Mathematical modelling is ubiquitous in the financial industry and drives key decision processes. Any given model provides only a crude approximation to reality and the risk of using an inadequate model is hard to detect and quantify. By contrast, modern data science techniques are opening the door to more robust and data-driven model selection mechanisms. However, most machine learning models are "black-boxes" as individual parameters do not have meaningful interpretation. The aim of this paper is to combine the above approaches achieving the best of both worlds. Combining neural networks with risk models based on classical stochastic differential equations (SDEs), we find robust bounds for prices of derivatives and the corresponding hedging strategies while incorporating relevant market data. The resulting model called neural SDE is an instantiation of generative models and is closely linked with the theory of causal optimal transport. Neural SDEs allow consistent calibration under both the risk-neutral and the real-world measures. Thus the model can be used to simulate market scenarios needed for assessing risk profiles and hedging strategies. We develop and analyse novel algorithms needed for efficient use of neural SDEs. We validate our approach with numerical experiments using both local and stochastic volatility models.
The pricing, hedging, optimal exercise and optimal cancellation of game or Israeli options are considered in a multi-currency model with proportional transaction costs. Efficient constructions for optimal hedging, cancellation and exercise strategies are presented, together with numerical examples, as well as probabilistic dual representations for the bid and ask price of a game option.
In the spirit of Arrow-Debreu, we introduce a family of financial derivatives that act as primitive securities in that exotic derivatives can be approximated by their linear combinations. We call these financial derivatives signature payoffs. We show that signature payoffs can be used to nonparametrically price and hedge exotic derivatives in the scenario where one has access to price data for other exotic payoffs. The methodology leads to a computationally tractable and accurate algorithm for pricing and hedging using market prices of a basket of exotic derivatives that has been tested on rea…
This paper investigates the hedging performance of pegged foreign exchange market in a regime switching (RS) model introduced in a recent paper by Drapeau, Wang and Wang (2019). We compare two prices, an exact solution and first order approximation and provide the bounds for the error. We provide exact RS delta, approximated RS delta as well as mean variance hedging strategies for this specific model and compare their performance. To improve the efficiency of the pricing and calibration procedure, the Fourier approach of this regime-switching model is developed in our work. It turns out that: …
In this paper the zero vanna implied volatility approximation for the price of freshly minted volatility swaps is generalised to seasoned volatility swaps. We also derive how volatility swaps can be hedged using a strip of vanilla options with weights that are directly related to trading intuition. Additionally, we derive first and second order hedges for volatility swaps using only variance swaps. As dynamically trading variance swaps is in general cheaper and operationally less cumbersome compared to dynamically rebalancing a continuous strip of options, our result makes the hedging of volat…
We investigate asymmetry of information in the context of robust approach to pricing and hedging of financial derivatives. We consider two agents, one who only observes the stock prices and another with some additional information, and investigate when the pricing--hedging duality for the former extends to the latter. We introduce a general framework to express the superhedging and market model prices for an informed agent. Our key insight is that an informed agent can be seen as a regular agent who can restrict her attention to a certain subset of possible paths. We use results of Hou & Obłój…
In this paper we derive robust super- and subhedging dualities for contingent claims that can depend on several underlying assets. In addition to strict super- and subhedging, we also consider relaxed versions which, instead of eliminating the shortfall risk completely, aim to reduce it to an acceptable level. This yields robust price bounds with tighter spreads. As examples we study strict super- and subhedging with general convex transaction costs and trading constraints as well as risk-based hedging with respect to robust versions of the average value at risk and entropic risk measure. Our …
We provide a practical superhedging strategy for the pricing and hedging of the No-Negative-Equity-Guarantee (NNEG) found in Equity-Release Mortgages (ERMs), or reverse mortgages, using a discrete-time model. In contrast to many papers on the NNEG and industry practice we work in an incomplete market setting so that deaths and property prices are not independent under most pricing measures. We give theoretical results and numerical illustrations to show that the assumption of market completeness leads to a considerable undervaluation of the NNEG. By introducing an Excess-of-Loss reinsurance as…
In this paper we study the pricing and hedging of structured products in energy markets, such as swing and virtual gas storage, using the exponential utility indifference pricing approach in a general incomplete multivariate market model driven by finitely many stochastic factors. The buyer of such contracts is allowed to trade in the forward market in order to hedge the risk of his position. We fully characterize the buyer's utility indifference price of a given product in terms of continuous viscosity solutions of suitable nonlinear PDEs. This gives a way to identify reasonable candidates fo…
We propose a deep Recurrent neural network (RNN) framework for computing prices and deltas of American options in high dimensions. Our proposed framework uses two deep RNNs, where one network learns the price and the other learns the delta of the option for each timestep. Our proposed framework yields prices and deltas for the entire spacetime, not only at a given point (e.g. t = 0). The computational cost of the proposed approach is linear in time, which improves on the quadratic time seen for feedforward networks that price American options. The computational memory cost of our method is con…
This study deals with the pricing and hedging of single-tranche collateralized debt obligations (STCDOs). We specify an affine two-factor model in which a catastrophic risk component is incorporated. Apart from being analytically tractable, this model has the feature that it captures the dynamics of super-senior tranches, thanks to the catastrophic component. We estimate the factor model based on the iTraxx Europe data with six tranches and four different maturities, using a quasi-maximum likelihood (QML) approach in conjunction with the Kalman filter. We derive the model-based variance-minimi…
We consider the martingale optimal transport duality for càdlàg processes with given initial and terminal laws. Strong duality and existence of dual optimizers (robust semi-static superhedging strategies) are proved for a class of payoffs that includes American, Asian, Bermudan, and European options with intermediate maturity. We exhibit an optimal superhedging strategy for which the static part solves an auxiliary problem and the dynamic part is given explicitly in terms of the static part.
