Option Pricing in Illiquid Markets with Jumps

ABSTRACT

The classical linear Black–Scholes model for pricing derivative securities is a popular model in the financial industry. It relies on several restrictive assumptions such as completeness, and frictionless of the market as well as the assumption on the underlying asset price dynamics following a geometric Brownian motion. The main purpose of this paper is to generalize the classical Black–Scholes model for pricing derivative securities by taking into account feedback effects due to an influence of a large trader on the underlying asset price dynamics exhibiting random jumps. The assumption that an investor can trade large amounts of assets without affecting the underlying asset price itself is usually not satisfied, especially in illiquid markets. We generalize the Frey–Stremme nonlinear option pricing model for the case the underlying asset follows a Lévy stochastic process with jumps. We derive and analyze a fully nonlinear parabolic partial-integro differential equation for the price of the option contract. We propose a semi-implicit numerical discretization scheme and perform various numerical experiments showing the influence of a large trader and intensity of jumps on the option price.     

Pricing in an equilibrium based model for a large investor

We study a financial model with a non-trivial price impact effect. In this model we consider the interaction of a large investor trading in an illiquid security, and a market maker who is quoting prices for this security. We assume that the market maker quotes the prices such that by taking the other side of the investor’s demand, the market maker will arrive at maturity with the maximal expected utility of the terminal wealth. Within this model we provide an explicit recursive pricing formula for an exponential utility function, as well as an asymptotic expansion for the price for a “small” simple demand.     

The short-run and long-run behaviour of personal consumption in Croatia

In this paper cointegration and error correction models are used to explore the long run and short run behavior of personal consumption in Croatia as a function of income, house prices and total credit to households. The results of the analysis showed that income (approximated by net real wage), house price and total credits to households play an important role in determining personal consumption. Also, lagged values of house prices showed significant impact on consumption, suggesting house price persistence. The most likely factors driving the house price persistence may include expectations and idiosyncratic institutional characteristics like illiquid real estate markets, inadequate property rights protection, high transaction costs, and underdeveloped financial instruments.     

The design of equity-indexed annuities

There is a rich variety of tailored investment products available to the retail investor in every developed economy. These contracts combine upside participation in bull markets with downside protection in bear markets. Examples include equity-linked contracts and other types of structured products. This paper analyzes these contracts from the investor’s perspective rather than the issuer’s using concepts and tools from financial economics. We analyze and critique their current design and examine their valuation from the investor’s perspective. We propose a generalization of the conventional design that has some interesting features. The generalized contract specifications are obtained by assuming that the investor wishes to maximize end of period expected utility of wealth subject to certain constraints. The first constraint is a guaranteed minimum rate of return which is a common feature of conventional contracts. The second constraint is new. It provides the investor with the opportunity to outperform a benchmark portfolio with some probability. We present the explicit form of the optimal contract assuming both constraints apply and we illustrate the nature of the solution using specific examples. The paper focusses on equity-indexed annuities as a representative type of such contracts but our approach is applicable to other types of equity-linked contracts and structured products.     

Portfolio optimization for a large investor under partial information and price impact

This paper studies portfolio optimization problems in a market with partial information and price impact. We consider a large investor with an objective of expected utility maximization from terminal wealth. The drift of the underlying price process is modeled as a diffusion affected by a continuous-time Markov chain and the actions of the large investor. Using the stochastic filtering theory, we reduce the optimal control problem under partial information to the one with complete observation. For logarithmic and power utility cases we solve the utility maximization problem explicitly and we obtain optimal investment strategies in the feedback form. We compare the value functions to those for the case without price impact in Bäuerle and Rieder (IEEE Trans Autom Control 49(3):442–447, 2004) and Bäuerle and Rieder (J Appl Prob 362–378, 2005). It turns out that the investor would be better off due to the presence of a price impact both in complete-information and partial-information settings. Moreover, the presence of the price impact results in a shift, which depends on the distance to final time and on the state of the filter, on the optimal control strategy.     

Securitization, structuring and pricing of longevity risk

Pricing and risk management for longevity risk have increasingly become major challenges for life insurers and pension funds around the world. Risk transfer to financial markets, with their major capacity for efficient risk pooling, is an area of significant development for a successful longevity product market. The structuring and pricing of longevity risk using modern securitization methods, common in financial markets, have yet to be successfully implemented for longevity risk management. There are many issues that remain unresolved for ensuring the successful development of a longevity risk market. This paper considers the securitization of longevity risk focusing on the structuring and pricing of a longevity bond using techniques developed for the financial markets, particularly for mortgages and credit risk. A model based on Australian mortality data and calibrated to insurance risk linked market data is used to assess the structure and market consistent pricing of a longevity bond. Age dependence in the securitized risks is shown to be a critical factor in structuring and pricing longevity linked securitizations.     

