Optimization Methods

In the context of stochastic portfolio theory we introduce a novel class of portfolios which we call linear path-functional portfolios. These are portfolios which are determined by certain transformations of linear functions of a collections of feature maps that are non-anticipative path functionals

Data scarcity and confidentiality in finance often impede model development and robust testing. This paper presents a unified multi-criteria evaluation framework for synthetic financial data and applies it to three representative generative paradigms: the statistical ARIMA-GARCH baseline, Variationa

Conditional Autoencoders (CAEs) offer a flexible, interpretable approach for estimating latent asset-pricing factors from firm characteristics. However, existing studies usually limit the latent factor dimension to around K=5 due to concerns that larger K can degrade performance. To overcome this ch

This study presents a Reinforcement Learning (RL)-based portfolio management model tailored for high-risk environments, addressing the limitations of traditional RL models and exploiting market opportunities through two-sided transactions and lending. Our approach integrates a new environmental form

We propose ARBITER, a risk-neutral neural operator for learning joint SPX-VIX term structures under no-arbitrage constraints. ARBITER maps market states to an operator that outputs implied volatility and variance curves while enforcing static arbitrage (calendar, vertical, butterfly), Lipschitz boun

Classical portfolio models tend to degrade under structural breaks, whereas flexible machine-learning allocators often lack arbitrage consistency and interpretability. We propose Causal PDE-Control Models (CPCMs), a framework that links structural causal drivers, nonlinear filtering, and forward-bac

This paper presents a comprehensive machine learning framework for quantitative trading that achieves superior risk-adjusted returns through systematic factor engineering, real-time computation optimization, and cross-sectional portfolio construction. Our approach integrates multi-factor alpha disco

HFT systems are conventionally built as a single-threaded event loop, on the rule that every thread hop adds latency. We test that rule against a measurement study of more than a year of CME market data for the NQ front-month contract, following every packet and matching-engine transaction through t

Cross-market portfolio optimization has become increasingly complex with the globalization of financial markets and the growth of high-frequency, multi-dimensional datasets. Traditional artificial neural networks, while effective in certain portfolio management tasks, often incur substantial computa

Maximizing revenue for grid-scale battery energy storage systems in continuous intraday electricity markets requires strategies that are able to seize trading opportunities as soon as new information arrives. This paper introduces and evaluates an automated high-frequency trading strategy for batter

Stochastic differential equation (SDE) models are the foundation for pricing and hedging financial derivatives. The drift and volatility functions in SDE models are typically chosen to be algebraic functions with a small number (less than 5) parameters which can be calibrated to market data. A more

We formulate option market making as a constrained, risk-sensitive control problem that unifies execution, hedging, and arbitrage-free implied-volatility surfaces inside a single learning loop. A fully differentiable eSSVI layer enforces static no-arbitrage conditions (butterfly and calendar) while

We study portfolio choice when firm-level emissions intensities are measured with error. We introduce a scope-specific penalty operator that rescales asset payoffs as a smooth function of revenue-normalized emissions intensity. Under payoff homogeneity, unit-scale invariance, mixture linearity, and

Forecasting accuracy is routinely optimised in financial prediction tasks even though investment and risk-management decisions are executed under transaction costs, market impact, capacity limits, and binding risk constraints. This paper treats forecasting as an econometric input to a constrained de

We introduce a novel approach to options trading strategies using a highly scalable and data-driven machine learning algorithm. In contrast to traditional approaches that often require specifications of underlying market dynamics or assumptions on an option pricing model, our models depart fundament

Capital allocation is a procedure for quantifying the contribution of each source of risk to aggregated risk. The gradient allocation rule, also known as the Euler principle, is a prevalent rule of capital allocation under which the allocated capital captures the diversification benefit of the margi

We develop a data-driven approach to dynamic portfolio selection that combines vine-copula simulation with reinforcement learning. The investor has constant relative risk aversion and maximises expected terminal utility with a running penalty on the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) of one-period los