In this article, we investigate the behavior of long-term options. In many cases, option prices follow an exponential decay (or growth) rate for further maturity dates. We determine under what conditions option prices are characterized by this property. To see this, we use the martingale extraction method through which a pricing operator is transformed into a semigroup operator, which is easier to address. We also explore notions of hedging long-term options. Hedging is an attempt to reduce market risks, and we investigate the price sensitivities (Greeks) with respect to such risks, which are …
Proof that under simple assumptions, such as constraints of Put-Call Parity, the probability measure for the valuation of a European option has the mean derived from the forward price which can, but does not have to be the risk-neutral one, under any general probability distribution, bypassing the Black-Scholes-Merton dynamic hedging argument, and without the requirement of complete markets and other strong assumptions. We confirm that the heuristics used by traders for centuries are both more robust, more consistent, and more rigorous than held in the economics literature. We also show that o…
This paper extends the Singular Fourier--Padé (SFP) method proposed by Chan (2018) to pricing/hedging early-exercise options--Bermudan, American and discrete-monitored barrier options--under a Lévy process. The current SFP method is incorporated with the Filon--Clenshaw--Curtis (FCC) rules invented by Domínguez et al. (2011), and we call the new method SFP--FCC. The main purpose of using the SFP--FCC method is to require a small number of terms to yield fast error convergence and to formulate option pricing and option Greek curves rather than individual prices/Greek values. We also numerically…
We investigate pricing-hedging duality for American options in discrete time financial models where some assets are traded dynamically and others, e.g. a family of European options, only statically. In the first part of the paper we consider an abstract setting, which includes the classical case with a fixed reference probability measure as well as the robust framework with a non-dominated family of probability measures. Our first insight is that by considering a (universal) enlargement of the space, we can see American options as European options and recover the pricing-hedging duality, which…
The VIX call options for the Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard models will be discussed. Derivatives written on the VIX, which is the most popular volatility measurement, have been traded actively very much. In this paper, we give representations of the VIX call option price for the Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard models: non-Gaussian Ornstein--Uhlenbeck type stochastic volatility models. Moreover, we provide representations of the locally risk-minimizing strategy constructed by a combination of the underlying riskless and risky assets. Remark that the representations obtained in this paper are ef…
We consider assets for which price $X_t$ and squared volatility $Y_t$ are jointly driven by Heston joint stochastic differential equations (SDEs). When the parameters of these SDEs are estimated from $N$ sub-sampled data $(X_{nT}, Y_{nT})$, estimation errors do impact the classical option pricing PDEs. We estimate these option pricing errors by combining numerical evaluation of estimation errors for Heston SDEs parameters with the computation of option price partial derivatives with respect to these SDEs parameters. This is achieved by solving six parabolic PDEs with adequate boundary conditio…
This article presents a deep reinforcement learning approach to price and hedge financial derivatives. This approach extends the work of Guo and Zhu (2017) who recently introduced the equal risk pricing framework, where the price of a contingent claim is determined by equating the optimally hedged residual risk exposure associated respectively with the long and short positions in the derivative. Modifications to the latter scheme are considered to circumvent theoretical pitfalls associated with the original approach. Derivative prices obtained through this modified approach are shown to be arb…
We pursue robust approach to pricing and hedging in mathematical finance. We consider a continuous time setting in which some underlying assets and options, with continuous paths, are available for dynamic trading and a further set of European options, possibly with varying maturities, is available for static trading. Motivated by the notion of prediction set in Mykland (2003), we include in our setup modelling beliefs by allowing to specify a set of paths to be considered, e.g. super-replication of a contingent claim is required only for paths falling in the given set. Our framework thus inte…
We describe the pricing and hedging of financial options without the use of probability using rough paths. By encoding the volatility of assets in an enhancement of the price trajectory, we give a pathwise presentation of the replication of European options. The continuity properties of rough-paths allow us to generalise the so-called fundamental theorem of derivative trading, showing that a small misspecification of the model will yield only a small excess profit or loss of the replication strategy. Our hedging strategy is an enhanced version of classical delta hedging where we use volatility…
