This paper studies the problem of optimal investment in incomplete markets, robust with respect to stopping times. We work on a Brownian motion framework and the stopping times are adapted to the Brownian filtration. Robustness can only be achieved for logartihmic utility, otherwise a cashflow should be added to the investor s wealth. The cashflow can be decomposed into the sum of an increasing and a decreasing process. The last one can be viewed as consumption. The first one is an insurance premium the agent has to pay.
We give a general formulation of the utility maximization problem under nondominated model uncertainty in discrete time and show that an optimal portfolio exists for any utility function that is bounded from above. In the unbounded case, integrability conditions are needed as nonexistence may arise even if the value function is finite.
The effectiveness of utility-maximization techniques for portfolio management relies on our ability to estimate correctly the parameters of the dynamics of the underlying financial assets. In the setting of complete or incomplete financial markets, we investigate whether small perturbations of the market coefficient processes lead to small changes in the agent's optimal behavior derived from the solution of the related utility-maximization problems. Specifically, we identify the topologies on the parameter process space and the solution space under which utility-maximization is a continuous op…
This article studies the sensitivity of the power utility maximization problem with respect to the investor's relative risk aversion, the statistical probability measure, the investment constraints and the market price of risk. We extend previous descriptions of the dual domain then exploit the link between the constrained utility maximization problem and continuous semimartingale quadratic BSDEs to reduce questions on sensitivity to results on stability for such equations. This then allows us to prove appropriate convergence of the primal and dual optimizers in the semimartingale topology.
We perform a stability analysis for the utility maximization problem in a general semimartingale model where both liquid and illiquid assets (random endowments) are present. Small misspecifications of preferences (as modeled via expected utility), as well as views of the world or the market model (as modeled via subjective probabilities) are considered. Simple sufficient conditions are given for the problem to be well-posed, in the sense the optimal wealth and the marginal utility-based prices are continuous functionals of preferences and probabilistic views.
We study the sensitivity of the expected utility maximization problem in a continuous semi-martingale market with respect to small changes in the market price of risk. Assuming that the preferences of a rational economic agent are modeled with a general utility function, we obtain a second-order expansion of the value function, a first-order approximation of the terminal wealth, and construct trading strategies that match the indirect utility function up to the second order. If a risk-tolerance wealth process exists, using it as a numéraire and under an appropriate change of measure, we reduce…
In this paper we extend the stability results of [4]}. Our utility maximization problem is defined as an essential supremum of conditional expectations of the terminal values of wealth processes, conditioned on the filtration at the stopping time $τ$. To establish our results, we extend the classical results of convex analysis to maps from $L^0$ to $L^0$. The notion of convex compactness introduced in [7] plays an important role in our analysis.
In this paper, we study a class of quadratic Backward Stochastic Differential Equations (BSDEs) which arises naturally when studying the problem of utility maximization with portfolio constraints. We first establish existence and uniqueness results for such BSDEs and then, we give an application to the utility maximization problem. Three cases of utility functions will be discussed: the exponential, power and logarithmic ones.
We adress the maximization problem of expected utility from terminal wealth. The special feature of this paper is that we consider a financial market where the price process of risky assets can have a default time. Using dynamic programming, we characterize the value function with a backward stochastic differential equation and the optimal portfolio policies. We separately treat the cases of exponential, power and logarithmic utility.
We consider the economic problem of optimal consumption and investment with power utility. We study the optimal strategy as the relative risk aversion tends to infinity or to one. The convergence of the optimal consumption is obtained for general semimartingale models while the convergence of the optimal trading strategy is obtained for continuous models. The limits are related to exponential and logarithmic utility. To derive these results, we combine approaches from optimal control, convex analysis and backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs).
We present an optimal investment theorem for a currency exchange model with random and possibly discontinuous proportional transaction costs. The investor's preferences are represented by a multivariate utility function, allowing for simultaneous consumption of any prescribed selection of the currencies at a given terminal date. We prove the existence of an optimal portfolio process under the assumption of asymptotic satiability of the value function. Sufficient conditions for asymptotic satiability of the value function include reasonable asymptotic elasticity of the utility function, or a gr…
We consider the problem of maximizing expected utility from terminal wealth in models with stochastic factors. Using martingale methods and a conditioning argument, we determine the optimal strategy for power utility under the assumption that the increments of the asset price are independent conditionally on the factor process.
