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Antoine Jacquier

Publications and source records attributed to Antoine Jacquier.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2021

The Log Moment formula for implied volatility

We revisit the foundational Moment Formula proved by Roger Lee fifteen years ago. We show that when the underlying stock price martingale admits finite log-moments E[|log(S)|^q] for some positive q, the arbitrage-free growth in the left wing of the implied volatility smile is less constrained than Lee's bound. The result is rationalised by a market trading discretely monitored variance swaps wherein the payoff is a function of squared log-returns, and requires no assumption for the underlying martingale to admit any negative moment. In this respect, the result can derived from a model-independent setup. As a byproduct, we relax the moment assumptions on the stock price to provide a new proof of the notorious Gatheral-Fukasawa formula expressing variance swaps in terms of the implied volatility.

q-fin.PR↗
arXiv2020

On the uniqueness of solutions of stochastic Volterra equations

We prove strong existence and uniqueness, and Hölder regularity, of a large class of stochastic Volterra equations, with singular kernels and non-Lipschitz diffusion coefficient. Extending Yamada-Watanabe's theorem, our proof relies on an approximation of the process by a sequence of semimartingales with regularised kernels. We apply these results to the rough Heston model, with square-root diffusion coefficient, recently proposed in Mathematical Finance to model the volatility of asset prices.

math.PR↗
arXiv2020

Anomalous diffusions in option prices: connecting trade duration and the volatility term structure

Anomalous diffusions arise as scaling limits of continuous-time random walks (CTRWs) whose innovation times are distributed according to a power law. The impact of a non-exponential waiting time does not vanish with time and leads to different distribution spread rates compared to standard models. In financial modelling this has been used to accommodate for random trade duration in the tick-by-tick price process. We show here that anomalous diffusions are able to reproduce the market behaviour of the implied volatility more consistently than usual Lévy or stochastic volatility models. We focus on two distinct classes of underlying asset models, one with independent price innovations and waiting times, and one allowing dependence between these two components. These two models capture the well-known paradigm according to which shorter trade duration is associated with higher return impact of individual trades. We fully describe these processes in a semimartingale setting leading no-arbitrage pricing formulae, and study their statistical properties. We observe that skewness and kurtosis of the asset returns do not tend to zero as time goes by. We also characterize the large-maturity asymptotics of Call option prices, and find that the convergence rate is slower than in standard Lévy regimes, which in turn yields a declining implied volatility term structure and a slower decay of the skew.

q-fin.PR↗
arXiv2019

Stacked Monte Carlo for option pricing

We introduce a stacking version of the Monte Carlo algorithm in the context of option pricing. Introduced recently for aeronautic computations, this simple technique, in the spirit of current machine learning ideas, learns control variates by approximating Monte Carlo draws with some specified function. We describe the method from first principles and suggest appropriate fits, and show its efficiency to evaluate European and Asian Call options in constant and stochastic volatility models.

q-fin.CP↗
arXiv2019

Volatility options in rough volatility models

We discuss the pricing and hedging of volatility options in some rough volatility models. First, we develop efficient Monte Carlo methods and asymptotic approximations for computing option prices and hedge ratios in models where log-volatility follows a Gaussian Volterra process. While providing a good fit for European options, these models are unable to reproduce the VIX option smile observed in the market, and are thus not suitable for VIX products. To accommodate these, we introduce the class of modulated Volterra processes, and show that they successfully capture the VIX smile.

q-fin.PR↗
arXiv2018

Pathwise large deviations for the Rough Bergomi model

We study the small-time behaviour of the rough Bergomi model, introduced by Bayer, Friz and Gatheral (2016), and prove a large deviations principle for a rescaled version of the normalised log stock price process, which then allows us to characterise the small-time behaviour of the implied volatility.

math.PR↗
arXiv2018

The randomised Heston model

We propose a randomised version of the Heston model-a widely used stochastic volatility model in mathematical finance-assuming that the starting point of the variance process is a random variable. In such a system, we study the small-and large-time behaviours of the implied volatility, and show that the proposed randomisation generates a short-maturity smile much steeper (`with explosion') than in the standard Heston model, thereby palliating the deficiency of classical stochastic volatility models in short time. We precisely quantify the speed of explosion of the smile for short maturities in terms of the right tail of the initial distribution, and in particular show that an explosion rate of~$t^γ$ ($γ\in[0,1/2]$) for the squared implied volatility--as observed on market data--can be obtained by a suitable choice of randomisation. The proofs are based on large deviations techniques and the theory of regular variations.

q-fin.PR↗
arXiv2018

Pathwise moderate deviations for option pricing

We provide a unifying treatment of pathwise moderate deviations for models commonly used in financial applications, and for related integrated functionals. Suitable scaling allows us to transfer these results into small-time, large-time and tail asymptotics for diffusions, as well as for option prices and realised variances. In passing, we highlight some intuitive relationships between moderate deviations rate functions and their large deviations counterparts; these turn out to be useful for numerical purposes, as large deviations rate functions are often difficult to compute.

