Optimal Execution in a Multiplayer Model of Transient Price Impact

Abstract

Trading algorithms that execute large orders are susceptible to exploitation by order anticipation strategies. This paper studies the influence of order anticipation strategies in a multi-investor model of optimal execution under transient price impact. Existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium is established under the assumption that trading incurs quadratic transaction costs. A closed-form representation of the Nash equilibrium is derived for exponential decay kernels. With this representation, it is shown that while order anticipation strategies raise the execution costs of a large order significantly, they typically do not cause price overshooting in the sense of Brunnermeier and Pedersen.