We study the convex duality method for robust utility maximization in the presence of a random endowment. When the underlying price process is a locally bounded semimartingale, we show that the fundamental duality relation holds true for a wide class of utility functions on the whole real line and unbounded random endowment. To obtain this duality, we prove a robust version of Rockafellar's theorem on convex integral functionals and apply Fenchel's general duality theorem.
We consider a utility-maximization problem in a general semimartingale financial model, subject to constraints on the number of shares held in each risky asset. These constraints are modeled by predictable convex-set-valued processes whose values do not necessarily contain the origin; that is, it may be inadmissible for an investor to hold no risky investment at all. Such a setup subsumes the classical constrained utility-maximization problem, as well as the problem where illiquid assets or a random endowment are present. Our main result establishes the existence of optimal trading strategies …
This paper studies the continuous time utility maximization problem on consumption with addictive habit formation in incomplete semimartingale markets. Introducing the set of auxiliary state processes and the modified dual space, we embed our original problem into a time-separable utility maximization problem with a shadow random endowment on the product space $\mathbb{L}_+^0(Ω\times [0,T],\mathcal{O},\overline{\mathbb{P}})$. Existence and uniqueness of the optimal solution are established using convex duality approach, where the primal value function is defined on two variables, that is, the …
We study a robust utility maximization problem in the unbounded case with a general penalty term and information including jumps. We focus on time consistent penalties and we prove that there exists an optimal probability measure solution of the robust problem. Then, we characterize the dynamic value process of our stochastic control problem as the unique solution of a Quadratic-Exponential BSDE.
In this paper, we consider the classical problem of utility maximization in a financial market allowing jumps. Assuming that the constraint set is a compact set, rather than a convex one, we use a dynamic method from which we derive a specific BSDE. We then aim at showing existence and uniqueness results for the introduced BSDE. This allows us to give an explicit expression of the value function and characterize optimal strategies for our problem.
In this paper we deal with the utility maximization problem with a general utility function. We derive a new approach in which we reduce the utility maximization problem with general utility to the study of a fully-coupled Forward-Backward Stochastic Differential Equation (FBSDE).
We study the problem of utility maximization from terminal wealth in which an agent optimally builds her portfolio by investing in a bond and a risky asset. The asset price dynamics follow a diffusion process with regime-switching coefficients modeled by a continuous-time finite-state Markov chain. We consider an investor with a Constant Relative Risk Aversion (CRRA) utility function. We deduce the associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation to construct the solution and the optimal trading strategy and verify optimality by showing that the value function is the unique constrained viscosity so…
We consider the robust utility maximization using a static holding in derivatives and a dynamic holding in the stock. There is no fixed model for the price of the stock but we consider a set of probability measures (models) which are not necessarily dominated by a fixed probability measure. By assuming that the set of physical probability measures is convex and weakly compact, we obtain the duality result and the existence of an optimizer.
In this paper, we study the dual problem of the expected utility maximization in incomplete markets with bounded random endowment. We start with the problem formulated in the paper of Cvitanić-Schachermayer-Wang (2001) and prove the following statement: in the Brownian framework, the countably additive part $Q^r$ of the dual optimizer $Q\in (L^\infty)^*$ obtained in that paper can be represented by the terminal value of a supermartingale deflator $Y$ defined in the paper of Kramkov-Schachermayer (1999), which is a local martingale.