We investigate the computational aspects of the basket CDS pricing with counterparty risk under a credit contagion model of multinames. This model enables us to capture the systematic volatility increases in the market triggered by a particular bankruptcy. The drawback of this problem is its analytical complication due to its path-dependent functional, which bears a potential failure in its convergence of numerical approximation under standing assumptions. In this paper we find sufficient conditions for the desired convergence of the functionals associated with a class of path-dependent stocha…
We consider the pricing of derivatives in a setting with trading restrictions, but without any probabilistic assumptions on the underlying model, in discrete and continuous time. In particular, we assume that European put or call options are traded at certain maturities, and the forward price implied by these option prices may be strictly decreasing in time. In discrete time, when call options are traded, the short-selling restrictions ensure no arbitrage, and we show that classical duality holds between the smallest super-replication price and the supremum over expectations of the payoff over…
This paper considers utility indifference valuation of derivatives under model uncertainty and trading constraints, where the utility is formulated as an additive stochastic differential utility of both intertemporal consumption and terminal wealth, and the uncertain prospects are ranked according to a multiple-priors model of Chen and Epstein (2002). The price is determined by two optimal stochastic control problems (mixed with optimal stopping time in the case of American option) of forward-backward stochastic differential equations. By means of backward stochastic differential equation and …
Pricing and Semi-static Hedging of Green Pay-as-produced Power Purchase Agreements
Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学科特韦格-德弗里斯数学研究所）；Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学信息学研究所）
We study pricing and hedging under parameter uncertainty for a class of Markov processes which we call generalized affine processes and which includes the Black-Scholes model as well as the constant elasticity of variance (CEV) model as special cases. Based on a general dynamic programming principle, we are able to link the associated nonlinear expectation to a variational form of the Kolmogorov equation which opens the door for fast numerical pricing in the robust framework. The main novelty of the paper is that we propose a deep hedging approach which efficiently solves the hedging problem u…
London School of Economics and Political Science（伦敦政治经济学院）；Shanghai University（上海大学）
We study neural networks as nonparametric estimation tools for the hedging of options. To this end, we design a network, named HedgeNet, that directly outputs a hedging strategy. This network is trained to minimise the hedging error instead of the pricing error. Applied to end-of-day and tick prices of S&P 500 and Euro Stoxx 50 options, the network is able to reduce the mean squared hedging error of the Black-Scholes benchmark significantly. However, a similar benefit arises by simple linear regressions that incorporate the leverage effect.
We investigate the links between various no-arbitrage conditions and the existence of pricing functionals in general markets, and prove the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing therein. No-arbitrage conditions, either in this abstract setting or in the case of a market consisting of European Call options, give rise to duality properties of infinite-dimensional sub- and super-hedging problems. With a view towards applications, we show how duality is preserved when reducing these problems over finite-dimensional bases. We finally perform a rigorous perturbation analysis of those linear programmi…
This research investigates pricing financial options based on the traditional martingale theory of arbitrage pricing applied to neural SDEs. We treat neural SDEs as universal Itô process approximators. In this way we can lift all assumptions on the form of the underlying price process, and compute theoretical option prices numerically. We propose a variation of the SDE-GAN approach by implementing the Wasserstein distance metric as a loss function for training. Furthermore, it is conjectured that the error of the option price implied by the learnt model can be bounded by the very Wasserstein d…
The objective of this paper is to develop a duality between a novel Entropy Martingale Optimal Transport problem (A) and an associated optimization problem (B). In (A) we follow the approach taken in the Entropy Optimal Transport (EOT) primal problem by Liero et al. "Optimal entropy-transport problems and a new Hellinger-Kantorovic distance between positive measures", Invent. math. 2018, but we add the constraint, typical of Martingale Optimal Transport (MOT) theory, that the infimum of the cost functional is taken over martingale probability measures, instead of finite positive measures, as i…
We consider the problem of optimal hedging in an incomplete market with an established pricing kernel. In such a market, prices are uniquely determined, but perfect hedges are usually not available. We work in the rather general setting of a Lévy-Ito market, where assets are driven jointly by an $n$-dimensional Brownian motion and an independent Poisson random measure on an $n$-dimensional state space. Given a position in need of hedging and the instruments available as hedges, we demonstrate the existence of an optimal hedge portfolio, where optimality is defined by use of an expected least s…
The problem of hedging and pricing sequences of contingent claims in large financial markets is studied. Connection between asymptotic arbitrage and behavior of the $α$~-~quantile price is shown. The large Black-Scholes model is carefully examined.
