pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Election Predictions as Martingales: An Arbitrage Approach
Authors: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Date: 2017-03-18 00:00:00

We consider the estimation of binary election outcomes as martingales and propose an arbitrage pricing when one continuously updates estimates. We argue that the estimator needs to be priced as a binary option as the arbitrage valuation minimizes the conventionally used Brier score for tracking the accuracy of probability assessors. We create a dual martingale process $Y$, in $[L,H]$ from the standard arithmetic Brownian motion, $X$ in $(-\infty, \infty)$ and price elections accordingly. The dual process $Y$ can represent the numerical votes needed for success. We show the relationship between the volatility of the estimator in relation to that of the underlying variable. When there is a high uncertainty about the final outcome, 1) the arbitrage value of the binary gets closer to 50\%, 2) the estimate should not undergo large changes even if polls or other bases show significant variations. There are arbitrage relationships between 1) the binary value, 2) the estimation of $Y$, 3) the volatility of the estimation of $Y$ over the remaining time to expiration. We note that these arbitrage relationships were often violated by the various forecasting groups in the U.S. presidential elections of 2016, as well as the notion that all intermediate assessments of the success of a candidate need to be considered, not just the final one.
Deep learning calibration of option pricing models: some pitfalls and solutions
Authors: A Itkin
Date: 2019-06-08 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Learning

Recent progress in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning and also in computer industry resulted in the ongoing boom of using these techniques as applied to solving complex tasks in both science and industry. Same is, of course, true for the financial industry and mathematical finance. In this paper we consider a classical problem of mathematical finance - calibration of option pricing models to market data, as it was recently drawn some attention of the financial society in the context of deep learning and artificial neural networks. We highlight some pitfalls in the existing approaches and propose resolutions that improve both performance and accuracy of calibration. We also address a problem of no-arbitrage pricing when using a trained neural net, that is currently ignored in the literature.
On expansions for the Black-Scholes prices and hedge parameters
Authors: Jean-Philippe Aguilar
Date: 2018-09-17 00:00:00

We derive new formulas for the price of the European call and put options in the Black-Scholes model, under the form of uniformly convergent series generalizing previously known approximations. We also provide precise boundaries for the convergence speed and apply the results to the calculation of hedge parameters (Greeks).
Funding Adjustments in Equity Linear Products
Authors: Stefania Gabrielli, Andrea Pallavicini, Stefano Scoleri
Date: 2019-06-06 00:00:00

Valuation adjustments are nowadays a common practice to include credit and liquidity effects in option pricing. Funding costs arising from collateral procedures, hedging strategies and taxes are added to option prices to take into account the production cost of financial contracts so that a profitability analysis can be reliably assessed. In particular, when dealing with linear products, we need a precise evaluation of such contributions since bid-ask spreads may be very tight. In this paper we start from a general pricing framework inclusive of valuation adjustments to derive simple evaluation formulae for the relevant case of total return equity swaps when stock lending and borrowing is adopted as hedging strategy.
Fair Pricing of Variable Annuities with Guarantees under the Benchmark Approach
Authors: Jin Sun, Kevin Fergusson, Eckhard Platen, Pavel V. Shevchenko
Date: 2019-06-04 00:00:00

In this paper we consider the pricing of variable annuities (VAs) with guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits. We consider two pricing approaches, the classical risk-neutral approach and the benchmark approach, and we examine the associated static and optimal behaviors of both the investor and insurer. The first model considered is the so-called minimal market model, where pricing is achieved using the benchmark approach. The benchmark approach was introduced by Platen in 2001 and has received wide acceptance in the finance community. Under this approach, valuing an asset involves determining the minimum-valued replicating portfolio, with reference to the growth optimal portfolio under the real-world probability measure, and it both subsumes classical risk-neutral pricing as a particular case and extends it to situations where risk-neutral pricing is impossible. The second model is the Black-Scholes model for the equity index, where the pricing of contracts is performed within the risk-neutral framework. Crucially, we demonstrate that when the insurer prices and reserves using the Black-Scholes model, while the insured employs a dynamic withdrawal strategy based on the minimal market model, the insurer may be underestimating the value and associated reserves of the contract.
Generalized Expected Discounted Penalty Function at General Drawdown for Lévy Risk Processes
Authors: Wenyuan Wang, Ping Chen, Shuanming Li
Date: 2019-06-03 00:00:00