Estimation error in short, correlated pricing panels is dominated by trajectory dispersion rather than sampling noise, creating an identification shortfall that only independently assigned variation can resolve. We propose a guided iteration methodology to decide how much variation to generate, wher

Unrestricted mean-variance-skewness-kurtosis portfolio optimization can capture asymmetry and tail risk, but sample-moment formulations become computationally impractical when the asset universe is large: they produce dense nonconvex quartic objectives with prohibitive coskewness and cokurtosis tens

Current tokenization methods process sequential data without accounting for signal quality, limiting their effectiveness on noisy real-world corpora. We present QA-Token (Quality-Aware Tokenization), which incorporates data reliability directly into vocabulary construction. We make three key contrib

The Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) poses a significant challenge for exotic derivatives pricing, particularly for non-modelable risk factors (NMRF) where sparse market data leads to infinite audit bounds under classical Martingale Optimal Transport (MOT). We propose a unified Rough Ma

Machine learning is central to empirical asset pricing, but portfolio construction still relies on point predictions and largely ignores asset-specific estimation uncertainty. We propose a simple change: sort assets using uncertainty-adjusted prediction bounds instead of point predictions alone. Acr

We present a high-level framework that explains why, in practice, different pricing models calibrated to the same vanilla surface tend to produce similar valuations for exotic derivatives. Our approach acts as an overlay on the Monte Carlo infrastructure already used in banks, combining path reweigh

We tackle high-dimensional, path-dependent valuation and control and introduce a deep BSDE/2BSDE solver that couples truncated log-signatures with a neural rough differential equation (RDE) backbone. The architecture aligns stochastic analysis with sequence-to-path learning: a CVaR-tilted terminal o

Transaction costs and regime shifts are major reasons why paper portfolios fail in live trading. We introduce FR-LUX (Friction-aware, Regime-conditioned Learning under eXecution costs), a reinforcement learning framework that learns after-cost trading policies and remains robust across volatility-li

Portfolio optimization is a routine asset management operation conducted in financial institutions around the world. However, under real-world constraints such as turnover limits and transaction costs, its formulation becomes a mixed-integer nonlinear program that current mixed-integer optimizers of

Financial markets are noisy yet contain a latent graph-theoretic structure that can be exploited for superior risk-adjusted returns. We propose a quantum stochastic walk (QSW) optimizer that embeds assets in a weighted graph: nodes represent securities while edges encode the return-covariance kernel

We develop a rotation-invariant neural network that provides the global minimum-variance portfolio by jointly learning how to lag-transform historical returns and how to regularise both the eigenvalues and the marginal volatilities of large equity covariance matrices. This explicit mathematical mapp

This research systematically develops and evaluates various hybrid modeling approaches by combining traditional econometric models (ARIMA and ARFIMA models) with machine learning and deep learning techniques (SVM, XGBoost, and LSTM models) to forecast financial time series. The empirical analysis is

Algorithmic trading relies on machine learning models to make trading decisions. Despite strong in-sample performance, these models often degrade when confronted with evolving real-world market regimes, which can shift dramatically due to macroeconomic changes-e.g., monetary policy updates or unanti

We address finance-native collateral optimization under ISDA Credit Support Annexes (CSAs), where integer lots, Schedule A haircuts, RA/MTA gating, and issuer/currency/class caps create rugged, legally bounded search spaces. We introduce a certifiable hybrid pipeline purpose-built for this domain: (

We examine whether regime-conditioned generative scenarios combined with a convex CVaR allocator improve portfolio decisions under regime shifts. We present MARCD, a generative-to-decision framework with: (i) a Gaussian HMM to infer latent regimes; (ii) a diffusion generator that produces regime-con

Financial returns are known to exhibit heavy tails, volatility clustering and abrupt jumps that are poorly captured by classical diffusion models. Advances in machine learning have enabled highly flexible functional forms for conditional means and volatilities, yet few models deliver interpretable s

