Pathwise analysis of log-optimal portfolios
Andrew L. Allan, Anna P. Kwossek, Chong Liu
et al.
Based on the theory of càdlàg rough paths, we develop a pathwise approach to analyze stability and approximation properties of portfolios along individual price trajectories generated by standard models of financial markets. As a prototypical example from portfolio theory, we study the log-optimal portfolio in a classical investment-consumption optimization problem on a frictionless financial market modelled by an Itô diffusion process. We identify a fully deterministic framework that enables a pathwise construction of the log-optimal portfolio, for which we then establish pathwise stability estimates with respect to the underlying model parameters. We also derive pathwise error estimates arising from the time-discretization of the log-optimal portfolio and its associated capital process.
Machine Learning Based Stress Testing Framework for Indian Financial Market Portfolios
Vidya Sagar G, Shifat Ali, Siddhartha P. Chakrabarty
This paper presents a machine learning driven framework for sectoral stress testing in the Indian financial market, focusing on financial services, information technology, energy, consumer goods, and pharmaceuticals. Initially, we address the limitations observed in conventional stress testing through dimensionality reduction and latent factor modeling via Principal Component Analysis and Autoencoders. Building on this, we extend the methodology using Variational Autoencoders, which introduces a probabilistic structure to the latent space. This enables Monte Carlo-based scenario generation, allowing for more nuanced, distribution-aware simulation of stressed market conditions. The proposed framework captures complex non-linear dependencies and supports risk estimation through Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall. Together, these pipelines demonstrate the potential of Machine Learning approaches to improve the flexibility, robustness, and realism of financial stress testing.
Optimal consumption under loss-averse multiplicative habit-formation preferences
Bahman Angoshtari, Xiang Yu, Fengyi Yuan
This paper studies a loss-averse version of the multiplicative habit formation preference and the corresponding optimal investment and consumption strategies over an infinite horizon. The agent's consumption preference is depicted by a general S-shaped utility function of her consumption-to-habit ratio. By considering the concave envelope of the S-shaped utility and the associated dual value function, we provide a thorough analysis of the HJB equation for the concavified problem via studying a related nonlinear free boundary problem. Based on established properties of the solution to this free boundary problem, we obtain the optimal consumption and investment policies in feedback form. Some new and technical verification arguments are developed to cope with generality of the utility function. The equivalence between the original problem and the concavified problem readily follows from the structure of the feedback controls. We also discuss some quantitative properties of the optimal policies, complemented by illustrative numerical examples and their financial implications.
On Accelerating Large-Scale Robust Portfolio Optimization
Chung-Han Hsieh, Jie-Ling Lu
Solving large-scale robust portfolio optimization problems is challenging due to the high computational demands associated with an increasing number of assets, the amount of data considered, and market uncertainty. To address this issue, we propose an extended supporting hyperplane approximation approach for efficiently solving a class of distributionally robust portfolio problems for a general class of additively separable utility functions and polyhedral ambiguity distribution set, applied to a large-scale set of assets. Our technique is validated using a large-scale portfolio of the S&P 500 index constituents, demonstrating robust out-of-sample trading performance. More importantly, our empirical studies show that this approach significantly reduces computational time compared to traditional concave Expected Log-Growth (ELG) optimization, with running times decreasing from several thousand seconds to just a few. This method provides a scalable and practical solution to large-scale robust portfolio optimization, addressing both theoretical and practical challenges.
New approximate stochastic dominance approaches for Enhanced Indexation models
Francesco Cesarone, Justo Puerto
In this paper, we discuss portfolio selection strategies for Enhanced Indexation (EI), which are based on stochastic dominance relations. The goal is to select portfolios that stochastically dominate a given benchmark but that, at the same time, must generate some excess return with respect to a benchmark index. To achieve this goal, we propose a new methodology that selects portfolios using the ordered weighted average (OWA) operator, which generalizes previous approaches based on minimax selection rules and still leads to solving linear programming models. We also introduce a new type of approximate stochastic dominance rule and show that it implies the almost Second-order Stochastic Dominance (SSD) criterion proposed by Lizyayev and Ruszczynski (2012). We prove that our EI model based on OWA selects portfolios that dominate a given benchmark through this new form of stochastic dominance criterion. We test the performance of the obtained portfolios in an extensive empirical analysis based on real-world datasets. The computational results show that our proposed approach outperforms several SSD-based strategies widely used in the literature, as well as the global minimum variance portfolio.