This paper considers an insurance surplus process modeled by a spectrally negative L\'{e}vy process. Instead of the time of ruin in the traditional setting, we apply the time of drawdown as the risk indicator in this paper. We study the joint distribution of the time of drawdown, the running maximum at drawdown, the last minimum before drawdown, the surplus before drawdown and the surplus at drawdown (may not be deficit in this case), which generalizes the known results on the classical expected discounted penalty function in Gerber and Shiu (1998). The results have semi-explicit expressions in terms of the $q$-scale functions and the L\'{e}vy measure associated with the L\'{e}vy process. As applications, the obtained result is applied to recover results in the literature and to obtain new results for the Gerber-Shiu function at ruin for risk processes embedded with a loss-carry-forward taxation system or a barrier dividend strategy. Moreover, numerical examples are provided to illustrate the results.
Repo convexity
Authors: Paul McCloud
Date: 2019-05-08 00:00:00

There is an observed basis between repo discounting, implied from market repo rates, and bond discounting, stripped from the market prices of the underlying bonds. Here, this basis is explained as a convexity effect arising from the decorrelation between the discount rates for derivatives and bonds. Using a Hull-White model for the discount basis, expressions are derived that can be used to interpolate the repo rates of bonds with different maturities and to extrapolate the repo curve for discounting bond-collateralised derivatives.
Revising SA-CCR
Authors: Mourad Berrahoui, Othmane Islah, Chris Kenyon
Date: 2019-02-22 00:00:00

From SA-CCR to RSA-CCR: making SA-CCR self-consistent and appropriately risk-sensitive by cashflow decomposition in a 3-Factor Gaussian Market Model
Duality for pathwise superhedging in continuous time
Authors: Daniel Bartl, Michael Kupper, David J. Prömel, Ludovic Tangpi
Date: 2017-05-08 00:00:00

We provide a model-free pricing-hedging duality in continuous time. For a frictionless market consisting of $d$ risky assets with continuous price trajectories, we show that the purely analytic problem of finding the minimal superhedging price of a path dependent European option has the same value as the purely probabilistic problem of finding the supremum of the expectations of the option over all martingale measures. The superhedging problem is formulated with simple trading strategies, the claim is the limit inferior of continuous functions, which allows for upper and lower semi-continuous claims, and superhedging is required in the pathwise sense on a $\sigma$-compact sample space of price trajectories. If the sample space is stable under stopping, the probabilistic problem reduces to finding the supremum over all martingale measures with compact support. As an application of the general results we deduce dualities for Vovk's outer measure and semi-static superhedging with finitely many securities.
Probability-free models in option pricing: statistically indistinguishable dynamics and historical vs implied volatility
Authors: Damiano Brigo
Date: 2019-04-03 00:00:00

We investigate whether it is possible to formulate option pricing and hedging models without using probability. We present a model that is consistent with two notions of volatility: a historical volatility consistent with statistical analysis, and an implied volatility consistent with options priced with the model. The latter will be also the quadratic variation of the model, a pathwise property. This first result, originally presented in Brigo and Mercurio (1998, 2000), is then connected with the recent work of Armstrong et al (2018, 2021), where using rough paths theory it is shown that implied volatility is associated with a purely pathwise lift of the stock dynamics involving no probability and no semimartingale theory in particular, leading to option models without probability. Finally, an intermediate result by Bender et al. (2008) is recalled. Using semimartingale theory, Bender et al. showed that one could obtain option prices based only on the semimartingale quadratic variation of the model, a pathwise property, and highlighted the difference between historical and implied volatility. All three works confirm the idea that while historical volatility is a statistical quantity, implied volatility is a pathwise one. This leads to a 20 years mini-anniversary of pathwise pricing through 1998, 2008 and 2018, which is rather fitting for a talk presented at the conference for the 45 years of the Black, Scholes and Merton option pricing paradigm.
Robust calibration and arbitrage-free interpolation of SSVI slices
Authors: Pierre Cohort, Jacopo Corbetta, Claude Martini, Ismail Laachir
Date: 2018-04-13 00:00:00

