Viable Insider Markets

TL;DR

This paper investigates the conditions under which an insider trading market with additional information flow remains viable, using advanced stochastic calculus tools to analyze the impact of information timing on market viability.

Contribution

It introduces a mathematical framework to determine market viability based on the insider's information flow and applies forward integrals, Hida-Malliavin calculus, and Donsker delta functionals to derive key results.

Findings

Market viability depends on the integrability of 1/ε_t over [0,T]

If ∫₀ᵗ 1/ε_t dt diverges, the insider market is not viable

The paper characterizes the impact of information timing on market viability

Abstract

We consider the problem of optimal inside portfolio $\pi(t)$ in a financial market with a corresponding wealth process $X(t)=X^{\pi}(t)$ modelled by \begin{align}\label{eq0.1} \begin{cases} dX(t)&=\pi(t)X(t)[\alpha(t)dt+\beta(t)dB(t)]; \quad t\in[0, T] X(0)&=x_0>0, \end{cases} \end{align} where $B(\cdot)$ is a Brownian motion. We assume that the insider at time $t$ has access to market information $\varepsilon_t>0$ units ahead of time, in addition to the history of the market up to time $t$. The problem is to find an insider portfolio $\pi^{*}$ which maximizes the expected logarithmic utility $J(\pi)$ of the terminal wealth, i.e. such that $$\sup_{\pi}J(\pi)= J(\pi^{*}), \text {where } J(\pi)= \mathbb{E}[\log(X^{\pi}(T))].$$ The insider market is called \emph{viable} if this value is finite. We study under what inside information flow $\mathbb{H}$ the insider market is viable or not. For example, assume that for all $t<T$ the insider knows the value of $B(t+\epsilon_t)$, where $t + \epsilon_t \geq T$ converges monotonically to $T$ from above as $t$ goes to $T$ from below. Then (assuming that the insider has a perfect memory) at time $t$ she has the inside information $\mathcal{H}_t$, consisting of the history $\mathcal{F}_t$ of $B(s); 0 \leq s \leq t$ plus all the values of Brownian motion in the interval $[t+\epsilon_t, \epsilon_0]$, i.e. we have the enlarged filtration \begin{equation}\label{eq0.2} \mathbb{H}=\{\mathcal{H}_t\}_{t\in[0.T]},\quad \mathcal{H}_t=\mathcal{F}_t\vee\sigma(B(t+\epsilon_t+r),0\leq r \leq \epsilon_0-t-\epsilon_t), \forall t\in [0,T]. \end{equation} Using forward integrals, Hida-Malliavin calculus and Donsker delta functionals we show that if $$\int_0^T\frac{1}{\varepsilon_t}dt=\infty,$$ then the insider market is not viable.