Cross-Currency Heath-Jarrow-Morton Framework in the Multiple-Curve Setting
Alessandro Gnoatto, Silvia Lavagnini
We provide a general HJM framework for forward contracts written on abstract market indices with arbitrary fixing and payment adjustments, and featuring collateralization in any currency denominations. In view of this, we first provide a thorough study of cross-currency markets in the presence of collateral and incompleteness. Then we give a general treatment of collateral dislocations by describing the instantaneous cross-currency basis spreads by means of HJM models, for which we derive appropriate drift conditions. The framework obtained allows us to simultaneously cover forward-looking risky IBOR rates, such as EURIBOR, and backward-looking rates based on overnight rates, such as SOFR. Due to the discrepancies in market conventions of different currency areas created by the benchmark transition, this is pivotal for describing portfolios of interest-rate products that are denominated in multiple currencies. As an example of contract simultaneously depending on all the risk factors that we describe within our framework, we treat cross-currency swaps using our proposed abstract indices.
Dynamic portfolio selection for nonlinear law-dependent preferences
Zongxia Liang, Jianming Xia, Fengyi Yuan
This paper addresses the portfolio selection problem for nonlinear law-dependent preferences in continuous time, which inherently exhibit time inconsistency. Employing the method of stochastic maximum principle, we establish verification theorems for equilibrium strategies, accommodating both random market coefficients and incomplete markets. We derive the first-order condition (FOC) for the equilibrium strategies, using a notion of functional derivatives with respect to probability distributions. Then, with the help of the FOC we obtain the equilibrium strategies in closed form for two classes of implicitly defined preferences: CRRA and CARA betweenness preferences, with deterministic market coefficients. Finally, to show applications of our theoretical results to problems with random market coefficients, we examine the weighted utility. We reveal that the equilibrium strategy can be described by a coupled system of Quadratic Backward Stochastic Differential Equations (QBSDEs). The well-posedness of this system is generally open but is established under the special structures of our problem.
ETF construction on CRIX
Konstantin Häusler
Investments in cryptocurrencies (CCs) remain risky due to high volatility. Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are a suitable tool to diversify risk and to benefit from the growth of the whole CC sector. We construct an ETF on the CRIX, the CRyptocurrency IndeX that maps the non-stationary CC dynamics closely by adapting its constituents weights dynamically. The scenario analysis considers the fee schedules of regulated CC exchanges, spreads obtained from high-frequency order book data, and models capital deposits to the ETF stochastically. The analysis yields valuable insights into the mechanisms, costs and risks of this new financial product: i) although the composition of the CRIX ETF changes frequently (from 5 to 30 constituents), it remains robust in its core, as the weights of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are robust over time, ii) on average, a portion of 5.2% needed to be rebalanced at the rebalancing dates, iii) trading costs are low compared to traditional assets, iv) the liquidity of the CC sector has increased significantly during the analysis period, spreads occur especially for altcoins and increase by the size of the transactions. But since BTC and ETH are most affected by rebalancing, the cost of spreads remains limited.
A Novel Experts Advice Aggregation Framework Using Deep Reinforcement Learning for Portfolio Management
MohammadAmin Fazli, Mahdi Lashkari, Hamed Taherkhani
et al.
Solving portfolio management problems using deep reinforcement learning has been getting much attention in finance for a few years. We have proposed a new method using experts signals and historical price data to feed into our reinforcement learning framework. Although experts signals have been used in previous works in the field of finance, as far as we know, it is the first time this method, in tandem with deep RL, is used to solve the financial portfolio management problem. Our proposed framework consists of a convolutional network for aggregating signals, another convolutional network for historical price data, and a vanilla network. We used the Proximal Policy Optimization algorithm as the agent to process the reward and take action in the environment. The results suggested that, on average, our framework could gain 90 percent of the profit earned by the best expert.
Stock Movement Prediction with Financial News using Contextualized Embedding from BERT
Qinkai Chen
News events can greatly influence equity markets. In this paper, we are interested in predicting the short-term movement of stock prices after financial news events using only the headlines of the news. To achieve this goal, we introduce a new text mining method called Fine-Tuned Contextualized-Embedding Recurrent Neural Network (FT-CE-RNN). Compared with previous approaches which use static vector representations of the news (static embedding), our model uses contextualized vector representations of the headlines (contextualized embeddings) generated from Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT). Our model obtains the state-of-the-art result on this stock movement prediction task. It shows significant improvement compared with other baseline models, in both accuracy and trading simulations. Through various trading simulations based on millions of headlines from Bloomberg News, we demonstrate the ability of this model in real scenarios.