We describe a robust calibration algorithm of a set of SSVI slices (i.e. a set of 3 SSVI parameters $\theta, \rho, \varphi$ attached to each option maturity available on the market), which grants that these slices are free of Butterfly and Calendar-Spread arbitrage. Given such a set of consistent SSVI parameters, we show that the most natural interpolation/extrapolation of the parameters provides a full continuous volatility surface free of arbitrage. The numerical implementation is straightforward, robust and quick, yielding an effective, parsimonious solution to the smile problem, which has the potential to become a benchmark one.
Pricing foreign exchange options under stochastic volatility and interest rates using an RBF--FD method
Authors: Fazlollah Soleymani, Andrey Itkin
Date: 2019-03-03 00:00:00

This paper proposes a numerical method for pricing foreign exchange (FX) options in a model which deals with stochastic interest rates and stochastic volatility of the FX rate. The model considers four stochastic drivers, each represented by an It\^{o}'s diffusion with time--dependent drift, and with a full matrix of correlations. It is known that prices of FX options in this model can be found by solving an associated backward partial differential equation (PDE). However, it contains non--affine terms, which makes its difficult to solve it analytically. Also, a standard approach of solving it numerically by using traditional finite--difference (FD) or finite elements (FE) methods suffers from the high computational burden. Therefore, in this paper a flavor of a localized radial basis functions (RBFs) method, RBF--FD, is developed which allows for a good accuracy at a relatively low computational cost. Results of numerical simulations are presented which demonstrate efficiency of such an approach in terms of both performance and accuracy for pricing FX options and computation of the associated Greeks.
Cover's Rebalancing Option With Discrete Hindsight Optimization
Authors: Alex Garivaltis
Date: 2019-03-03 00:00:00

We study T. Cover's rebalancing option (Ordentlich and Cover 1998) under discrete hindsight optimization in continuous time. The payoff in question is equal to the final wealth that would have accrued to a $\$1$ deposit into the best of some finite set of (perhaps levered) rebalancing rules determined in hindsight. A rebalancing rule (or fixed-fraction betting scheme) amounts to fixing an asset allocation (i.e. $200\%$ stocks and $-100\%$ bonds) and then continuously executing rebalancing trades to counteract allocation drift. Restricting the hindsight optimization to a small number of rebalancing rules (i.e. 2) has some advantages over the pioneering approach taken by Cover $\&$ Company in their brilliant theory of universal portfolios (1986, 1991, 1996, 1998), where one's on-line trading performance is benchmarked relative to the final wealth of the best unlevered rebalancing rule of any kind in hindsight. Our approach lets practitioners express an a priori view that one of the favored asset allocations ("bets") $b\in\{b_1,...,b_n\}$ will turn out to have performed spectacularly well in hindsight. In limiting our robustness to some discrete set of asset allocations (rather than all possible asset allocations) we reduce the price of the rebalancing option and guarantee to achieve a correspondingly higher percentage of the hindsight-optimized wealth at the end of the planning period. A practitioner who lives to delta-hedge this variant of Cover's rebalancing option through several decades is guaranteed to see the day that his realized compound-annual capital growth rate is very close to that of the best $b_i$ in hindsight. Hence the point of the rock-bottom option price.
An extremal fractional Gaussian with a possible application to option-pricing with skew and smile
Authors: Alexander Jurisch
Date: 2018-04-08 00:00:00