We propose a novel distributionally robust $Q$-learning algorithm for the non-tabular case accounting for continuous state spaces where the state transition of the underlying Markov decision process is subject to model uncertainty. The uncertainty is taken into account by considering the worst-case

We propose a scalable, policy-centric framework for continuous-time multi-asset portfolio-consumption optimization under inequality constraints. Our method integrates neural policies with Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle (PMP) and enforces feasibility by maximizing a log-barrier-regularized Hamiltonia

In this paper, we propose a complete modelling framework to value several batteries in the electricity intraday market at the trading session scale. The model consists of a stochastic model for the 24 mid-prices (one price per delivery hour) combined with a deterministic model for the liquidity cost

In this work, we develop a novel efficient quadrature and sparse grid based polynomial interpolation method to price American options with multiple underlying assets. The approach is based on first formulating the pricing of American options using dynamic programming, and then employing static spars

We introduce Deep Inception Networks (DINs), a family of Deep Learning models that provide a general framework for end-to-end systematic trading strategies. DINs extract time series (TS) and cross sectional (CS) features directly from daily price returns. This removes the need for handcrafted featur

Financial scenario simulation is essential for risk management and portfolio optimization, yet it remains challenging especially in high-dimensional and small data settings common in finance. We propose a diffusion factor model that integrates latent factor structure into generative diffusion proces

In this work, we present a novel forward differential deep learning-based algorithm for solving high-dimensional nonlinear backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs). Motivated by the fact that differential deep learning can efficiently approximate the labels and their derivatives with respe

Dynamic AMM pools, as found in Temporal Function Market Making, rebalance their holdings to a new desired ratio (e.g. moving from being 50-50 between two assets to being 90-10 in favour of one of them) by introducing an arbitrage opportunity that disappears when their holdings are in line with their

This paper proposes an Extended State-Dependent Hawkes Process (ExsdHawkes) to model the intricate dynamics of Limit Order Books (LOBs). Our theoretical contribution lies in relaxing traditional constraints by allowing for state disappearances – a phenomenon frequently observed in high-frequency tr

The multidimensional Uncertain Volatility Model leads to robust option pricing problems under joint volatility and correlation uncertainty. Their numerical resolution quickly becomes challenging because the associated stochastic control problem is high-dimensional. We propose a backward actor-critic

Metaheuristic algorithms for cardinality-constrained portfolio optimization require repair operators to map infeasible candidates onto the feasible region. Standard Euclidean projection treats assets as independent and can ignore the covariance structure that governs portfolio risk, potentially prod

As renewable energy integration increases supply variability, battery energy storage systems (BESS) present a viable solution for balancing supply and demand. This paper proposes a novel approach for optimizing battery BESS participation in multiple electricity markets. We develop a joint bidding st

We propose a novel conditional diffusion model for portfolio optimization that learns the cross-sectional distribution of next-day stock returns conditioned on asset-specific factors. The model builds on the Diffusion Transformer with token-wise conditioning, linking each asset’s return to its own f

The efficiency of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and the influence of token routing algorithms on market performance and stakeholder outcomes remain underexplored. This paper introduces the concept of Standardized Total Arbitrage Profit (STAP), computed via convex optimization, as a systematic measu

We develop a mathematical model for intraday dispatch of co-located wind-battery energy assets. Focusing on the primary objective of firming grid-side actual production vis-a-vis the preset day-ahead hourly generation targets, we conduct a comprehensive study of the resulting stochastic control prob

We study continuous-time mean–variance portfolio selection in markets where stock prices are diffusion processes driven by observable factors that are also diffusion processes, yet the coefficients of these processes are unknown. Based on the recently developed reinforcement learning (RL) theory for

We propose an approach to construct text-based time-series indices in an optimal way–typically, indices that maximize the contemporaneous relation or the predictive performance with respect to a target variable, such as inflation. We illustrate our methodology with a corpus of news articles from the

