We construct a family of non-Gaussian martingales the marginals of which are all Gaussian. We give the predictable quadratic variation of these processes and show they do not have continuous paths. These processes are Markovian and inhomogeneous in time, and we give their infinitesimal generators. Within this family we find a class of piecewise deterministic pure jump processes and describe the laws of jumps and times between the jumps.
We consider the problem of finding a real valued martingale fitting specified marginal distributions. For this to be possible, the marginals must be increasing in the convex order and have constant mean. We show that, under the extra condition that they are weakly continuous, the marginals can always be fitted in a unique way by a martingale which lies in a particular class of strong Markov processes. It is also shown that the map that this gives from the sets of marginal distributions to the martingale measures is continuous. Furthermore, we prove that it is the unique continuous method of fi…
Baez-Duarte (1971) and Gilat (1972) gave examples of martingales that converge in probability (and hence in distribution) but not almost surely. Here such a martingale is constructed with uniformly bounded increments, and a construction is provided of two martingales with the same marginals, one of which converges almost surely, while the other does not converge in probability.
We show continuity of the martingale optimal transport optimisation problem as a functional of its marginals. This is achieved via an estimate on the projection in the nested/causal Wasserstein distance of an arbitrary coupling on to the set of martingale couplings with the same marginals. As a corollary we obtain an independent proof of sufficiency of the monotonicity principle established in [Beiglboeck, M., & Juillet, N. (2016). On a problem of optimal transport under marginal martingale constraints. Ann. Probab., 44 (2016), no. 1, 42106] for cost functions of polynomial growth.
We are interested in martingale rearrangement couplings. As introduced by Wiesel [37] in order to prove the stability of Martingale Optimal Transport problems, these are projections in adapted Wasserstein distance of couplings between two probability measures on the real line in the convex order onto the set of martingale couplings between these two marginals. In reason of the lack of relative compactness of the set of couplings with given marginals for the adapted Wasserstein topology, the existence of such a projection is not clear at all. Under a barycentre dispersion assumption on the orig…
An explicit procedure to construct a family of martingales generated by a process with independent increments is presented. The main tools are the polynomials that give the relationship between the moments and cumulants, and a set of martingales related to the jumps of the process called Teugels martingales
In this paper, we exhibit a new family of martingale couplings between two one-dimensional probability measures $μ$ and $ν$ in the convex order. This family is parametrised by two dimensional probability measures on the unit square with respective marginal densities proportional to the positive and negative parts of the difference between the quantile functions of $μ$ and $ν$. It contains the inverse transform martingale coupling which is explicit in terms of the associated cumulative distribution functions. The integral of $\vert x-y\vert$ with respect to each of these couplings is smaller th…
Given the univariate marginals of a real-valued, continuous-time martingale, (respectively, a family of measures parameterised by $t \in [0,T]$ which is increasing in convex order, or a double continuum of call prices) we construct a family of pure-jump martingales which mimic that martingale (respectively, are consistent with the family of measures, or call prices). As an example, we construct a fake Brownian motion. Then, under a further `dispersion' assumption, we construct the martingale which (within the family of martingales which are consistent with a given set of measures) has the smal…
We determine the optimal structure of couplings for the \emph{Martingale transport problem} between radially symmetric initial and terminal laws $μ, ν$ on $\R^d$ and show the uniqueness of optimizer. Here optimality means that such solutions will minimize the functional $\E |X-Y|^p$ where $0<p \leq 1$, and the dimension $d$ is arbitrary.
