From (Martingale) Schrodinger bridges to a new class of Stochastic Volatility Models

Following closely the construction of the Schrodinger bridge, we build a new class of Stochastic Volatility Models exactly calibrated to market instruments such as for example Vanillas, options on realized variance or VIX options. These models differ strongly from the well-known local stochastic volatility models, in particular the instantaneous volatility-of-volatility of the associated naked SVMs is not modified, once calibrated to market instruments. They can be interpreted as a martingale version of the Schrodinger bridge. The numerical calibration is performed using a dynamic-like version of the Sinkhorn algorithm. We finally highlight a striking relation with Dyson non-colliding Brownian motions

Some Results on Skorokhod Embedding and Robust Hedging with Local Time

In this paper, we provide some results on Skorokhod embedding with local time and its applications to the robust hedging problem in finance. First we investigate the robust hedging of options depending on the local time by using the recently introduced stochastic control approach, in order to identify the optimal hedging strategies, as well as the market models that realize the extremal no-arbitrage prices. As a by-product, the optimality of Vallois' Skorokhod embeddings is recovered. In addition, under appropriate conditions, we derive a new solution to the two-marginal Skorokhod embedding as a generalization of the Vallois solution. It turns out from our analysis that one needs to relax the monotonicity assumption on the embedding functions in order to embed a larger class of marginal distributions. Finally, in a full-marginal setting where the stopping times given by Vallois are well-ordered, we construct a remarkable Markov martingale which provides a new example of fake Brownian motion

A numerical algorithm for a class of BSDEs via branching process

We generalize the algorithm for semi-linear parabolic PDEs in Henry-Labord\`ere (2012) to the non-Markovian case for a class of Backward SDEs (BSDEs). By simulating the branching process, the algorithm does not need any backward regression. To prove that the numerical algorithm converges to the solution of BSDEs, we use the notion of viscosity solution of path dependent PDEs introduced by Ekren, Keller, Touzi and Zhang (2012) and extended in Ekren, Touzi and Zhang (2013).Comment: 31 page

Unbiased simulation of stochastic differential equations

We propose an unbiased Monte-Carlo estimator for $\mathbb{E}[g(X_{t_1}, \cdots, X_{t_n})]$, where $X$ is a diffusion process defined by a multi-dimensional stochastic differential equation (SDE). The main idea is to start instead from a well-chosen simulatable SDE whose coefficients are updated at independent exponential times. Such a simulatable process can be viewed as a regime-switching SDE, or as a branching diffusion process with one single living particle at all times. In order to compensate for the change of the coefficients of the SDE, our main representation result relies on the automatic differentiation technique induced by Bismu-Elworthy-Li formula from Malliavin calculus, as exploited by Fourni\'e et al.(1999) for the simulation of the Greeks in financial applications. In particular, this algorithm can be considered as a variation of the (infinite variance) estimator obtained in Bally and Kohatsu-Higa [Section 6.1](2014) as an application of the parametrix method