Rules are widely used in Fintech institutions to make fraud prevention decisions, since rules are highly interpretable thanks to their intuitive if-then structure. In practice, a two-stage framework of fraud prevention decision rule set mining is usually employed in large Fintech institutions; Stage

Cryptocurrency trading represents a nascent field of research, with growing adoption in industry. Aided by its decentralised nature, many metrics describing cryptocurrencies are accessible with a simple Google search and update frequently, usually at least on a daily basis. This presents a promising

In this article, we introduce an algorithm called Backward Hedging, designed for hedging European and American options while considering transaction costs. The optimal strategy is determined by minimizing an appropriate loss function, which is based on either a risk measure or the mean squared error

This paper presents a framework for pricing catastrophe (CAT) bonds in incomplete markets through Riemannian geometric optimization of financial entropy. We formulate pricing-measure selection as a maximum financial entropy problem on a finite-dimensional manifold of equivalent measures, parameteriz

Feature selection is a central problem in high-dimensional financial regression, where large numbers of engineered variables and strong correlations among predictors reduce model stability and interpretability. $L_1$ regularization (Lasso) is widely used for sparse regression, but its shrinkage can

Decision-focused learning (DFL) trains predictors through downstream objectives, but a different loss need not provide an independent parameter-update direction. We characterize this restriction through the predictor Jacobian, using sparse index tracking to distinguish the covariance entries read by

Stock price forecasting is a long-standing challenge in computational finance, driven by the inherent randomness of markets and complex temporal patterns. While recent deep-learning models have raised forecasting accuracy by jointly modeling inter-stock and temporal price dynamics, they conflate int

ESG-aware portfolio optimization is increasingly important for sustainable capital allocation, yet most learning-based methods still operationalize ESG by appending static scores to the policy observation or reward. This creates a mismatch for sequential control: ESG scores are noisy, provider-depen

Many real-world problems require sequential decisions under uncertainty: when to inject or withdraw gas from storage, how to rebalance a pension portfolio each month, what temperature profile to run through a pharmaceutical reactor chain. Dynamic programming solves small instances exactly but scales

We study cubic cardinality-constrained portfolio optimization, a higher-order extension of the standard Markowitz formulation where three-way sector co-movement terms augment the quadratic risk-return objective. Classical heuristics like simulated annealing (SA) and tabu search require Rosenberg qua

Money-back guarantees (MBGs) are features of pooled retirement income products that address bequest concerns by ensuring the initial premium is returned through lifetime payments or, upon early death, as a death benefit to the estate. This paper studies optimal retirement decumulation in an individu

We study the problem of forecasting and optimally trading day-ahead versus real-time (DART) price spreads in U.S. wholesale electricity markets. Building on the framework of Galarneau-Vincent et al., we extend spike prediction from a single zone to a multi-zone setting and treat both positive and ne

The integration of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) and Evolutionary Computation (EC) is frequently hypothesized to be the “Holy Grail” of algorithmic trading, promising systems that adapt autonomously to non-stationary market regimes. This paper presents a rigorous post-mortem analysis of “Galaxy

This paper proposes a reinforcement learning–based framework for cryptocurrency portfolio management using the Soft Actor–Critic (SAC) and Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) algorithms. Traditional portfolio optimization methods often struggle to adapt to the highly volatile and nonlinear dyn

We study the dynamic investment decisions of investors who prioritise specific quantiles of outcomes over their expected values. Downside-focused agents targeting low quantiles reduce risk in states with high variance, while those with a preference for high quantiles concentrate in sleeves with high

Effective supply chain management under high-variance demand requires models that jointly address demand uncertainty and digital contracting adoption. Existing research often simplifies demand variability or treats adoption as an exogenous decision, limiting relevance in e-commerce and humanitarian

