Pairs Trading: An Optimal Selling Rule with Constraints

Ruyi Liu, Jingzhi Tie, Zhen Wu and Qing Zhang

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: The focus of this paper is on identifying the most effective selling strategy for pairs trading of stocks. In pairs trading, a long position is held in one stock while a short position is held in another. The goal is to determine the optimal time to sell the long position and repurchase the short position in order to close the pairs position. The paper presents an optimal pairs-trading selling rule with trading constraints. In particular, the underlying stock prices evolve according to a two dimensional geometric Brownian motion and the trading permission process is given in terms of a two-state {trading allowed, trading not allowed} Markov chain. It is shown that the optimal policy can be determined by a threshold curve which is obtained by solving the associated HJB equations (quasi-variational inequalities). A closed form solution is obtained. A verification theorem is provided. Numerical experiments are also reported to demonstrate the optimal policies and value functions.

Date: 2023-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.15300 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2307.15300

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().