the extremal multi-step martingale measure is a power of the corresponding single-step extremal martingale measure. This allows for closed form formulas for the bounds of a no-arbitrage contingent claim price interval. We construct a feasible algorithm for computing those boundaries as well as for the corresponding hedging strategies. Our results apply, for example, to European basket call and put options and Asian arithmetic average options.
We investigate financial markets under model risk caused by uncertain volatilities. For this purpose we consider a financial market that features volatility uncertainty. To have a mathematical consistent framework we use the notion of G-expectation and its corresponding G-Brownian motion recently introduced by Peng (2007). Our financial market consists of a riskless asset and a risky stock with price process modeled by a geometric G-Brownian motion. We adapt the notion of arbitrage to this more complex situation and consider stock price dynamics which exclude arbitrage opportunities. Due to vo…
This study examines the dynamic asset market linkages under the COVID-19 global pandemic based on market efficiency, in the sense of Fama (1970). Particularly, we estimate the joint degree of market efficiency by applying Ito et al.'s (2014; 2017) Generalized Least Squares-based time-varying vector autoregression model. The empirical results show that (1) the joint degree of market efficiency changes widely over time, as shown in Lo's (2004) adaptive market hypothesis, (2) the COVID-19 pandemic may eliminate arbitrage and improve market efficiency through enhanced linkages between the asset ma…
The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First is to extend the notions of an n-dimensional semimartingale and its stochastic integral to a piecewise semimartingale of stochastic dimension. The properties of the former carry over largely intact to the latter, avoiding some of the pitfalls of infinite-dimensional stochastic integration. Second is to extend two fundamental theorems of asset pricing (FTAPs): the equivalence of no free lunch with vanishing risk to the existence of an equivalent sigma-martingale measure for the price process, and the equivalence of no arbitrage of the first kind to t…