The existence of optimal strategy in robust utility maximization is addressed when the utility function is finite on the entire real line. A delicate problem in this case is to find a "good definition" of admissible strategies, so that an optimizer is obtained. Under suitable assumptions, especially a time-consistency property of the set of probabilities which describes the model uncertainty, we show that an optimal strategy is obtained in the class of strategies whose wealths are supermartingales under all local martingale measures having a finite generalized entropy with at least one of cand…
This paper concerns the recursive utility maximization problem under partial information. We first transform our problem under partial information into the one under full information. When the generator of the recursive utility is concave, we adopt the variational formulation of the recursive utility which leads to a stochastic game problem and a characterization of the saddle point of the game is obtained. Then, we study the K-ignorance case and explicit saddle points of several examples are obtained. At last, when the generator of the recursive utility is smooth, we employ the terminal pertu…
This article studies quadratic semimartingale BSDEs arising in power utility maximization when the market price of risk is of BMO type. In a Brownian setting we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a solution but show that uniqueness fails to hold in the sense that there exists a continuum of distinct square-integrable solutions. This feature occurs since, contrary to the classical Ito representation theorem, a representation of random variables in terms of stochastic exponentials is not unique. We study in detail when the BSDE has a bounded solution and derive a n…
We introduce a linear space of finitely additive measures to treat the problem of optimal expected utility from consumption under a stochastic clock and an unbounded random endowment process. In this way we establish existence and uniqueness for a large class of utility maximization problems including the classical ones of terminal wealth or consumption, as well as the problems depending on a random time-horizon or multiple consumption instances. As an example we treat explicitly the problem of maximizing the logarithmic utility of a consumption stream, where the local time of an Ornstein-Uhle…
We investigate the continuity of expected exponential utility maximization with respect to perturbation of the Sharpe ratio of markets. By focusing only on continuity, we impose weaker regularity conditions than those found in the literature. Specifically, we require, in addition to the $V$-compactness hypothesis of Larsen and Žitković (2007) (ArXiv: 0706.0474), a local $bmo$ hypothesis, a condition which is seen to always be trivially satisfied in the setting of Larsen and Žitković (2007). For markets of the form $S = M + \int λd<M>$, these conditions are simultaneously implied by the existen…
In this paper we find tight sufficient conditions for the continuity of the value of the utility maximization problem from terminal wealth with respect to the convergence in distribution of the underlying processes. We also establish a weak convergence result for the terminal wealths of the optimal portfolios. Finally, we apply our results to the computation of the minimal expected shortfall (shortfall risk) in the Heston model by building an appropriate lattice approximation.
We treat utility maximization from terminal wealth for an agent with utility function $U:\mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{R}$ who dynamically invests in a continuous-time financial market and receives a possibly unbounded random endowment. We prove the existence of an optimal investment without introducing the associated dual problem. We rely on a recent result of Orlicz space theory, due to Delbaen and Owari which leads to a simple and transparent proof. Our results apply to non-smooth utilities and even strict concavity can be relaxed. We can handle certain random endowments with non-hedgeable risks, co…
We consider the utility maximization problem for a general class of utility functions defined on the real line. We rely on existing results which reduce the problem to a coupled forward-backward stochastic differential equation (FBSDE) and concentrate on showing existence and uniqueness of solution processes to this FBSDE. We use the method of decoupling fields for strongly coupled, multi-dimensional and possibly non-Lipschitz systems as the central technique in conducting the proofs.
We study utility maximization problem for general utility functions using dynamic programming approach. We consider an incomplete financial market model, where the dynamics of asset prices are described by an $R^d$-valued continuous semimartingale. Under some regularity assumptions we derive backward stochastic partial differential equation (BSPDE) related directly to the primal problem and show that the strategy is optimal if and only if the corresponding wealth process satisfies a certain forward-SDE. As examples the cases of power, exponential and logarithmic utilities are considered.
We study a robust stochastic optimization problem in the quasi-sure setting in discrete-time. We show that under a lineality-type condition the problem admits a maximizer. This condition is implied by the no-arbitrage condition in models of financial markets. As a corollary, we obtain existence of an utility maximizer in the frictionless market model, markets with proportional transaction costs and also more general convex costs, like in the case of market impact.
In this paper we study a utility maximization problem with random horizon and reduce it to the analysis of a specific BSDE, which we call BSDE with singular coefficients, when the support of the default time is assumed to be bounded. We prove existence and uniqueness of the solution for the equation under interest. Our results are illustrated by numerical simulations.
We study the dual formulation of the utility maximization problem in incomplete markets when the utility function is finitely valued on the whole real line. We extend the existing results in this literature in two directions. First, we allow for nonsmooth utility functions, so as to include the shortfall minimization problems in our framework. Second, we allow for the presence of some given liability or a random endowment. In particular, these results provide a dual formulation of the utility indifference valuation rule.
