A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.
We study the problem of empirical minimization for variance-type functionals over functional classes. Sharp non-asymptotic bounds for the excess variance are derived under mild conditions. In particular, it is shown that under some restrictions imposed on the functional class fast convergence rates can be achieved incl…
We develop an approach to risk minimization and stochastic optimization that provides a convex surrogate for variance, allowing near-optimal and computationally efficient trading between approximation and estimation error. Our approach builds off of techniques for distributionally robust optimization and Owen's empiric…
This paper tackles variance issues in GNN training by proposing a method to reduce both embedding and gradient variances.
problem High variance in estimating stochastic gradients in GNN training, especially in large graphs.
method The paper proposes a decoupled variance reduction strategy that employs approximate gradient information to adaptively sample nodes with minimal variance.
result The proposed method achieves faster convergence and better generalization compared to existing sampling methods.
Several useful variance-reduced stochastic gradient algorithms, such as SVRG, SAGA, Finito, and SAG, have been proposed to minimize empirical risks with linear convergence properties to the exact minimizer. The existing convergence results assume uniform data sampling with replacement. However, it has been observed in …
This paper describes an empirical study of shortfall optimization with Barra Extreme Risk. We compare minimum shortfall to minimum variance portfolios in the US, UK, and Japanese equity markets using Barra Style Factors (Value, Growth, Momentum, etc.). We show that minimizing shortfall generally improves performance ov…
In this paper we propose a novel variance reduction approach for additive functionals of Markov chains based on minimization of an estimate for the asymptotic variance of these functionals over suitable classes of control variates. A distinctive feature of the proposed approach is its ability to significantly reduce th…
We provide a new characterization of mean-variance hedging strategies in a general semimartingale market. The key point is the introduction of a new probability measure P⋆ which turns the dynamic asset allocation problem into a myopic one. The minimal martingale measure relative to P⋆ coincides with t…
The study analyzes pricing and hedging of STCDOs using an affine model with a catastrophic risk component.
problem Pricing and hedging of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) with specific focus on mezzanine and equity tranches.
method Specified an affine two-factor model with a catastrophic risk component, estimated using QML and Kalman filter, derived variance-minimizing strategy, analyzed actual performance and simulated extreme loss scenarios.
result The variance-minimizing strategy is most effective for mezzanine tranches but fails for equity tranches.
To improve the efficient frontier of the classical mean-variance model in continuous time, we propose a varying terminal time mean-variance model with a constraint on the mean value of the portfolio asset, which moves with the varying terminal time. Using the embedding technique from stochastic optimal control in conti…
We consider a composite convex minimization problem associated with regularized empirical risk minimization, which often arises in machine learning. We propose two new stochastic gradient methods that are based on stochastic dual averaging method with variance reduction. Our methods generate a sparser solution than the…
This paper investigates the pricing and hedging of variance swaps under a 3/2 volatility model. Explicit pricing and hedging formulas of variance swaps are obtained under the benchmark approach, which only requires the existence of the numéraire portfolio. The growth optimal portfolio is the numéraire portfolio and u…
We consider the problem of minimizing the composition of a smooth (nonconvex) function and a smooth vector mapping, where the inner mapping is in the form of an expectation over some random variable or a finite sum. We propose a stochastic composite gradient method that employs an incremental variance-reduced estimator…
A new framework for bilevel optimization tackles stochastic and global variance reduction.
problem Bilevel optimization challenges in large-scale empirical risk minimization.
method Introducing a novel framework where inner and main variables evolve simultaneously, leading to unbiased estimates and global variance reduction algorithms.
result SABA algorithm achieves $O( rac{1}{T})$ convergence rate and linear convergence under Polyak-Lojasciewicz assumption.
We revisit resampling procedures for error estimation in binary classification in terms of U-statistics. In particular, we exploit the fact that the error rate estimator involving all learning-testing splits is a U-statistic. Thus, it has minimal variance among all unbiased estimators and is asymptotically normally dis…
Unified framework for decentralized optimization combining gradient tracking and variance reduction.
problem Solving finite-sum minimization problems in distributed systems with privacy and resource constraints.
method Unified algorithmic framework combining variance-reduction and gradient tracking.
result Unified methods achieve robust performance and fast convergence for smooth and strongly-convex objectives, and are applicable to non-convex problems.
This paper studies a continuous-time market where an agent, having specified an investment horizon and a targeted terminal mean return, seeks to minimize the variance of the return. The optimal portfolio of such a problem is called mean-variance efficient à la Markowitz. It is shown that, when the market coefficients a…
We propose algorithms for online principal component analysis (PCA) and variance minimization for adaptive settings. Previous literature has focused on upper bounding the static adversarial regret, whose comparator is the optimal fixed action in hindsight. However, static regret is not an appropriate metric when the un…
It is common to encounter large-scale monotone inclusion problems where the objective has a finite sum structure. We develop a general framework for variance-reduced forward-backward splitting algorithms for this problem. This framework includes a number of existing deterministic and variance-reduced algorithms for fun…
We obtain a sharp lower bound on the isoperimetric deficit of a general polygon in terms of the variance of its side lengths, the variance of its radii, and its deviation from being convex. Our technique involves a functional minimization problem on a suitably constructed compact manifold and is based on the spectral t…
There exist a number of reinforcement learning algorithms which learnby climbing the gradient of expected reward. Their long-runconvergence has been proved, even in partially observableenvironments with non-deterministic actions, and without the need fora system model. However, the variance of the gradient estimator ha…
Stochastic optimization algorithms with variance reduction have proven successful for minimizing large finite sums of functions. Unfortunately, these techniques are unable to deal with stochastic perturbations of input data, induced for example by data augmentation. In such cases, the objective is no longer a finite su…