No-arbitrage in discrete-time markets with proportional transaction costs and general information structure

We discuss the no-arbitrage conditions in a general framework for discrete-time models of financial markets with proportional transaction costs and general information structure. We extend the results of Kabanov and al. (2002), Kabanov and al. (2003) and Schachermayer (2004) to the case where bid-ask spreads are not known with certainty. In the "no-friction" case, we retrieve the result of Kabanov and Stricker (2003)

Option Pricing and Hedging with Small Transaction Costs

An investor with constant absolute risk aversion trades a risky asset with general It\^o-dynamics, in the presence of small proportional transaction costs. In this setting, we formally derive a leading-order optimal trading policy and the associated welfare, expressed in terms of the local dynamics of the frictionless optimizer. By applying these results in the presence of a random endowment, we obtain asymptotic formulas for utility indifference prices and hedging strategies in the presence of small transaction costs.Comment: 20 pages, to appear in "Mathematical Finance

The temporal pattern of trading rule returns and central bank intervention: intervention does not generate technical trading rule profits

This paper characterizes the temporal pattern of trading rule returns and official intervention for Australian, German, Swiss and U.S. data to investigate whether intervention generates technical trading rule profits. High frequency data show that abnormally high trading rule returns precede German, Swiss and U.S. intervention, disproving the hypothesis that intervention generates inefficiencies from which technical rules profit. Australian intervention precedes high trading rule returns, but trading/intervention patterns make it implausible that intervention actually generates those returns. Rather, intervention responds to exchange rate trends from which trading rules have recently profited.Banks and banking, Central ; Foreign exchange ; Trade

A look at intraday frictions in the euro area overnight deposit market

This paper studies frictions in the euro area interbank deposit overnight market, making use of high frequency individual quote and trade data. The aim of the analysis is to determine, in a quantitative way, how efficient this market is. Besides a comprehensive descriptive analysis, the approach used defines a measure of the friction arising for each single transaction, by which we understand an (small) initial loss accepted by a counterparty, and the corresponding gain made by the other counterparty. The evolution of total daily frictions is then put into perspective comparing it with the frictions arising if flows corresponded to the optimal solution of a “cash transportation problem”. The main conclusions of this exercise are that overall frictions, although small in absolute size, tend to increase strongly whenever the overnight rate becomes volatile. Some tentative explanations for this are given, relying on the introduced methodology. JEL Classification: D4, E52, C61Financial market microstructure, Market friction, money market, Network optimization problems

Linear vector optimization and European option pricing under proportional transaction costs

A method for pricing and superhedging European options under proportional transaction costs based on linear vector optimisation and geometric duality developed by Lohne & Rudloff (2014) is compared to a special case of the algorithms for American type derivatives due to Roux & Zastawniak (2014). An equivalence between these two approaches is established by means of a general result linking the support function of the upper image of a linear vector optimisation problem with the lower image of the dual linear optimisation problem

Mean reversion in stock index futures markets: a nonlinear analysis

Several stylized theoretical models of futures basis behavior under nonzero transactions costs predict nonlinear mean reversion of the futures basis towards its equilibrium value. Nonlinearly mean-reverting models are employed to characterize the basis of the SandP 500 and the FTSE 100 indices over the post-1987 crash period, capturing empirically these theoretical predictions and examining the view that the degree of mean reversion in the basis is a function of the size of the deviation from equilibrium. The estimated half lives of basis shocks, obtained using Monte Carlo integration methods, suggest that for smaller shocks to the basis level the basis displays substantial persistence, while for larger shocks the basis exhibits highly nonlinear mean reversion towards its equilibrium value. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Which Method for Pricing Weather Derivatives ?

Since the introduction of the first weather derivative in the United-States in 1997, a significant number of work was directed towards the pricing of this product and the modelling of the daily average temperature which characterizes most of the traded weather instruments. The weather derivatives were created to enable companies to hedge against climate risks. They respond more to a need to cover seasonal variations which may cause loss of profits for companies than to a coverage need in property damage. Despite the abundance of work on the topic, no consensus has emerged so far about the methodology for evaluating weather derivatives. The major problems of these instruments are on one hand, they are based on an meteorological index that is not traded on financial market which does not allow the use of traditional pricing methods and on the other hand, it is difficult to get round this obstacle by susbtituting the underlying for a linked exchanged security since the weather index is weakly correlated with prices of other financial assets. To further the question of evaluation, we propose in this paper to, firstly, shed light on the difficulties of implementing the three major pricing approaches suggested in the literature for the weather derivatives (actuarial, arbitrage-free and consumption-based methods) and, secondly, to compute the prices of a weather contract by the three methodologies for comparison.weather derivatives; arbitrage-free pricing method; actuarial pricing approach; consumption-based pricing model; risk-neutral distribution; market price of risk; finite difference method; Monte-Carlo simulations.