Hamza-Klebaner posed the problem of constructing martingales with Brownian marginals that differ from Brownian motion, so called fake Brownian motions. Besides its theoretical appeal, the problem represents the quintessential version of the ubiquitous fitting problem in mathematical finance where the task is to construct martingales that satisfy marginal constraints imposed by market data. Non-continuous solutions to this challenge were given by Madan-Yor, Hamza-Klebaner, Hobson, and Fan-Hamza-Klebaner whereas continuous (but non-Markovian) fake Brownian motions were constructed by Oleszkiewic…
We investigate the supports of extremal martingale measures with pre-specified marginals in a two-period setting. First, we establish in full generality the equivalence between the extremality of a given measure $Q$ and the denseness in $L^1(Q)$ of a suitable linear subspace, which can be seen in a financial context as the set of all semi-static trading strategies. Moreover, when the supports of both marginals are countable, we focus on the slightly stronger notion of weak exact predictable representation property (henceforth, WEP) and provide two combinatorial sufficient conditions, called "2…
In this article we discuss the problem of calculating optimal model-independent (robust) bounds for the price of Asian options with discrete and continuous averaging. We will give geometric characterisations of the maximising and the minimising pricing model for certain types of Asian options in discrete and continuous time. In discrete time the problem is reduced to finding the optimal martingale transport for the cost function $|x+y|$. In the continuous time case we consider the cases with one and two given marginals. We describe the maximising models in both of these cases as well as the mi…
Given a real valued and time-inhomogeneous martingale diffusion X, we investigate the properties of functions defined by the conditional expectation f(t,X_t)=E[g(X_T)|F_t]. We show that whenever g is monotonic or Lipschitz continuous then f(t,x) will also be monotonic or Lipschitz continuous in x. If g is convex then f(t,x) will be convex in x and decreasing in t. We also define the marginal support of a process and show that it almost surely contains the paths of the process. Although f need not be jointly continuous, we show that it will be continuous on the marginal support of X. We prove t…
Continuity of the value of the martingale optimal transport problem on the real line w.r.t. its marginals was recently established in Backhoff-Veraguas and Pammer [2] and Wiesel [21]. We present a new perspective of this result using the theory of set-valued maps. In particular, using results from Beiglböck, Jourdain, Margheriti, and Pammer [5], we show that the set of martingale measures with fixed marginals is continuous, i.e., lower- and upper hemicontinuous, w.r.t. its marginals. Moreover, we establish compactness of the set of optimizers as well as upper hemicontinuity of the optimizers w…
We study the influence of additional intermediate marginal distributions on the value of the martingale optimal transport problem. From a financial point of view, this corresponds to taking into account call option prices not only, as usual, for those call options where the respective future maturities coincide with the maturities of some exotic derivative but also additional maturities and then to study the effect on model-independent price bounds for the exotic derivative. We characterize market settings, i.e., combinations of the payoff of exotic derivatives, call option prices and marginal…
We obtain bounds on the distribution of the maximum of a martingale with fixed marginals at finitely many intermediate times. The bounds are sharp and attained by a solution to $n$-marginal Skorokhod embedding problem in Obłój and Spoida [An iterated Azéma-Yor type embedding for finitely many marginals (2013) Preprint]. It follows that their embedding maximizes the maximum among all other embeddings. Our motivating problem is superhedging lookback options under volatility uncertainty for an investor allowed to dynamically trade the underlying asset and statically trade European call options fo…
In this article, it is proved that for any cumulative distribution function with compact support and a specified t > 0, there exists a diffusion martingale which has this law at time t. The article proves existence; no claims are made about uniqueness. After a discussion on strings and associated semigroups, the article gives a re-working of a standard approach to the problem of constructing an explicit discrete time martingale diffusion on a finite state space which, for a random geometrically distributed time that is independent of the diffusion, the law of the diffusion stopped at this rand…
In this paper we apply change of numeraire techniques to the optimal transport approach for computing model-free prices of derivatives in a two periods model. In particular, we consider the optimal transport plan constructed in \cite{HobsonKlimmek2013} as well as the one introduced in \cite{BeiglJuil} and further studied in \cite{BrenierMartingale}. We show that, in the case of positive martingales, a suitable change of numeraire applied to \cite{HobsonKlimmek2013} exchanges forward start straddles of type I and type II, so that the optimal transport plan in the subhedging problems is the same…
This paper presents a generalization of the Kunita-Watanabe decomposition of a $L^2$ space with nonlinear stochastic integrals where the integrator is a family of continuous martingales bounded in $L^2$. To get the result, a useful relation between the regularity of the martingale family respect to its parameter and the regularity of the integrand in its martingale decomposition is shown.The decomposition presented in the main result is also the solution of an optimization problem in $L^2$. Finally, an example is given where the optimization problem is solved explicitely.