Next Generation Models for Portfolio Risk Management: An Approach Using Financial Big Data
Kwangmin Jung, Donggyu Kim, Seunghyeon Yu
This paper proposes a dynamic process of portfolio risk measurement to address potential information loss. The proposed model takes advantage of financial big data to incorporate out-of-target-portfolio information that may be missed when one considers the Value at Risk (VaR) measures only from certain assets of the portfolio. We investigate how the curse of dimensionality can be overcome in the use of financial big data and discuss where and when benefits occur from a large number of assets. In this regard, the proposed approach is the first to suggest the use of financial big data to improve the accuracy of risk analysis. We compare the proposed model with benchmark approaches and empirically show that the use of financial big data improves small portfolio risk analysis. Our findings are useful for portfolio managers and financial regulators, who may seek for an innovation to improve the accuracy of portfolio risk estimation.
Optimal Retirement Time and Consumption with the Variation in Habitual Persistence
Lin He, Zongxia Liang, Yilun Song
et al.
In this paper,we study the individual's optimal retirement time and optimal consumption under habitual persistence. Because the individual feels equally satisfied with a lower habitual level and is more reluctant to change the habitual level after retirement, we assume that both the level and the sensitivity of the habitual consumption decline at the time of retirement. We establish the concise form of the habitual evolutions, and obtain the optimal retirement time and consumption policy based on martingale and duality methods. The optimal consumption experiences a sharp decline at retirement, but the excess consumption raises because of the reduced sensitivity of the habitual level. This result contributes to explain the "retirement consumption puzzle". Particularly, the optimal retirement and consumption policies are balanced between the wealth effect and the habitual effect. Larger wealth increases consumption, and larger growth inertia (sensitivity) of the habitual level decreases consumption and brings forward the retirement time.
Pseudo-Model-Free Hedging for Variable Annuities via Deep Reinforcement Learning
Wing Fung Chong, Haoen Cui, Yuxuan Li
This paper proposes a two-phase deep reinforcement learning approach, for hedging variable annuity contracts with both GMMB and GMDB riders, which can address model miscalibration in Black-Scholes financial and constant force of mortality actuarial market environments. In the training phase, an infant reinforcement learning agent interacts with a pre-designed training environment, collects sequential anchor-hedging reward signals, and gradually learns how to hedge the contracts. As expected, after a sufficient number of training steps, the trained reinforcement learning agent hedges, in the training environment, equally well as the correct Delta while outperforms misspecified Deltas. In the online learning phase, the trained reinforcement learning agent interacts with the market environment in real time, collects single terminal reward signals, and self-revises its hedging strategy. The hedging performance of the further trained reinforcement learning agent is demonstrated via an illustrative example on a rolling basis to reveal the self-revision capability on the hedging strategy by online learning.
Stability and asymptotic analysis of the Föllmer-Schweizer decomposition on a finite probability space
Sarah Boese, Tracy Cui, Samuel Johnston
et al.
First, we consider the problem of hedging in complete binomial models. Using the discrete-time Föllmer-Schweizer decomposition, we demonstrate the equivalence of the backward induction and sequential regression approaches. Second, in incomplete trinomial models, we examine the extension of the sequential regression approach for approximation of contingent claims. Then, on a finite probability space, we investigate stability of the discrete-time Föllmer-Schweizer decomposition with respect to perturbations of the stock price dynamics and, finally, perform its asymptotic analysis under simultaneous perturbations of the drift and volatility of the underlying discounted stock price process, where we prove stability and obtain explicit formulas for the leading order correction terms.
A Triptych Approach for Reverse Stress Testing of Complex Portfolios
Pascal Traccucci, Luc Dumontier, Guillaume Garchery
et al.
The quest for diversification has led to an increasing number of complex funds with a high number of strategies and non-linear payoffs. The new generation of Alternative Risk Premia (ARP) funds are an example that has been very popular in recent years. For complex funds like these, a Reverse Stress Test (RST) is regarded by the industry and regulators as a better forward-looking risk measure than a Value-at-Risk (VaR). We present an Extended RST (ERST) triptych approach with three variables: level of plausibility, level of loss and scenario. In our approach, any two of these variables can be derived by providing the third as the input. We advocate and demonstrate that ERST is a powerful tool for both simple linear and complex portfolios and for both risk management as well as day-to-day portfolio management decisions. An updated new version of the Levenberg - Marquardt optimization algorithm is introduced to derive ERST in certain complex cases.