Connections between a system of Forward-Backward SDEs and Backward Stochastic PDEs related to the utility maximiza- tion problem is established. Besides, we derive another version of FBSDE of the same problem and prove an existence of a solution
We explore martingale and convex duality techniques to study optimal investment strategies that maximize expected risk-averse utility from consumption and terminal wealth. We consider a market model with jumps driven by (multivariate) marked point processes and so-called non-linear wealth dynamics which allows to take account of relaxed assumptions such as differential borrowing and lending interest rates or short positions with cash collateral and negative rebate rates. We give suffcient conditions for existence of optimal policies for agents with logarithmic and CRRA power utility. We find c…
This paper studies the problem of optimal investment with CRRA (constant, relative risk aversion) preferences, subject to dynamic risk constraints on trading strategies. The market model considered is continuous in time and incomplete. the prices of financial assets are modeled by Itô processes. The dynamic risk constraints, which are time and state dependent, are generated by risk measures. Optimal trading strategies are characterized by a quadratic BSDE. Within the class of \textit{time consistent distortion risk measures}, a three-fund separation result is established. Numerical results emp…
We consider a utility maximization problem in a broad class of markets. Apart from traditional semimartingale markets, our class of markets includes processes with long memory, fractional Brownian motion and related processes, and, in general, Gaussian processes satisfying certain regularity conditions on their covariance functions. Our choice of markets is motivated by the well-known phenomena of the so-called "constant" and "variable depth" memory observed in real world price processes, for which fractional and multifractional models are the most adequate descriptions. We introduce the notio…
We present a solution of a class of network utility maximization (NUM) problems using minimal communication. The constraints of the problem are inspired less by TCP-like congestion control but by problems in the area of internet of things and related areas in which the need arises to bring the behavior of a large group of agents to a social optimum. The approach uses only intermittent feedback, no inter-agent communication, and no common clock. The proposed algorithm is a combination of the classical AIMD algorithm in conjunction with a simple probabilistic rule for the agents to respond to a …
We study a problem of utility maximization under model uncertainty with information including jumps. We prove first that the value process of the robust stochastic control problem is described by the solution of a quadratic-exponential backward stochastic differential equation with jumps. Then, we establish a dynamic maximum principle for the optimal control of the maximization problem. The characterization of the optimal model and the optimal control (consumption-investment) is given via a forward-backward system which generalizes the result of Duffie and Skiadas (1994) and El Karoui, Peng an…
In this paper we study the problem of maximizing expected utility from the terminal wealth with proportional transaction costs and random endowment. In the context of the existence of consistent price systems, we consider the duality between the primal utility maximization problem and the dual one, which is set up on the domain of finitely additive measures. In particular, we prove duality results for utility functions supporting possibly negative values. Moreover, we construct the shadow market by the dual optimal process and consider the utility based pricing for random endowment.
In this paper we ask whether, given a stock market and an illiquid derivative, there exists arbitrage-free prices at which an utility-maximizing agent would always want to buy the derivative, irrespectively of his own initial endowment of derivatives and cash. We prove that this is false for any given investor if one considers all initial endowments with finite utility, and that it can instead be true if one restricts to the endowments in the interior. We show however how the endowments on the boundary can give rise to very odd phenomena; for example, an investor with such an endowment would c…
In this study, we consider the exponential utility maximization problem in the context of a jump-diffusion model. To solve the problem, we rely on the dynamic programming principle and we derive from it a quadratic BSDE with jumps. Since this quadratic BSDE is driven both by a Wiener process and by a Poisson random measure having a Levy measure with infinite mass, our main task consists in establishing a new existence result for the specific BSDE introduced.
In an incomplete model, where under an appropriate numéraire, the stock price process is driven by a sigma-bounded semimartingale, we investigate the behavior of the expected utility maximization problem under small perturbations of the numéraire. We establish a quadratic approximation of the value function and a first-order expansion of the terminal wealth. Relying on a description of the base return process in terms of its semimartingale characteristics, we also construct wealth processes and nearly optimal strategies that allow for matching the primal value function up to the second order. …
In this paper we establish the existence and the uniqueness of the solution of a special class of BSDEs for Lévy processes in the case of a Lipschitz generator of sublinear growth. We then study a related problem of logarithmic utility maximization of the terminal wealth in the filtration generated by an arbitrary Lévy process.