We study general properties for the family of stochastic processes with polynomial regression property, that is that every conditional moment of the process is a polynomial. It turns out that then there exists a family of polynomial martingales $\left\{ M_{n}(X_{t},t)\right\}_{n\geq1}$ that contains complete information on the distribution (both marginal and transitional) of the process. We specify conditions expressed in terms of $M_{n}^{\prime}s$ under which a given process has independent increments and further is a Levy process, contains reversed martingales, is a harness or quadratic harn…
The basic problem of optimal transportation consists in minimizing the expected costs $\mathbb {E}[c(X_1,X_2)]$ by varying the joint distribution $(X_1,X_2)$ where the marginal distributions of the random variables $X_1$ and $X_2$ are fixed. Inspired by recent applications in mathematical finance and connections with the peacock problem, we study this problem under the additional condition that $(X_i)_{i=1,2}$ is a martingale, that is, $\mathbb {E}[X_2|X_1]=X_1$. We establish a variational principle for this problem which enables us to determine optimal martingale transport plans for specific …
We consider the optimal Skorokhod embedding problem (SEP) given full marginals over the time interval $[0,1]$. The problem is related to the study of extremal martingales associated with a peacock ("process increasing in convex order", by Hirsch, Profeta, Roynette and Yor). A general duality result is obtained by convergence techniques. We then study the case where the reward function depends on the maximum of the embedding process, which is the limit of the martingale transport problem studied in Henry-Labordere, Obloj, Spoida and Touzi. Under technical conditions, some explicit characteristi…
Marginal structural models were introduced in order to provide estimates of causal effects from interventions based on observational studies in epidemiological research. The key point is that this can be understood in terms of Girsanov's change of measure. This offers a mathematical interpretation of marginal structural models that has not been available before. We consider both a model of an observational study and a model of a hypothetical randomized trial. These models correspond to different martingale measures -- the observational measure and the randomized trial measure -- on some underl…
A classical result of Strassen asserts that given probabilities $μ, ν$ on the real line which are in convex order, there exists a \emph{martingale coupling} with these marginals, i.e.\ a random vector $(X_1,X_2)$ such that $X_1\sim μ, X_2\sim ν$ and $E[X_2|X_1]=X_1$. Remarkably, it is a non trivial problem to construct particular solutions to this problem. In this article, we introduce a family of such martingale couplings, each of which admits several characterizations in terms of optimality properties / geometry of the support set / representation through a Skorokhod embedding. As a particul…
We study the problem of bounding path-dependent expectations (within any finite time horizon $d$) over the class of discrete-time martingales whose marginal distributions lie within a prescribed tolerance of a given collection of benchmark marginal distributions. This problem is a relaxation of the martingale optimal transport (MOT) problem and is motivated by applications to super-hedging in financial markets. We show that the empirical version of our relaxed MOT problem can be approximated within $O\left( n^{-1/2}\right)$ error where $n$ is the number of samples of each of the individual mar…
The duality between the robust (or equivalently, model independent) hedging of path dependent European options and a martingale optimal transport problem is proved. The financial market is modeled through a risky asset whose price is only assumed to be a continuous function of time. The hedging problem is to construct a minimal super-hedging portfolio that consists of dynamically trading the underlying risky asset and a static position of vanilla options which can be exercised at the given, fixed maturity. The dual is a Monge-Kantorovich type martingale transport problem of maximizing the expe…
Suppose that a real valued process X is given as a solution to a stochastic differential equation. Then, for any twice continuously differentiable function f, the backward Kolmogorov equation gives a condition for f(t,X) to be a local martingale. We generalize the backward equation in two main ways. First, it is extended to non-differentiable functions. Second, the process X is not required to satisfy an SDE. Instead, it is only required to be a quasimartingale satisfying an integrability condition, and the martingale condition for f(t,X) is then expressed in terms of the marginal distribution…
We show that the left-monotone martingale coupling is optimal for any given performance function satisfying the martingale version of the Spence-Mirrlees condition, without assuming additional structural conditions on the marginals. We also give a new interpretation of the left monotone coupling in terms of Skorokhod embedding which allows us to give a short proof of uniqueness.