Explicit solutions of optimal consumption,investment and insurance problems with regime switching

We consider an investor who wants to select his optimal consumption, investment and insurance policies. Motivated by new insurance products, we allow not only the financial market but also the insurable loss to depend on the regime of the economy. The objective of the investor is to maximize his expected total discounted utility of consumption over an infinite time horizon. For the case of hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility functions, we obtain the first explicit solutions for simultaneous optimal consumption, investment, and insurance problems when there is regime switching. We determine that the optimal insurance contract is either no-insurance or deductible insurance, and calculate when it is optimal to buy insurance. The optimal policy depends strongly on the regime of the economy. Through an economic analysis, we calculate the advantage of buying insurance.     

To borrow or insure? Long term care costs and the impact of housing

We assess the impact of housing, the availability of reverse mortgages and long-term care (LTC) insurance on a retiree’s optimal portfolio choice and consumption decisions using a multi-period life cycle model that takes into consideration individual longevity risk, health shocks and house price risk. We determine how much an individual should borrow against their home equity and how much to insure health care costs with LTC insurance. We introduce an endogenous grid method, along with a regression based approach, to improve computational efficiency and avoid the curse of dimensionality. Our results confirm that borrowing against home equity provides higher consumption in earlier years and longevity insurance. LTC insurance transfers wealth from healthy states to disabled states, but reduces early consumption because of the payment of insurance premiums. Housing is an illiquid asset that is important in meeting bequest motives, and it reduces the demand for LTC insurance for the wealthy. We show that the highest welfare benefits come from combining a reverse mortgage with LTC insurance because of strong complementary effects between them. This result highlights the benefits of innovative products that bundle these two products together.     

Dual representation of superhedging costs in illiquid markets

This paper studies superhedging of contingent claims in illiquid markets where trading costs may depend nonlinearly on the traded amounts and portfolios may be subject to constraints. We give dual expressions for superhedging costs of financial contracts where claims and premiums are paid possibly at multiple points in time. Besides classical pricing problems, this setup covers various swap and insurance contracts where premiums are paid in sequences. Validity of the dual expressions is proved under new relaxed conditions related to the classical no-arbitrage condition. A new version of the fundamental theorem of asset pricing is given for unconstrained models with nonlinear trading costs.     

离散时间单位连结人寿保险合同的局部风险最小对冲策略

单位连结人寿保险合同是保险利益依赖于某特定股票的价格的保险合同。当保险公司发行这样的保险合同后，保险公司将面临金融和被保险人死亡率两类风险。因此这样的保险合同相当对不完全金融市场上的或有索取权，不能利用自我融资交易策略复制出。本提出利用不完全市场的局部风险最小对冲方法对冲保险的风险，我们在离散时间的框架下给出了局部风险最小对冲策略。     

Contingent claim pricing using probability distortion operators: methods from insurance risk pricing and their relationship to financial theory

This paper considers the pricing of contingent claims using an approach developed and used in insurance pricing. The approach is of interest and significance because of the increased integration of insurance and financial markets and also because insurance-related risks are trading in financial markets as a result of securitization and new contracts on futures exchanges. This approach uses probability distortion functions as the dual of the utility functions used in financial theory. The pricing formula is the same as the Black-Scholes formula for contingent claims when the underlying asset price is log-normal. The paper compares the probability distortion function approach with that based on financial theory. The theory underlying the approaches is set out and limitations on the use of the insurance-based approach are illustrated. The probability distortion approach is extended to the pricing of contingent claims for more general assumptions than those used for Black-Scholes option pricing.     

Illiquid financial market models and absence of arbitrage

We study financial market models with different liquidity effects. In the first part of this paper, we extend the short-term price impact model introduced by Rogers and Singh (2007) to a general semimartingale setup. We show the convergence of the discrete-time into the continuous-time modeling framework when trading times approach each other. In the second part, arbitrage opportunities in illiquid economies are considered, in particular a modification of the feedback effect model of Bank and Baum (2004). We demonstrate that a large trader cannot create wealth at no risk within this framework. Here we have to assume that the price process is described by a continuous semimartingale.     

Optimal investment–reinsurance strategies with state dependent risk aversion and VaR constraints in correlated markets

In this paper, we investigate the optimal time-consistent investment–reinsurance strategies for an insurer with state dependent risk aversion and Value-at-Risk (VaR) constraints. The insurer can purchase proportional reinsurance to reduce its insurance risks and invest its wealth in a financial market consisting of one risk-free asset and one risky asset, whose price process follows a geometric Brownian motion. The surplus process of the insurer is approximated by a Brownian motion with drift. The two Brownian motions in the insurer’s surplus process and the risky asset’s price process are correlated, which describe the correlation or dependence between the insurance market and the financial market. We introduce the VaR control levels for the insurer to control its loss in investment–reinsurance strategies, which also represent the requirement of regulators on the insurer’s investment behavior. Under the mean–variance criterion, we formulate the optimal investment–reinsurance problem within a game theoretic framework. By using the technique of stochastic control theory and solving the corresponding extended Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman (HJB) system of equations, we derive the closed-form expressions of the optimal investment–reinsurance strategies. In addition, we illustrate the optimal investment–reinsurance strategies by numerical examples and discuss the impact of the risk aversion, the correlation between the insurance market and the financial market, and the VaR control levels on the optimal strategies.     