In this note, we study the utility maximization problem on the terminal wealth under proportional transaction costs and bounded random endowment. In particular, we restrict ourselves to the numéraire-based model and work with utility functions only supporting R+. Under the assumption of existence of consistent price systems and natural regularity conditions, standard convex duality results are established. Precisely, we first enlarge the dual domain from the collection of martingale densities associated with consistent price systems to a set of finitely additive measures; then the dual formula…
In this paper we show that the weak representation property of a semimartingale $X$ with respect to a filtration $\mathbb{F}$ is preserved in the progressive enlargement $\mathbb{G}$ by a random time $τ$ avoiding $\mathbb{F}$-stopping times and such that $\mathbb{F}$ is immersed in $\mathbb{G}$. As an application of this, we can solve an exponential utility maximization problem in the enlarged filtration $\mathbb{G}$ following the dynamical approach, based on suitable BSDEs, both over the fixed time horizon $[0,T]$, $T>0$, and over $[0,T\wedgeτ]$.
In this paper, we study representative investor's G-utility maximization problem by G-martingale approach in the framework of G-expectation space proposed by Peng \cite{Pe19}. Financial market has only a bond and a stock with uncertainty characterized by G-Brownian motions. The routine idea of \cite{Wxz} fails because that the quadratic variation process of a G-Brownian motion is also a stochastic process. To overcome this difficulty, an extended nonlinear expectation should be pulled in. A sufficient condition of G-utility maximization is presented firstly. In the case of log-utility, an expl…
We consider the classical problem of maximizing the expected utility of terminal net wealth with a final random liability in a simple jump-diffusion model. In the spirit of Horst et al. (2014) and Santacroce-Trivellato (2014), under suitable conditions the optimal strategy is expressed in implicit form in terms of a forward backward system of equations. Some explicit results are presented for the pure jump model and for exponential utilities.
We consider a stochastic financial incomplete market where the price processes are described by a vector-valued semimartingale that is possibly nonlocally bounded. We face the classical problem of utility maximization from terminal wealth, with utility functions that are finite-valued over $(a,\infty)$, $a\in\lbrack-\infty,\infty)$, and satisfy weak regularity assumptions. We adopt a class of trading strategies that allows for stochastic integrals that are not necessarily bounded from below. The embedding of the utility maximization problem in Orlicz spaces permits us to formulate the problem …
Within the well-known framework of financial portfolio optimization, we analyze the existing relationships between the condition of arbitrage and the utility maximization in presence of \emph{insider information}. We assume that, since the initial time, the information flow is altered by adding the knowledge of an additional random variable including future information. In this context we study the utility maximization problem under the logarithmic and the Constant Relative Risk Aversion (CRRA) utilities, with and without the restriction of no temporary-bankruptcy. In particular, we show that …
We consider a discrete-time financial market model with finite time horizon and give conditions which guarantee the existence of an optimal strategy for the problem of maximizing expected terminal utility. Equivalent martingale measures are constructed using optimal strategies.
We introduce a linear space of finitely additive measures to treat the problem of optimal expected utility from consumption under a stochastic clock and an unbounded random endowment process. In this way we establish existence and uniqueness for a large class of utility-maximization problems including the classical ones of terminal wealth or consumption, as well as the problems that depend on a random time horizon or multiple consumption instances. As an example we explicitly treat the problem of maximizing the logarithmic utility of a consumption stream, where the local time of an Ornstein-Uh…
The problem of robust utility maximization in an incomplete market with volatility uncertainty is considered, in the sense that the volatility of the market is only assumed to lie between two given bounds. The set of all possible models (probability measures) considered here is non-dominated. We propose studying this problem in the framework of second-order backward stochastic differential equations (2BSDEs for short) with quadratic growth generators. We show for exponential, power and logarithmic utilities that the value function of the problem can be written as the initial value of a particu…
We consider the problem of utility maximization for small traders on incomplete financial markets. As opposed to most of the papers dealing with this subject, the investors' trading strategies we allow underly constraints described by closed, but not necessarily convex, sets. The final wealths obtained by trading under these constraints are identified as stochastic processes which usually are supermartingales, and even martingales for particular strategies. These strategies are seen to be optimal, and the corresponding value functions determined simply by the initial values of the supermarting…
