The authors of this article address the problem of how to optimally hedge an options book in a practical setting, where trading decisions are discrete and trading costs can be nonlinear and difficult to model. Based on reinforcement learning (RL), a well-established machine learning technique, the authors propose a model that is flexible, accurate and very promising for real-world applications. A key strength of the RL approach is that it does not make any assumptions about the form of trading cost. RL learns the minimum variance hedge subject to whatever transaction cost function one provides. All that it needs is a good simulator, in which transaction costs and options prices are simulated accurately.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.