q-fin.MF↗
arXiv2017

Black-Scholes in a CEV random environment

Classical (Itô diffusions) stochastic volatility models are not able to capture the steepness of small-maturity implied volatility smiles. Jumps, in particular exponential Lévy and affine models, which exhibit small-maturity exploding smiles, have historically been proposed to remedy this (see \cite{Tank} for an overview), and more recently rough volatility models \cite{AlosLeon, Fukasawa}. We suggest here a different route, randomising the Black-Scholes variance by a CEV-generated distribution, which allows us to modulate the rate of explosion (through the CEV exponent) of the implied volatility for small maturities. The range of rates includes behaviours similar to exponential Lévy models and fractional stochastic volatility models.

q-fin.PR↗
arXiv2017

Optimal liquidation in a Level-I limit order book for large tick stocks

We propose a framework to study the optimal liquidation strategy in a limit order book for large-tick stocks, with spread equal to one tick. All order book events (market orders, limit orders and cancellations) occur according to independent Poisson processes, with parameters depending on price move directions. Our goal is to maximise the expected terminal wealth of an agent who needs to liquidate her positions within a fixed time horizon. Assuming that the agent trades (through sell limit order or/and sell market order) only when the price moves, we model her liquidation procedure as a semi-Markov decision process, and compute the semi-Markov kernel using Laplace method in the language of queueing theory. The optimal liquidation policy is then solved by dynamic programming, and illustrated numerically.

q-fin.TR↗
arXiv2017

Asymptotic behaviour of the fractional Heston model

We consider the fractional Heston model originally proposed by Comte, Coutin and Renault. Inspired by recent ground-breaking work on rough volatility, which showed that models with volatility driven by fractional Brownian motion with short memory allows for better calibration of the volatility surface and more robust estimation of time series of historical volatility, we provide a characterisation of the short- and long-maturity asymptotics of the implied volatility smile. Our analysis reveals that the short-memory property precisely provides a jump-type behaviour of the smile for short maturities, thereby fixing the well-known standard inability of classical stochastic volatility models to fit the short-end of the volatility smile.

q-fin.MF↗
arXiv2017

Shapes of implied volatility with positive mass at zero

We study the shapes of the implied volatility when the underlying distribution has an atom at zero and analyse the impact of a mass at zero on at-the-money implied volatility and the overall level of the smile. We further show that the behaviour at small strikes is uniquely determined by the mass of the atom up to high asymptotic order, under mild assumptions on the remaining distribution on the positive real line. We investigate the structural difference with the no-mass-at-zero case, showing how one can--theoretically--distinguish between mass at the origin and a heavy-left-tailed distribution. We numerically test our model-free results in stochastic models with absorption at the boundary, such as the CEV process, and in jump-to-default models. Note that while Lee's moment formula tells that implied variance is at most asymptotically linear in log-strike, other celebrated results for exact smile asymptotics such as Benaim and Friz (09) or Gulisashvili (10) do not apply in this setting--essentially due to the breakdown of Put-Call duality.

q-fin.PR↗
arXiv2017

On VIX Futures in the rough Bergomi model

The rough Bergomi model introduced by Bayer, Friz and Gatheral has been outperforming conventional Markovian stochastic volatility models by reproducing implied volatility smiles in a very realistic manner, in particular for short maturities. We investigate here the dynamics of the VIX and the forward variance curve generated by this model, and develop efficient pricing algorithms for VIX futures and options. We further analyse the validity of the rough Bergomi model to jointly describe the VIX and the SPX, and present a joint calibration algorithm based on the hybrid scheme by Bennedsen, Lunde and Pakkanen.

q-fin.PR↗
arXiv2016

Mass at zero in the uncorrelated SABR model and implied volatility asymptotics

We study the mass at the origin in the uncorrelated SABR stochastic volatility model, and derive several tractable expressions, in particular when time becomes small or large. As an application--in fact the original motivation for this paper--we derive small-strike expansions for the implied volatility when the maturity becomes short or large. These formulae, by definition arbitrage free, allow us to quantify the impact of the mass at zero on existing implied volatility approximations, and in particular how correct/erroneous these approximations become.

q-fin.PR↗
arXiv2016

On the probability of hitting the boundary for Brownian motions on the SABR plane

Starting from the hyperbolic Brownian motion as a time-changed Brownian motion, we explore a set of probabilistic models--related to the SABR model in mathematical finance--which can be obtained by geometry-preserving transformations, and show how to translate the properties of the hyperbolic Brownian motion (density, probability mass, drift) to each particular model. Our main result is an explicit expression for the probability of any of these models hitting the boundary of their domains, the proof of which relies on the properties of the aforementioned transformations as well as time-change methods.

math.PR↗