Unit-linked life insurance policies: Optimal hedging in partially observable market models

In this paper we investigate the hedging problem of a unit-linked life insurance contract via the local risk-minimization approach, when the insurer has a restricted information on the market. In particular, we consider an endowment insurance contract, that is a combination of a term insurance policy and a pure endowment, whose final value depends on the trend of a stock market where the premia the policyholder pays are invested. To allow for mutual dependence between the financial and the insurance markets, we use the progressive enlargement of filtration approach. We assume that the stock price process dynamics depends on an exogenous unobservable stochastic factor that also influences the mortality rate of the policyholder. We characterize the optimal hedging strategy in terms of the integrand in the Galtchouk–Kunita–Watanabe decomposition of the insurance claim with respect to the minimal martingale measure and the available information flow. We provide an explicit formula by means of predictable projection of the corresponding hedging strategy under full information with respect to the natural filtration of the risky asset price and the minimal martingale measure. Finally, we discuss applications in a Markovian setting via filtering.     

离散时间单位连结人寿保险合同的局部风险最小对冲策略

单位连结人寿保险合同是保险利益依赖于某特定股票的价格的保险合同 .当保险公司发行这样的保险合同后 ,保险公司将面临金融和被保险人死亡率两类风险 .因此这样的保险合同相当于不完全金融市场上的或有索取权 ,不能利用自我融资交易策略复制出 .本文提出利用不完全市场的局部风险最小对冲方法对冲保险者的风险 .我们在离散时间的框架下给出了局部风险最小对冲策略 .     

Contagion modeling between the financial and insurance markets with time changed processes

This study analyzes the impact of contagion between financial and non-life insurance markets on the asset–liability management policy of an insurance company. The indirect dependence between these markets is modeled by assuming that the assets return and non-life insurance claims are led respectively by time-changed Brownian and jump processes, for which stochastic clocks are integrals of mutually self-exciting processes. This model exhibits delayed co-movements between financial and non-life insurance markets, caused by events like natural disasters, epidemics, or economic recessions.     

A jump model for fads in asset prices under asymmetric information

This paper addresses how asymmetric information, fads and Lévy jumps in the price of an asset affect the optimal portfolio strategies and maximum expected utilities of two distinct classes of rational investors in a financial market. We obtain the investors’ optimal portfolios and maximum expected logarithmic utilities and show that the optimal portfolio of each investor is more or less than its Merton optimal. Our approximation results suggest that jumps reduce the excess asymptotic utility of the informed investor relative to that of uninformed investor, and hence jump risk could be helpful for market efficiency as an indirect reducer of information asymmetry. Our study also suggests that investors should pay more attention to the overall variance of the asset pricing process when jumps exist in fads models. Moreover, if there are very little or too much fads, then the informed investor has no utility advantage in the long run.     

Valuation and hedging of participating life-insurance policies under management discretion

The valuation and hedging of participating life insurance policies, also known as with-profits policies, is considered. Such policies can be seen as European path-dependent contingent claims whose underlying security is the investment portfolio of the insurance company that sold the policy. The fair valuation of these policies is studied under the assumption that the insurance company has the right to modify the investment strategy of the underlying portfolio at any time. Furthermore, it is assumed that the issuer of the policy does not setup a separate portfolio to hedge the risk associated with the policy. Instead, the issuer will use its discretion about the investment strategy of the underlying portfolio to hedge shortfall risks. In that sense, the insurer’s investment portfolio serves simultaneously as the underlying security and as the hedge portfolio. This means that the hedging problem can not be separated from the valuation problem. We investigate the relationship between risk-neutral valuation and hedging of these policies in complete and incomplete financial markets.     

The design of equity-indexed annuities

There is a rich variety of tailored investment products available to the retail investor in every developed economy. These contracts combine upside participation in bull markets with downside protection in bear markets. Examples include equity-linked contracts and other types of structured products. This paper analyzes these contracts from the investor’s perspective rather than the issuer’s using concepts and tools from financial economics. We analyze and critique their current design and examine their valuation from the investor’s perspective. We propose a generalization of the conventional design that has some interesting features. The generalized contract specifications are obtained by assuming that the investor wishes to maximize end of period expected utility of wealth subject to certain constraints. The first constraint is a guaranteed minimum rate of return which is a common feature of conventional contracts. The second constraint is new. It provides the investor with the opportunity to outperform a benchmark portfolio with some probability. We present the explicit form of the optimal contract assuming both constraints apply and we illustrate the nature of the solution using specific examples. The paper focusses on equity-indexed annuities as a representative type of such contracts but our approach is applicable to other types of equity-linked contracts and structured products.     

目标约束下的投资选择

根据 Markowitz投资组合理论和传统的期望效用理论 ,在效用函数相同的情况下 ,所有的理性投资者都将采用相同的最优投资策略 .但在现实中 ,不同的投资者往往采用不同的投资策略 ,依据传统理论只能认为他们并不都是理性投资者 .本文引入了目标约束后 ,说明了由于不同的投资者具有不同的目标约束 ,所以用传统的期望效用理论无法解释的看似非理性的行为其实却是理性的最优选择 .