This paper proposes a reinforcement learning framework that employs Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) to dynamically optimize the weights of multiple large language model (LLM)-generated formulaic alphas for stock trading strategies. Formulaic alphas are mathematically defined trading signals deriv

This paper investigates an important problem of an appropriate variance-covariance matrix estimation in the Modern Portfolio Theory. We propose a novel framework for variancecovariance matrix estimation for purposes of the portfolio optimization, which is based on deep learning models. We employ the

The efficient and effective construction of portfolios that adhere to real-world constraints is a challenging optimization task in finance. We investigate a concrete representation of the problem with a focus on design proposals of an Exchange Traded Fund. We evaluate the sampling-based CVaR Variati

Regardless of the selected asset class and the level of model complexity (Transformer versus LSTM versus Perceptron/RNN), the GMADL loss function produces superior results than standard MSE-type loss functions and has better numerical properties in the context of optimization than MADL. Better resul

An investment portfolio consists of $n$ algorithmic trading strategies, which generate vectors of positions in trading assets. Sign opposite trades (buy/sell) cross each other as strategies are combined in a portfolio. Then portfolio turnover becomes a non linear function of strategies turnover. It

Markowitz’s criterion aims to balance expected return and risk when optimizing the portfolio. The expected return level is usually fixed according to the risk appetite of an investor, then the risk is minimized at this fixed return level. However, the investor may not know which return level is suit

In the era of rapid globalization and digitalization, accurate identification of similar stocks has become increasingly challenging due to the non-stationary nature of financial markets and the ambiguity in conventional regional and sector classifications. To address these challenges, we examine Sim

As a model-free algorithm, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agent learns and makes decisions by interacting with the environment in an unsupervised way. In recent years, DRL algorithms have been widely applied by scholars for portfolio optimization in consecutive trading periods, since the DRL agen

The present article explores the application of randomized control techniques in empirical asset pricing and performance evaluation. It introduces geometric random walks, a class of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, to construct flexible control groups in the form of random portfolios adhering to in

We propose a discrete-time econometric model that combines autoregressive filters with factor regressions to predict stock returns for portfolio optimisation purposes. In particular, we test both robust linear regressions and general additive models on two different investment universes composed of

We consider the construction of renewable portfolios targeting specified carbon-free (CFE) hourly performance scores. We work in a probabilistic framework that uses a collection of simulation scenarios and imposes probability constraints on achieving the desired CFE score. In our approach there is a

For $n$ assets and discrete-time rebalancing, the probability to complete a given schedule of investments and withdrawals is maximized over progressively measurable portfolio weight functions. Applications consider two assets, namely the S&P Composite Index and an inflation-protected bond. The maxim

High-frequency trading (HFT) uses computer algorithms to make trading decisions in short time scales (e.g., second-level), which is widely used in the Cryptocurrency (Crypto) market (e.g., Bitcoin). Reinforcement learning (RL) in financial research has shown stellar performance on many quantitative

Correlation-diversified portfolios can be constructed by finding the maximum independent sets (MISs) in market graphs with edges corresponding to correlations between two stocks. The computational complexity to find the MIS increases exponentially as the size of the market graph increases, making th

Suppose you are a fund manager with $100 million to deploy and two years to invest it. A deal comes across your desk that looks appealing but costs $50 million – half of your available capital. Should you take it, or wait for something better? The decision hinges on the trade-off between current opp

This paper addresses the challenge of model uncertainty in quantitative finance, where decisions in portfolio allocation, derivative pricing, and risk management rely on estimating stochastic models from limited data. In practice, the unavailability of the true probability measure forces reliance on

Parametric Portfolio Policies (PPP) estimate optimal portfolio weights directly as functions of observable signals by maximizing expected utility, bypassing the need to model asset returns and covariances. However, PPP ignores policy risk. We show that this is consequential, leading to an overstatem

This paper investigates the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) constraint on a regularized mean-variance (MV) portfolio optimization problem in a large-dimensional setting, in which a positive definite regularization matrix is imposed on the sample covariance matrix. We first deri