We develop a robust framework for pricing and hedging of derivative securities in discrete-time financial markets. We consider markets with both dynamically and statically traded assets and make minimal measurability assumptions. We obtain an abstract (pointwise) Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing and Pricing--Hedging Duality. Our results are general and in particular include so-called model independent results of Acciao et al. (2016), Burzoni et al. (2016) as well as seminal results of Dalang et al. (1990) in a classical probabilistic approach. Our analysis is scenario--based: a model speci…
Paper is based on "The cost of illiquidity and its effects on hedging", L. C. G. Rogers and Surbjeet Singh, 2010. We generalize its thesis to constant elasticity model, which own previously used Black-Schoels model as a special case. The Goal of this article is to find optimal hedging strategy of European call/put option in illiquid environment. We understand illiquidity as a non linear transaction cost function depending only on rate of change of our portfolio. In case this function is quadratic, optimal policy is given by system of 3 PDE. In addition we show, that for small $ε$ costs of sell…
We study the pricing and hedging of derivative securities with uncertainty about the volatility of the underlying asset. Rather than taking all models from a prespecified class equally seriously, we penalise less plausible ones based on their "distance" to a reference local volatility model. In the limit for small uncertainty aversion, this leads to explicit formulas for prices and hedging strategies in terms of the security's cash gamma.
We provide a Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing and a Superhedging Theorem for a model independent discrete time financial market with proportional transaction costs. We consider a probability-free version of the Robust No Arbitrage condition introduced in Schachermayer ['04] and show that this is equivalent to the existence of Consistent Price Systems. Moreover, we prove that the superhedging price for a claim g coincides with the frictionless superhedging price of g for a suitable process in the bid-ask spread.
The effects of weather on agriculture in recent years have become a major global concern. Hence, the need for an effective weather risk management tool (i.e., weather derivatives) that can hedge crop yields against weather uncertainties. However, most smallholder farmers and agricultural stakeholders are unwilling to pay for the price of weather derivatives (WD) because of the presence of basis risks (product-design and geographical) in the pricing models. To eliminate product-design basis risks, a machine learning ensemble technique was used to determine the relationship between maize yield a…
Although not a formal pricing consideration, gap risk or hedging errors are the norm of derivatives businesses. Starting with the gap risk during a margin period of risk of a repurchase agreement (repo), this article extends the Black-Scholes-Merton option pricing framework by introducing a reserve capital approach to the hedging error's irreducible variability. An extended partial differential equation is derived with two new terms for expected gap loss and economic capital charge, leading to the gap risk economic value adjustment and capital valuation adjustment (KVA) respectively. Practical…
In this paper, we consider the pricing and hedging of a financial derivative for an insider trader, in a model-independent setting. In particular, we suppose that the insider wants to act in a way which is independent of any modelling assumptions, but that she observes market information in the form of the prices of vanilla call options on the asset. We also assume that both the insider's information, which takes the form of a set of impossible paths, and the payoff of the derivative are time-invariant. This setup allows us to adapt recent work of Beiglboeck, Cox and Huesmann (2016) to prove d…
In this paper we study the pricing and hedging problem of a portfolio of life insurance products under the benchmark approach, where the reference market is modelled as driven by a state variable following a polynomial diffusion on a compact state space. Such a model guarantees not only the positivity of the OIS short rate and the mortality intensity, but also the possibility of approximating both pricing formula and hedging strategy of a large class of life insurance products by explicit formulas.
In this paper we propose a general framework for modeling an insurance liability cash flow in continuous time, by generalizing the reduced-form framework for credit risk and life insurance. In particular, we assume a nontrivial dependence structure between the reference filtration and the insurance internal filtration. We apply these results for pricing and hedging non-life insurance liabilities in hybrid financial and insurance markets, while taking into account the role of inflation under the benchmarked risk-minimization approach. This framework offers at the same time a general and flexibl…
The two main issues for managing wrong way risk (WWR) for the credit valuation adjustment (CVA, i.e. WW-CVA) are calibration and hedging. Hence we start from a novel model-free worst-case approach based on static hedging of counterparty exposure with liquid options. We say "start from" because we demonstrate that a naive worst-case approach contains hidden unrealistic assumptions on the variance of the hazard rate (i.e. that it is infinite). We correct this by making it an explicit (finite) parameter and present an efficient method for solving the parametrized model optimizing the hedges. We a…
We study robust notions of good-deal hedging and valuation under combined uncertainty about the drifts and volatilities of asset prices. Good-deal bounds are determined by a subset of risk-neutral pricing measures such that not only opportunities for arbitrage are excluded but also deals that are too good, by restricting instantaneous Sharpe ratios. A non-dominated multiple priors approach to model uncertainty (ambiguity) leads to worst-case good-deal bounds. Corresponding hedging strategies arise as minimizers of a suitable coherent risk measure. Good-deal bounds and hedges for measurable cla…
