Option pricing and hedging with execution costs and market impact

Abstract: This article considers the pricing and hedging of a call option when liquidity matters, that is, either for a large nominal or for an illiquid underlying asset. In practice, as opposed to the classical assumptions of a price-taking agent in a frictionless market, traders cannot be perfectly hedged because of execution costs and market impact. They indeed face a trade-off between hedging errors and costs that can be solved by using stochastic optimal control. Our modelling framework, which is inspired by the recent literature on optimal execution, makes it possible to account for both execution costs and the lasting market impact of trades. Prices are obtained through the indifference pricing approach. Numerical examples are provided, along with comparisons to standard methods.