Almgren-Chriss Model

To Hedge or Not to Hedge: Optimal Strategies for Stochastic Trade Flow Management ArXiv ID: 2503.02496 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract This paper addresses the trade-off between internalisation and externalisation in the management of stochastic trade flows. We consider agents who must absorb flows and manage risk by deciding whether to warehouse it or hedge in the market, thereby incurring transaction costs and market impact. Unlike market makers, these agents cannot skew their quotes to attract offsetting flows and deter risk-increasing ones, leading to a fundamentally different problem. Within the Almgren-Chriss framework, we derive almost-closed-form solutions in the case of quadratic execution costs, while more general cases require numerical methods. In particular, we discuss the challenges posed by artificial boundary conditions when using classical grid-based numerical PDE techniques and propose reinforcement learning methods as an alternative. ...

Optimal execution with deterministically time varying liquidity: well posedness and price manipulation ArXiv ID: 2410.04867 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract We investigate the well-posedness in the Hadamard sense and the absence of price manipulation in the optimal execution problem within the Almgren-Chriss framework, where the temporary and permanent impact parameters vary deterministically over time. We present sufficient conditions for the existence of a unique solution and provide second-order conditions for the problem, with a particular focus on scenarios where impact parameters change monotonically over time. Additionally, we establish conditions to prevent transaction-triggered price manipulation in the optimal solution, i.e. the occurence of buying and selling in the same trading program. Our findings are supported by numerical analyses that explore various regimes in simple parametric settings for the dynamics of impact parameters. ...

Reinforcement Learning for Optimal Execution when Liquidity is Time-Varying ArXiv ID: 2402.12049 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract Optimal execution is an important problem faced by any trader. Most solutions are based on the assumption of constant market impact, while liquidity is known to be dynamic. Moreover, models with time-varying liquidity typically assume that it is observable, despite the fact that, in reality, it is latent and hard to measure in real time. In this paper we show that the use of Double Deep Q-learning, a form of Reinforcement Learning based on neural networks, is able to learn optimal trading policies when liquidity is time-varying. Specifically, we consider an Almgren-Chriss framework with temporary and permanent impact parameters following several deterministic and stochastic dynamics. Using extensive numerical experiments, we show that the trained algorithm learns the optimal policy when the analytical solution is available, and overcomes benchmarks and approximated solutions when the solution is not available. ...

Leveraging IS and TC: Optimal order execution subject to reference strategies ArXiv ID: 2401.03305 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract The paper addresses the problem of meta order execution from a broker-dealer’s point of view in Almgren-Chriss model under execution risk. A broker-dealer agency is authorized to execute an order of trading on some client’s behalf. The strategies that the agent is allowed to deploy is subject to a benchmark, referred to as the reference strategy, regulated by the client. We formulate the broker’s problem as a utility maximization problem in which the broker seeks to maximize his utility of excess profit-and-loss at the execution horizon, of which optimal feedback strategies are obtained in closed form. In the absence of execution risk, the optimal strategies subject to reference strategies are deterministic. We establish an affine structure among the trading trajectories under optimal strategies subject to general reference strategies using implementation shortfall (IS) and target close (TC) orders as basis. Furthermore, an approximation theorem is proposed to show that with small error, general reference strategies can be approximated by piece-wise constant ones, of which the optimal strategy is piece-wise linear combination between IS and TC orders. We conclude the paper with numerical experiments illustrating the trading trajectories as well as histograms of terminal wealth and utility at investment horizon under optimal strategies versus those under TWAP strategies. ...

Residual U-net with Self-Attention to Solve Multi-Agent Time-Consistent Optimal Trade Execution ArXiv ID: 2312.09353 “View on arXiv” Authors: Unknown Abstract In this paper, we explore the use of a deep residual U-net with self-attention to solve the the continuous time time-consistent mean variance optimal trade execution problem for multiple agents and assets. Given a finite horizon we formulate the time-consistent mean-variance optimal trade execution problem following the Almgren-Chriss model as a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation. The HJB formulation is known to have a viscosity solution to the unknown value function. We reformulate the HJB to a backward stochastic differential equation (BSDE) to extend the problem to multiple agents and assets. We utilize a residual U-net with self-attention to numerically approximate the value function for multiple agents and assets which can be used to determine the time-consistent optimal control. In this paper, we show that the proposed neural network approach overcomes the limitations of finite difference methods. We validate our results and study parameter sensitivity. With our framework we study how an agent with significant price impact interacts with an agent without any price impact and the optimal strategies used by both types of agents. We also study the performance of multiple sellers and buyers and how they compare to a holding strategy under different economic conditions. ...