Lifetime Ruin under High-watermark Fees and Drift Uncertainty
Junbeom Lee, Xiang Yu, Chao Zhou
This paper aims to make a new contribution to the study of lifetime ruin problem by considering investment in two hedge funds with high-watermark fees and drift uncertainty. Due to multi-dimensional performance fees that are charged whenever each fund profit exceeds its historical maximum, the value function is expected to be multi-dimensional. New mathematical challenges arise as the standard dimension reduction cannot be applied, and the convexity of the value function and Isaacs condition may not hold in our ruin probability minimization problem with drift uncertainty. We propose to employ the stochastic Perron's method to characterize the value function as the unique viscosity solution to the associated Hamilton Jacobi Bellman (HJB) equation without resorting to the proof of dynamic programming principle. The required comparison principle is also established in our setting to close the loop of stochastic Perron's method.
Discrete hierarchy of sizes and performances in the exchange-traded fund universe
Benjamin Vandermarliere, Jan Ryckebusch, Koen Schoors
et al.
Using detailed statistical analyses of the size distribution of a universe of equity exchange-traded funds (ETFs), we discover a discrete hierarchy of sizes, which imprints a log-periodic structure on the probability distribution of ETF sizes that dominates the details of the asymptotic tail. This allows us to propose a classification of the studied universe of ETFs into seven size layers approximately organized according to a multiplicative ratio of 3.5 in their total market capitalization. Introducing a similarity metric generalising the Herfindhal index, we find that the largest ETFs exhibit a significantly stronger intra-layer and inter-layer similarity compared with the smaller ETFs. Comparing the performance across the seven discerned ETF size layers, we find an inverse size effect, namely large ETFs perform significantly better than the small ones both in 2014 and 2015.
Optimal Derivative Liquidation Timing Under Path-Dependent Risk Penalties
Tim Leung, Yoshihiro Shirai
This paper studies the risk-adjusted optimal timing to liquidate an option at the prevailing market price. In addition to maximizing the expected discounted return from option sale, we incorporate a path-dependent risk penalty based on shortfall or quadratic variation of the option price up to the liquidation time. We establish the conditions under which it is optimal to immediately liquidate or hold the option position through expiration. Furthermore, we study the variational inequality associated with the optimal stopping problem, and prove the existence and uniqueness of a strong solution. A series of analytical and numerical results are provided to illustrate the non-trivial optimal liquidation strategies under geometric Brownian motion (GBM) and exponential Ornstein-Uhlenbeck models. We examine the combined effects of price dynamics and risk penalty on the sell and delay regions for various options. In addition, we obtain an explicit closed-form solution for the liquidation of a stock with quadratic penalty under the GBM model.
Portfolio Optimization under Expected Shortfall: Contour Maps of Estimation Error
Fabio Caccioli, Imre Kondor, Gábor Papp
The contour maps of the error of historical resp. parametric estimates for large random portfolios optimized under the risk measure Expected Shortfall (ES) are constructed. Similar maps for the sensitivity of the portfolio weights to small changes in the returns as well as the VaR of the ES-optimized portfolio are also presented, along with results for the distribution of portfolio weights over the random samples and for the out-of-sample and in-the-sample estimates for ES. The contour maps allow one to quantitatively determine the sample size (the length of the time series) required by the optimization for a given number of different assets in the portfolio, at a given confidence level and a given level of relative estimation error. The necessary sample sizes invariably turn out to be unrealistically large for any reasonable choice of the number of assets and the confidence level. These results are obtained via analytical calculations based on methods borrowed from the statistical physics of random systems, supported by numerical simulations.
Optimal closing of a pair trade with a model containing jumps
Stig Larsson, Carl Lindberg, Marcus Warfheimer
A pair trade is a portfolio consisting of a long position in one asset and a short position in another, and it is a widely applied investment strategy in the financial industry. Recently, Ekström, Lindberg and Tysk studied the problem of optimally closing a pair trading strategy when the difference of the two assets is modelled by an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. In this paper we study the same problem, but the model is generalized to also include jumps. More precisely we assume that the above difference is an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck type process, driven by a Lévy process of finite activity. We prove a verification theorem and analyze a numerical method for the associated free boundary problem. We prove rigorous error estimates, which are used to draw some conclusions from numerical simulations.