Modeling Optimal Trading Demand with Information and Hedging Needs
Summary
The document considers an informed trader who observes an endowment and a correlated risky asset, trades against independent noise demand, and faces a market maker who prices from aggregate order flow. The trader's demand is intended both to exploit information about asset value and to hedge the endowment. The setup asks for an optimal dynamic policy, but leaves important details of information sharing and price formation unspecified.
The response places the problem alongside continuous-time Kyle models and optimal execution with hedging, noting that these frameworks require carefully defined trading and information dynamics. For a tractable one-period version, it proposes a pricing function and a cash-account objective; differentiating gives a first-order condition linking optimal demand, the pricing function's slope, asset value, and endowment. The implied demand must then be consistent with the market maker's conditional pricing rule. This is a sketch rather than a complete solution, and the response cautions that the original dynamic model needs further specification.
Key ideas
- The trader's demand combines speculative information use with hedging of an endowment.
- Aggregate order flow mixes informed demand with independent noise trading.
- A one-period cash-account objective yields a first-order condition for optimal demand.
- The demand rule must be consistent with the market maker's conditional price estimate.
- The dynamic model remains under-specified and is not solved in full.
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Full text
# How do your solve for trader's optimal demand in market similar to Kyle's model?
# How do your solve for trader's optimal demand in market similar to Kyle's model?
Suppose that $(\Omega,\mathcal{F},\mathbb{P})$ is a standard probability space and $Z_t=(Z_t^1,Z_t^2)$ is a two dimensional Brownian motion with the filtration $\mathcal{F}^Z_{t}$ and $Z_t^1$, $Z_t^2$ are correlated with $\rho\in(-1,1)$. Let $\mathcal{E}_t$ the endowment of a trader with the following dynamics
$$d\mathcal{E}_t=\mu_1 dt + \sigma_1 dZ^1_t$$
The utility payoff of the investor is concave and increasing with respect to her demand $\alpha_t$ at any $t\in [0, T]$ and to keep simple the problem we assume that $\forall t\in [0,T]$ the trader does not have any budget constraint and can reallocate her demand with respect to a risky asset $V$, that is used to hedge her endowment $\mathcal{E}_t$, with the following dynamics
$$dV_t = \mu_2 dt + \sigma_2 dZ^2_t $$
the position of the trader is
$$W_t = \mathcal{E}_t+\alpha_t (P_t - V_t)$$
where $P_t$ stands for the price of the risky asset $V$ on date $t$ when the demand of the trader will be $\alpha_t$, and $P_t$ is $F_t^Z$-adapted. The expected utility payoff will be
$$\mathbb{E}(U(\mathcal{E}_{t}+\alpha_{t} (P_{t} - V_{t}))|F_0^Z)$$
At any $t\in [0,T]$ there exist also noise traders who who have random, price-inelastic demands and we denote by $B_t$ their cumulative orders at any $t$ and let's assume that $B$ is also an $\mathcal{F}^Z_{t}$-adapted Brownian motion that is independent of $Z=(Z^1,Z^2)$. Hence the total order is
$$Y_t = B_t + \alpha_t$$
where $\alpha$ is the demand of the trader and the price dynamics are
$$P_{t} = \mathbb{E}(V_{t}|Y_{t})$$
where (I believe that) the price dynamics resemble the market efficiency hypothesis as in Kyle 1985. Note here that the trader knows $P_t$ when she trades and that the market maker cannot designate the order $\alpha$ from $B$ and hence she can not know the exactly know the order of the trader.
How could someone solve for the optimal demand $\alpha_t^*$ such that
$$\alpha^*=\operatorname{argmax}\{\mathbb{E}(U(\mathcal{E}_{T}+\alpha_{T} (P_{T} - V_{T}))|F_0^Z)\}$$ when $(t,\alpha_t,V_t) \in \mathbb{R}_{+}\times\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}$?
$\mathbb{Remark:}$ In contrast to the classic model of Kyle, there is an endowment $\mathcal{E}$ that refers to the hedging needs of the trader as well. More precisely, the trader will give an order $a^*$ not only because of her informational advantage (which she wants to exploit) on the dynamics of $V$, but also based on her hedging needs, which would make more difficult for the market maker to elicit the (private) information that the trader holds about $V$ at any $t\in[0,T]$ even in the case where no noise traders exist.
