Richard Bellman's Principle of Optimality, formulated in 1957, is the heart of dynamic programming, the mathematical discipline which studies the optimal solution of multi-period decision problems. In this paper, we look at the main trading principles of Jesse Livermore, the legendary stock...

In this paper, we present a novel penalty approach for the numerical solution of continuously controlled HJB equations and HJB obstacle problems. Our results include estimates of the penalisation error for a class of penalty terms, and we show that variations of Newton's method can be used to...

We consider a class of discrete time stochastic control problems motivated by some financial applications. We use a pathwise stochastic control approach to provide a dual formulation of the problem. This enables us to develop a numerical technique for obtaining an estimate of the value function...

This article combines various methods of analysis to draw a comprehensive picture of penalty approximations to the value, hedge ratio, and optimal exercise strategy of American options. While convergence of the penalised solution for sufficiently smooth obstacles is well established in the...

We present a simple and easy to implement method for the numerical solution of a rather general class of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations. In many cases, the considered problems have only a viscosity solution, to which, fortunately, many intuitive (e.g. finite difference based)...

In this paper, we demonstrate that policy iteration, introduced in the context of HJB equations in [Forsyth & Labahn, 2007], is an extremely simple generic algorithm for solving linear complementarity problems resulting from the finite difference and finite element approximation of American...

We combine forward investment performance processes and ambiguity averse portfolio selection. We introduce the notion of robust forward criteria which addresses the issues of ambiguity in model specification and in preferences and investment horizon specification. It describes the evolution of...

In quantitative finance, we often model asset prices as a noisy Ito semimartingale. As this model is not identifiable, approximating by a time-changed Levy process can be useful for generative modelling. We give a new estimate of the normalised volatility or time change in this model, which...

This paper presents the first empirical assessment of the causal relationship between social capital and health in Italy. The analysis draws on the 2000 wave of the Multipurpose Survey on Household conducted by the Italian Institute of Statistics on a representative sample of the population (n =...