Robust Risk-Aware Option Hedging
This addresses risk management in financial derivatives trading for quantitative finance practitioners, representing an incremental application of existing RL methods.
The paper tackles option hedging for barrier options using robust risk-aware reinforcement learning, showing that robust strategies outperform non-robust ones when the data generating process varies from training conditions.
The objectives of option hedging/trading extend beyond mere protection against downside risks, with a desire to seek gains also driving agent's strategies. In this study, we showcase the potential of robust risk-aware reinforcement learning (RL) in mitigating the risks associated with path-dependent financial derivatives. We accomplish this by leveraging a policy gradient approach that optimises robust risk-aware performance criteria. We specifically apply this methodology to the hedging of barrier options, and highlight how the optimal hedging strategy undergoes distortions as the agent moves from being risk-averse to risk-seeking. As well as how the agent robustifies their strategy. We further investigate the performance of the hedge when the data generating process (DGP) varies from the training DGP, and demonstrate that the robust strategies outperform the non-robust ones.