Deep Hedging with Reinforcement Learning: A Practical Framework for Option Risk Management

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Lucius, Travon, Koch Jr, Christian, Starling, Jacob, Zhu, Julia, Urena, Miguel, Hu, Carrie
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Lucius, Travon
Koch Jr, Christian
Starling, Jacob
Zhu, Julia
Urena, Miguel
Hu, Carrie
author_facet Lucius, Travon
Koch Jr, Christian
Starling, Jacob
Zhu, Julia
Urena, Miguel
Hu, Carrie
contents We present a reinforcement-learning (RL) framework for dynamic hedging of equity index option exposures under realistic transaction costs and position limits. We hedge a normalized option-implied equity exposure (one unit of underlying delta, offset via SPY) by trading the underlying index ETF, using the option surface and macro variables only as state information and not as a direct pricing engine. Building on the "deep hedging" paradigm of Buehler et al. (2019), we design a leak-free environment, a cost-aware reward function, and a lightweight stochastic actor-critic agent trained on daily end-of-day panel data constructed from SPX/SPY implied volatility term structure, skew, realized volatility, and macro rate context. On a fixed train/validation/test split, the learned policy improves risk-adjusted performance versus no-hedge, momentum, and volatility-targeting baselines (higher point-estimate Sharpe); only the GAE policy's test-sample Sharpe is statistically distinguishable from zero, although confidence intervals overlap with a long-SPY benchmark so we stop short of claiming formal dominance. Turnover remains controlled and the policy is robust to doubled transaction costs. The modular codebase, comprising a data pipeline, simulator, and training scripts, is engineered for extensibility to multi-asset overlays, alternative objectives (e.g., drawdown or CVaR), and intraday data. From a portfolio management perspective, the learned overlay is designed to sit on top of an existing SPX or SPY allocation, improving the portfolio's mean-variance trade-off with controlled turnover and drawdowns. We discuss practical implications for portfolio overlays and outline avenues for future work.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_12420
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep Hedging with Reinforcement Learning: A Practical Framework for Option Risk Management
Lucius, Travon
Koch Jr, Christian
Starling, Jacob
Zhu, