High-frequency market-making with inventory constraints and directional bets

Abstract

In this paper we extend the market-making models with inventory constraints of Avellaneda and Stoikov ("High-frequency trading in a limit-order book", Quantitative Finance Vol.8 No.3 2008) and Gueant, Lehalle and Fernandez-Tapia ("Dealing with inventory risk", Preprint 2011) to the case of a rather general class of mid-price processes, under either exponential or linear PNL utility functions, and we add an inventory-risk-aversion parameter that penalises the marker-maker if she finishes her day with a non-zero inventory. This general, non-martingale framework allows a market-maker to make directional bets on market trends whilst keeping under control her inventory risk. In order to achieve this, the marker-maker places non-symmetric limit orders that favour market orders to hit her bid (resp. ask) quotes if she expects that prices will go up (resp. down). With this inventory-risk-aversion parameter, the market-maker has not only direct control on her inventory risk but she also has indirect control on the moments of her PNL distribution. Therefore, this parameter can be seen as a fine-tuning of the marker-maker's risk-reward profile. In the case of a mean-reverting mid-price, we show numerically that the inventory-risk-aversion parameter gives the market-maker enough room to tailor her risk-reward profile, depending on her risk budgets in inventory and PNL distribution (especially variance, skewness, kurtosis and VaR). For example, when compared to the martingale benchmark, a market can choose to either increase her average PNL by more than 15% and carry a huge risk, on inventory and PNL, or either give up 5% of her benchmark PNL to increase her control on inventory and PNL, as well as increasing her Sharpe ratio by a factor bigger than 2.