We derive an extremal fractional Gaussian by employing the L\'evy-Khintchine theorem and L\'evian noise. With the fractional Gaussian we then generalize the Black-Scholes-Merton option-pricing formula. We obtain an easily applicable and exponentially convergent option-pricing formula for fractional markets. We also carry out an analysis of the structure of the implied volatility in this system.
Evaluation of equity-based debt obligations
Authors: Alexander Fromm
Date: 2019-01-08 00:00:00

We consider a class of participation rights, i.e. obligations issued by a company to investors who are interested in performance-based compensation. Albeit having desirable economic properties equity-based debt obligations (EbDO) pose challenges in accounting and contract pricing. We formulate and solve the associated mathematical problem in a discrete time, as well as a continuous time setting. In the latter case the problem is reduced to a forward-backward stochastic differential equation (FBSDE) and solved using the method of decoupling fields.
Timing the market: the economic value of price extremes
Authors: Haibin Xie, Shouyang Wang
Date: 2019-01-07 00:00:00

By decomposing asset returns into potential maximum gain (PMG) and potential maximum loss (PML) with price extremes, this study empirically investigated the relationships between PMG and PML. We found significant asymmetry between PMG and PML. PML significantly contributed to forecasting PMG but not vice versa. We further explored the power of this asymmetry for predicting asset returns and found it could significantly improve asset return predictability in both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting. Investors who incorporate this asymmetry into their investment decisions can get substantial utility gains. This asymmetry remains significant even when controlling for macroeconomic variables, technical indicators, market sentiment, and skewness. Moreover, this asymmetry was found to be quite general across different countries.
Delay stochastic interest rate model with jump and strong convergence in Monte Carlo simulations
Authors: Emmanuel Coffie
Date: 2021-03-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Vocal Bursts Type Prediction

In this paper, we study analytical properties of the solutions to the generalised delay Ait-Sahalia-type interest rate model with Poisson-driven jump. Since this model does not have explicit solution, we employ several new truncated Euler-Maruyama (EM) techniques to investigate finite time strong convergence theory of the numerical solutions under the local Lipschitz condition plus the Khasminskii-type condition. We justify the strong convergence result for Monte Carlo calibration and valuation of some debt and derivative instruments.
Optimal management of DC pension fund under relative performance ratio and VaR constraint
Authors: Guohui Guan, Zongxia Liang, Yi Xia
Date: 2021-03-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Management

In this paper, we investigate the optimal management of defined contribution (abbr. DC) pension plan under relative performance ratio and Value-at-Risk (abbr. VaR) constraint. Inflation risk is introduced in this paper and the financial market consists of cash, inflation-indexed zero coupon bond and a stock. The goal of the pension manager is to maximize the performance ratio of the real terminal wealth under VaR constraint. An auxiliary process is introduced to transform the original problem into a self-financing problem first. Combining linearization method, Lagrange dual method, martingale method and concavification method, we obtain the optimal terminal wealth under different cases. For convex penalty function, there are fourteen cases while for concave penalty function, there are six cases. Besides, when the penalty function and reward function are both power functions, the explicit forms of the optimal investment strategies are obtained. Numerical examples are shown in the end of this paper to illustrate the impacts of the performance ratio and VaR constraint.
Multivariate higher order moments in multi-state life insurance
Authors: Jamaal Ahmad
Date: 2021-02-22 00:00:00

It is well-known that combining life annuities and death benefits introduce opposite effects in payments with respect to the mortality risk on the lifetime of the insured. In a general multi-state framework with multiple product types, such joint effects are less trivial. In this paper, we consider a multivariate payment process in multi-state life insurance, where the components are defined in terms of the same Markovian state process. The multivariate present value of future payments is introduced, and we derive differential equations and product integral representations of its conditional moments and moment generating function. Special attention is given to pair-wise covariances between two present values, where results closely connected to Hattendorff type of results for the variance are derived. The results are illustrated in a numerical example in a disability model.
Liquidity Stress Testing using Optimal Portfolio Liquidation
Authors: Mike Weber, Iuliia Manziuk, Bastien Baldacci
Date: 2021-02-04 00:00:00

