Approximately optimal trade execution strategies under fast mean-reversion

Abstract

In a fixed time horizon, appropriately executing a large amount of a particular asset -- meaning a considerable portion of the volume traded within this frame -- is challenging. Especially for illiquid or even highly liquid but also highly volatile ones, the role of "market quality" is quite relevant in properly designing execution strategies. Here, we model it by considering uncertain volatility and liquidity; hence, moments of high or low price impact and risk vary randomly throughout the trading period. We work under the central assumption: although there are these uncertain variations, we assume they occur in a fast mean-reverting fashion. We thus employ singular perturbation arguments to study approximations to the optimal strategies in this framework. By using high-frequency data, we provide estimation methods for our model in face of microstructure noise, as well as numerically assess all of our results.