## Answer by lehalle (score 3)
https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/75107
### Generic knowledge about this kind of models
Let me try to get your model close to elements that are known:
- Time continuous Kyle's model is something that is solved in Çetin, Umut, and Albina Danilova. "Markovian Nash equilibrium in financial markets with asymmetric information and related forward–backward systems." (2016): 1996-2029. Such a model shares a lot of your features: the informed trader observes the value of an asset $\cal E$ she can trade it to optimise her PnL at $T$ in front of a Market Maker (MM) who does not see the true value of $\cal E$ but observes the flow $\alpha dt$ (same notation as yours!) of the informed trader, the is mixed with noise trades' demand hence the MM "see" a diffusion with a controlled drift: $dY = \alpha dt + \sigma dB$. the MM has a CARA utility function (that is more general than your conditional expectation) the difference is that the informed trader does not have another instrument $V$ to trade, but this is already complicated something that you fail to properly define in your model is how the market maker and the informed trader share (or not) information; in their paper, Cetin and Dsnilova have to use a Brownian Bridge. If you want. to do something like them, they have a great book on this topic: Çetin, Umut, and Albina Danilova. Dynamic Markov Bridges and Market Microstructure: Theory and Applications. Vol. 90. Springer, 2018.
- Optimal execution with hedging is another story and focuses on simultaneously trading $\cal E$ and $V$ to hedge some market risk on the most liquid instrument ($V$ for you). There is this paper that shown how to do it on a portfolio: Lehalle, Charles-Albert. "Rigorous strategic trading: Balanced portfolio and mean-reversion." The Journal of Trading 4, no. 3 (2009): 40-46. it deals with a full portfolio: the investor trades all thehe components of the portfolio that are correlated and do not have all the same liquidity but it is done inside an "Almgren-Chriss" framework, that is discrete and not really well adapted to yours (or Cetin-Danilova's one)
My advice would be to use a Cartea-Jaimungal framework and write your optimal trading with an instrument properly. It is not very difficult (I gave it at one of my exams, hence I prefer not to write the full solution there...), but mixing it with Cetin and Danilova may be tricky....
### Start of analysis: the one period model
Let me help you in the context of a one period model.
The mechanism of the proof should be this one
- you need to choose a pricing function for your Market Maker (MM), let me use the notation $f_\theta(\alpha)$, where $\theta$ are the parameters of the pricing function. If you want to get inspiration you can have a look at Lehalle, Charles-Albert, Eyal Neuman, and Segev Shlomov. "Phase Transitions in Kyle's Model with Market Maker Profit Incentives." arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.04481 (2021) where a neural network is used (and theoretical results provided).
- let me replace the generic CARA function by the cash account of the informed trader, she want to maximise $$\mathbb{E}((Q_0-\alpha){\cal E} + \alpha (f_\theta(\alpha)-V)).$$ I let you check: she can liquidate her position (of size $Q_0-\alpha$) in the initial security and the value of the remaining position $\alpha$ is clear.
- To maximise this it is enough to find $\alpha^*$ such that $$f_\theta(\alpha^*)+\alpha^*f_\theta'(\alpha^*)=V-{\cal E}.$$ This is nothing more that the derivative of the upper expression with respect to $\alpha$.
- Now you have a relation between $\alpha^*$ and $(\theta,{\cal E})$ that is of primary importance in this kind of game (this is a kind of Stackelberg game, see Vasal, Deepanshu, and Randall Berry. "Master Equation for Discrete-Time Stackelberg Mean Field Games with a Single Leader." In 2022 IEEE 61st Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 5529-5535. IEEE, 2022.)
- This relation has to be reinjected in the pricing model $P=\mathbb{E}(V|B+\alpha)$, giving birth to something like $$P=f_\theta(\alpha^*(\theta,{\cal E}))=\mathbb{E}(V|B+\alpha^*(\theta,{\cal E})).$$ This is the formula in $\theta$ of a regression of $V$ on $\alpha$.
- usually you try to get there a regression of $\cal E$ on $\alpha$ and not of $V$ on it.
### Conclusion and advice
I hope you understand that there is a lot of knowledge and literature on this topic. You should read more about it before attacking your problem: I am sure the reading will tell you how to modify your problem so that it reflects what you really want. I am not sure that at this stage it is really the case.Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.