We explore the structure of solutions to a family of non-linear martingale optimal transport (MOT) problems that involve conditional expectations in the objective functional. En route general results concerning optimization over (martingale) measures are proved that appear much more widely applicable. In particular the analysis leads us to introduce a notion of so-called curtain transports; in a main contribution we highlight the rôle that these transports play in (non-linear) MOT.
We study the structure of martingale transports in finite dimensions. We consider the family $\mathcal{M}(μ,ν) $ of martingale measures on $\mathbb{R}^N \times \mathbb{R}^N$ with given marginals $μ,ν$, and construct a family of relatively open convex sets $\{C_x:x\in \mathbb{R}^N \}$, which forms a partition of $\mathbb{R}^N$, and such that any martingale transport in $\mathcal{M}(μ,ν) $ sends mass from $x$ to within $\overline{C_x}$, $μ(dx)$--a.e. Our results extend the analogous one-dimensional results of M. Beiglböck and N. Juillet (2016) and M. Beiglböck, M. Nutz, and N. Touzi (2015). We c…
Given a family of real probability measures $(μ_t)_{t\geq 0}$ increasing in convex order (a peacock) we describe a systematic method to create a martingale exactly fitting the marginals at any time. The key object for our approach is the obstructed shadow of a measure in a peacock, a generalization of the (obstructed) shadow introduced in \cite{BeJu16,NuStTa17}. As input data we take an increasing family of measures $(ν^α)_{α\in [0,1]}$ with $ν^α(\mathbb{R})=α$ that are submeasures of $μ_0$, called a parametrization of $μ_0$. Then, for any $α$ we define an evolution $(η^α_t)_{t\geq 0}$ of the …
We provide a characterization of the family of non-negative local martingales that have continuous running supremum and vanish at infinity. This is done by describing the class of random times that identify the times of maximum of such processes. In this way we extend to the case of general filtrations a result proved by Nikeghbali and Yor [NY06] for continuous filtrations. Our generalization is complementary to the one presented by Kardaras [Kar14], and is obtained by means of similar tools.
Consider a multiperiod optimal transport problem where distributions $μ_{0},\dots,μ_{n}$ are prescribed and a transport corresponds to a scalar martingale $X$ with marginals $X_{t}\simμ_{t}$. We introduce particular couplings called left-monotone transports; they are characterized equivalently by a no-crossing property of their support, as simultaneous optimizers for a class of bivariate transport cost functions with a Spence--Mirrlees property, and by an order-theoretic minimality property. Left-monotone transports are unique if $μ_{0}$ is atomless, but not in general. In the one-period case …
We introduce a family of real random variables $(β,θ)$ arising from the supersymmetric nonlinear sigma model and containing the family $β$ introduced by Sabot, Tarrès, and Zeng [STZ17] in the context of the vertex-reinforced jump process. Using this family we construct an exponential martingale generalizing the one considered in [DMR17]. Moreover, using the full supersymmetric nonlinear sigma model we also construct a generalization of the exponential martingale involving Grassmann variables.
