arXiv research

Investment and consumption strategy optimized under uncertain conditions.

Study robust utility maximization with uncertain continuous semimartingales.

Honest traders can outperform insiders in a Black-Scholes market with positive probability.

We investigate optimal consumption problems for a Black-Scholes market under uniform restrictions on Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall for logarithmic utility functions. We find the solutions in terms of a dynamic strategy in explicit form, which can be compared and interpreted. This paper continues our previous wor…

Study shows Skorokhod insider outperforms forward insider in logarithmic utility maximization.

Optimizes portfolios with utility theory, diversification, and leverage.

The background for the general mathematical link between utility and information theory investigated in this paper is a simple financial market model with two kinds of small traders: less informed traders and insiders, whose extra information is represented by an enlargement of the other agents' filtration. The expecte…

We consider a spread financial market defined by the multidimensional Ornstein--Uhlenbeck (OU) process. We study the optimal consumption/investment problem for logarithmic utility functions in the base of stochastic dynamical programming method. We show a special Verification Theorem for this case. We find the solution…

Karl Menger's 1934 paper on the St. Petersburg paradox contains mathematical errors that invalidate his conclusion that unbounded utility functions, specifically Bernoulli's logarithmic utility, fail to resolve modified versions of the St. Petersburg paradox.

The paper addresses portfolio allocation with uncertain covariance matrices, finding a logarithmic risk dependence.

We derive new results related to the portfolio choice problem for power and logarithmic utilities. Assuming that the portfolio returns follow an approximate log-normal distribution, the closed-form expressions of the optimal portfolio weights are obtained for both utility functions. Moreover, we prove that both optimal…

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 maximiza…

The Kelly Criterion is applied to prediction markets to analyze risk and return.

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 equ…

A resolution of the St. Petersburg paradox is presented. In contrast to the standard resolution, utility is not required. Instead, the time-average performance of the lottery is computed. The final result can be phrased mathematically identically to Daniel Bernoulli's resolution, which uses logarithmic utility, but is …

Proposes resilience metrics for large blackout costs with logarithmic resilience.

In this paper, we consider a financial market with assets exposed to some risks inducing jumps in the asset prices, and which can still be traded after default times. We use a default-intensity modeling approach, and address in this incomplete market context the problem of maximization of expected utility from terminal…

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…

Recently, prediction markets have shown considerable promise for developing flexible mechanisms for machine learning. In this paper, agents with isoelastic utilities are considered. It is shown that the costs associated with homogeneous markets of agents with isoelastic utilities produce equilibrium prices correspondin…

Study optimal portfolio strategy with sporadic bankruptcy for isoelastic 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 strate…

This paper investigates optimal trading strategies in a financial market with multidimensional stock returns where the drift is an unobservable multivariate Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. Information about the drift is obtained by observing stock returns and expert opinions. The latter provide unbiased estimates on the cu…

We present a new approach to the optimal portfolio problem for an insider with logarithmic utility. Our method is based on white noise theory, stochastic forward integrals, Hida-Malliavin calculus and the Donsker delta function.

We give explicit solutions for utility maximization of terminal wealth problem $u(X_T)$ in the presence of Knightian uncertainty in continuous time $[0,T]$ in a complete market. We assume there is uncertainty on both drift and volatility of the underlying stocks, which induce nonequivalent measures on canonical space o…

We study a robust portfolio optimization problem under model uncertainty for an investor with logarithmic or power utility. The uncertainty is specified by a set of possible Lévy triplets; that is, possible instantaneous drift, volatility and jump characteristics of the price process. We show that an optimal investment…

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 one…

Paper develops duality theory for robust utility maximization in continuous time.

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 one…

This paper investigates optimal portfolio strategies in a financial market where the drift of the stock returns is driven by an unobserved Gaussian mean reverting process. Information on this process is obtained from observing stock returns and expert opinions. The latter provide at discrete time points an unbiased est…

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…

An explicit formula is derived for the value of weak information in a discrete time model that works for a wide range of utility functions including the logarithmic and power utility. We assume a complete market with a finite number of assets and a finite number of possible outcomes. Explicit calculations are performed…

The paper analyzes competition among fund managers using excess logarithmic returns and constructs games to find optimal allocations.

We consider classical Merton problem of terminal wealth maximization in finite horizon. We assume that the drift of the stock is following Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process and the volatility of it is following GARCH(1) process. In particular, both mean and volatility are unbounded. We assume that there is Knightian uncertain…

Researchers tackle insider trading in incomplete markets using a discrete-time jump process approach.

The paper proposes a method to learn the structure of continuous-action games with non-parametric utilities using a limited number of samples.

This paper extends the classical consumption and portfolio rules model in continuous time (Merton 1969, 1971) to the framework of decision-makers with time-inconsistent preferences. The model is solved for different utility functions for both, naive and sophisticated agents, and the results are compared. In order to so…

New approach avoids restrictive assumptions for optimal portfolio in default risk scenarios.

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 addi…

The question addressed in this paper is the performance of the optimal strategy, and the impact of partial information. The setting we consider is that of a stochastic asset price model where the trend follows an unobservable Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. We focus on the optimal strategy with a logarithmic utility functi…

Gambles are random variables that model possible changes in monetary wealth. Classic decision theory transforms money into utility through a utility function and defines the value of a gamble as the expectation value of utility changes. Utility functions aim to capture individual psychological characteristics, but thei…

Hydro storage system optimization is becoming one of the most challenging tasks in Energy Finance. While currently the state-of-the-art of the commercial software in the industry implements mainly linear models, we would like to introduce risk aversion and a generic utility function. At the same time, we aim to develop…

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 …

We study optimal investment strategies that maximize expected utility from consumption and terminal wealth in a pure-jump asset price model with Markov-modulated (regime switching) jump-size distributions. We give sufficient conditions for existence of optimal policies and find closed-form expressions for the optimal v…

Study optimal portfolios for traders with asymmetric information and delay.

Consider a discrete-time infinite horizon financial market model in which the logarithm of the stock price is a time discretization of a stochastic differential equation. Under conditions different from those given in a previous paper of ours, we prove the existence of investment opportunities producing an exponentiall…

We study an optimal consumption and investment problem in a possibly incomplete market with general, not necessarily convex, stochastic constraints. We give explicit solutions for investors with exponential, logarithmic and power utility. Our approach is based on martingale methods which rely on recent results on the e…

This note will extend the research presented in Brown & Rogers (2009) to the case of CRRA agents. We consider the model outlined in that paper in which agents had diverse beliefs about the dividends produced by a risky asset. We now assume that the agents all have CRRA utility, with some integer coefficient of relative…

We study the effect of liquidity freezes on an economic agent optimizing her utility of consumption in a perturbed Black-Scholes-Merton model. The single risky asset follows a geometric Brownian motion but is subject to liquidity shocks, during which no trading is possible and stock dynamics are modified. The liquidity…