We build an optimal portfolio liquidation model for OTC markets, aiming at minimizing the trading costs via the choice of the liquidation time. We work in the Locally Linear Order Book framework of \cite{toth2011anomalous} to obtain the market impact as a function of the traded volume. We find that the optimal terminal time for a linear execution of a small order is proportional to the square root of the ratio between the amount being bought or sold and the average daily volume. Numerical experiments on real market data illustrate the method on a portfolio of corporate bonds.
Conditional Value at Risk and Partial Moments for the Metalog Distributions
Authors: Valentyn Khokhlov
Date: 2021-02-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Form

The metalog distributions represent a convenient way to approach many practical applications. Their distinctive feature is simple closed-form expressions for quantile functions. This paper contributes to further development of the metalog distributions by deriving the closed-form expressions for the Conditional Value at Risk, a risk measure that is closely related to the tail conditional expectations. It also addressed the derivation of the first-order partial moments and shows that they are convex with respect to the vector of the metalog distribution parameters.
The use of scaling properties to detect relevant changes in financial time series: a new visual warning tool
Authors: Ioannis P. Antoniades, Giuseppe Brandi, L. G. Magafas, T. Di Matteo
Date: 2020-10-18 00:00:00
Tasks: Time Series, Time Series Analysis

The dynamical evolution of multiscaling in financial time series is investigated using time-dependent Generalized Hurst Exponents (GHE), $H_q$, for various values of the parameter $q$. Using $H_q$, we introduce a new visual methodology to algorithmically detect critical changes in the scaling of the underlying complex time-series. The methodology involves the degree of multiscaling at a particular time instance, the multiscaling trend which is calculated by the Change-Point Analysis method, and a rigorous evaluation of the statistical significance of the results. Using this algorithm, we have identified particular patterns in the temporal co-evolution of the different $H_q$ time-series. These GHE patterns, distinguish in a statistically robust way, not only between time periods of uniscaling and multiscaling, but also among different types of multiscaling: symmetric multiscaling (M) and asymmetric multiscaling (A). We apply the visual methodology to time-series comprising of daily close prices of four stock market indices: two major ones (S\&P~500 and NIKKEI) and two peripheral ones (Athens Stock Exchange general Index and Bombay-SENSEX). Results show that multiscaling varies greatly with time: time periods of strong multiscaling behavior and time periods of uniscaling behavior are interchanged while transitions from uniscaling to multiscaling behavior occur before critical market events, such as stock market bubbles. Moreover, particular asymmetric multiscaling patterns appear during critical stock market eras and provide useful information about market conditions. In particular, they can be used as 'fingerprints' of a turbulent market period as well as provide warning signals for an upcoming stock market 'bubble'. The applied visual methodology also appears to distinguish between exogenous and endogenous stock market crises, based on the observed patterns before the actual events.
Insurance valuation: A two-step generalised regression approach
Authors: Karim Barigou, Valeria Bignozzi, Andreas Tsanakas
Date: 2020-12-08 00:00:00
Tasks: quantile regression, regression, Vocal Bursts Valence Prediction

Current approaches to fair valuation in insurance often follow a two-step approach, combining quadratic hedging with application of a risk measure on the residual liability, to obtain a cost-of-capital margin. In such approaches, the preferences represented by the regulatory risk measure are not reflected in the hedging process. We address this issue by an alternative two-step hedging procedure, based on generalised regression arguments, which leads to portfolios that are neutral with respect to a risk measure, such as Value-at-Risk or the expectile. First, a portfolio of traded assets aimed at replicating the liability is determined by local quadratic hedging. Second, the residual liability is hedged using an alternative objective function. The risk margin is then defined as the cost of the capital required to hedge the residual liability. In the case quantile regression is used in the second step, yearly solvency constraints are naturally satisfied; furthermore, the portfolio is a risk minimiser among all hedging portfolios that satisfy such constraints. We present a neural network algorithm for the valuation and hedging of insurance liabilities based on a backward iterations scheme. The algorithm is fairly general and easily applicable, as it only requires simulated paths of risk drivers.