4th Quarter (2024)

Vol. 22, No. 4, 2024 Robert A. Jarrow In the past 50 years, the Black Merton Scholes option pricing methodology has advanced in three directions: the mathematical foundations, modifying its assumptions, and applications to new derivatives. This lecture reviews the advances with respect to the mathematical foundations and the modifications of its assumptions. The key… Read more

Vol. 22, No. 4, 2024 Sanjay K. Nawalkha This paper offers a critical analysis of the normative theory of investment decisions as presented in Taleb’s The Black Swan. I find that the relentless pursuit of positive black swans can lead investors to overprice opportunities, potentially triggering financial bubbles and crashes in the medium to long… Read more

Vol. 22, No. 4, 2024 Dilip B. Madan and King Wang Machines are trained to trade stocks by developing an investment policy for stock investment in a Markovian context. Importantly, the investment actions impact just the immediate reward and not the state transitions. The policies are designed to maximize a nonlinear expectation of the undiscounted… Read more

Vol. 22, No. 4, 2024 Jacky Chen, Yu Fu, John Hull, Zissis Poulos, Zeyu Wang and Jun Yuan We examine the use of reinforcement learning (RL) to hedge barrier options. We find that, when the hedger’s objective is to minimize value at risk or conditional value at risk, RL is an attractive alternative to traditional… Read more