We propose DeePM (Deep Portfolio Manager), a structured deep-learning macro portfolio manager trained end-to-end to maximize a robust, risk-adjusted utility. DeePM addresses three fundamental challenges in financial learning: (1) it resolves the asynchronous “ragged filtration” problem via a Directe

This study models the monopoly pricing of weather index insurance as a Bowley-type sequential game involving a profit-maximizing insurer (leader) and a farmer (follower). The farmer chooses an insurance payoff to minimize a convex distortion risk measure, while the insurer anticipates this best resp

This paper introduces a hybrid framework for portfolio optimization that fuses Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) forecasting with a Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) reinforcement learning strategy. The proposed system leverages the predictive power of deep recurrent networks to capture temporal depend

This paper introduces a novel multivariate volatility modeling framework, named Long Short-Term Memory enhanced BEKK (LSTM-BEKK), that integrates deep learning into multivariate GARCH processes. By combining the flexibility of recurrent neural networks with the econometric structure of BEKK models,

In this paper, we study the continuous-time multi-asset mean-variance (MV) portfolio selection using a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm, specifically the soft actor-critic (SAC) algorithm, in the time-varying financial market. A family of Gaussian portfolio selections is derived, and a policy i

Robust utility optimization enables an investor to deal with market uncertainty in a structured way, with the goal of maximizing the worst-case outcome. In this work, we propose a generative adversarial network (GAN) approach to (approximately) solve robust utility optimization problems in general a

We propose a regime-aware tactical asset allocation (TAA) framework integrating market regime detection with Nested Clustered Optimization (NCO) for multi-asset portfolio construction. The central hypothesis is that incorporating market regime information into the NCO pipeline, specifically at the s

Deep hedging learns trading policies from historical or simulated market trajectories, yet under nonstationarity these training paths may not represent future market conditions. We propose WRAP (Wasserstein-Reweighting Adversarial Perturbation), a drift-aware adversarial training framework derived f

We introduce a deep kernel hedging framework that combines the flexibility of deep learning with the structural inductive bias of kernel methods. The hedging functional is restricted to a reproducing kernel Hilbert space whose kernel is parameterized through a neural network embedding of the input f

We propose post-screening portfolio selection (PS$^2$), a two-step framework for high-dimensional mean–variance investing. First, assets are screened by Lasso-type regression of a constant on excess returns without an intercept. Second, portfolio weights are estimated on the selected set using stan

Portfolio optimization under cardinality constraints transforms the classical Markowitz mean-variance problem from a convex quadratic problem into an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. This paper introduces a novel approach using THRML (Thermodynamic HypergRaphical Model Library), a JAX-bas

We study U.S. Treasury yield curve forecasting under distributional uncertainty and recast forecasting as an operations research and managerial decision problem. Rather than minimizing average forecast error, the forecaster selects a decision rule that minimizes worst case expected loss over an ambi

Improvements in return forecast accuracy do not always lead to proportional improvements in portfolio decision quality, especially under realistic trading frictions and constraints. This paper adopts the Smart Predict–then–Optimize (SPO) paradigm for portfolio optimization in real markets, which exp

We revisit Gerber’s Informational Quality (IQ) framework, a data-driven approach for constructing correlation matrices from co-movement evidence, and address two obstacles that limit its use in portfolio optimization: guaranteeing positive semidefinite ness (PSD) and controlling spectral conditionin

DRL agents circumvent the issue of classic models in the sense that they do not make assumptions like the financial returns being normally distributed and are able to deal with any information like the ESG score if they are configured to gain a reward that makes an objective better. However, the per

Autodeleveraging (ADL) is a last-resort loss socialization mechanism for perpetual futures venues. It is triggered when solvency-preserving liquidations fail. Despite the dominance of perpetual futures in the crypto derivatives market, with over $60 trillion of volume in 2024, there has been no form