In the "positive interest" models of Flesaker-Hughston, the nominal discount bond system is determined by a one-parameter family of positive martingales. In the present paper we extend this analysis to include a variety of distributions for the martingale family, parameterised by a function that determines the behaviour of the market risk premium. These distributions include jump and diffusion characteristics that generate various properties for discount bond returns. For example, one can generate skewness and excess kurtosis in the bond returns by choosing the martingale family to be given by…
We construct a family of self-similar Markov martingales with given marginal distributions. This construction uses the self-similarity and Markov property of a reference process to produce a family of Markov processes that possess the same marginal distributions as the original process. The resulting processes are also self-similar with the same exponent as the original process. They can be chosen to be martingales under certain conditions. In this paper, we present two approaches to this construction, the transition-randomising approach and the time-change approach. We then compute the infini…
We revisit Kellerer's Theorem, that is, we show that for a family of real probability distributions $(μ_t)_{t\in [0,1]}$ which increases in convex order there exists a Markov martingale $(S_t)_{t\in[0,1]}$ s.t.\ $S_t\sim μ_t$. To establish the result, we observe that the set of martingale measures with given marginals carries a natural compact Polish topology. Based on a particular property of the martingale coupling associated to Root's embedding this allows for a relatively concise proof of Kellerer's theorem. We emphasize that many of our arguments are borrowed from Kellerer \cite{Ke72}, Lo…
We construct a fake exponential Brownian motion, a continuous martingale different from classical exponential Brownian motion but with the same marginal distributions, thus extending results of Albin and Oleszkiewicz for fake Brownian motions. The ideas extend to other diffusions.
We solve explicitly the following problem: for a given probability measure mu, we specify a generalised martingale diffusion X which, stopped at an independent exponential time T, is distributed according to mu. The process X is specified via its speed measure m. We present three proofs. First we show how the result can be derived from the solution of Bertoin and Le Jan (1992) to the Skorokhod embedding problem. Secondly, we give a proof exploiting applications of Krein's spectral theory of strings to the study of linear diffusions. Finally, we present a novel direct probabilistic proof based …
We provide a complete characterisation of the Root solution to the Skorokhod embedding problem (SEP) by means of an optimal stopping formulation. Our methods are purely probabilistic and the analysis relies on a tailored time-reversal argument. This approach allows us to address the long-standing question of a multiple marginals extension of the Root solution of the SEP. Our main result establishes a complete solution to the n-marginal SEP using first hitting times of barrier sets by the time-space process. The barriers are characterised by means of a recursive sequence of optimal stopping pro…
It is shown that the ratio between the expected diameter of an L2-bounded martingale and the standard deviation of its last term cannot exceed sqrt(3). Moreover, a one-parameter family of stopping times on standard Brownian Motion is exhibited, for which the sqrt(3) upper bound is attained. These stopping times, one for each cost-rate c, are optimal when the payoff for stopping at time t is the diameter D(t) obtained up to time t minus the hitherto accumulated cost c t. A quantity related to diameter, maximal drawdown (or rise), is introduced and its expectation is shown to be bounded by sqrt(…
We study a variant of the martingale optimal transport problem in a multi-period setting to derive robust price bounds of a financial derivative. On top of marginal and martingale constraints, we introduce a time-homogeneity assumption, which restricts the variability of the forward-looking transitions of the martingale across time. We provide a dual formulation in terms of superhedging and discuss relaxations of the time-homogeneity assumption by adding market frictions. In financial terms, the introduced time-homogeneity corresponds to a time-consistency condition for call prices, given the …
This paper focuses on martingale optimal transport problems when the martingales are assumed to have bounded quadratic variation. First, we give a result that characterizes the existence of a probability measure satisfying some convex transport constraints in addition to having given initial and terminal marginals. Several applications are provided: martingale measures with volatility uncertainty, optimal transport with capacity constraints, and Skorokhod embedding with bounded times. Next, we extend this result to multi-marginal constraints. Finally, we consider an optimal transport problem w…
In this paper the whole family of fractional Brownian motions is constructed as a single Gaussian field indexed by time and the Hurst index simultaneously. The field has a simple covariance structure and it is related to two generalizations of fractional Brownian motion known as multifractional Brownian motions. A mistake common to the existing literature regarding multifractional Brownian motions is pointed out and corrected. The Gaussian field, due to inherited ``duality'', reveals a new way of constructing martingales associated with the odd and even part of a fractional Brownian motion and…
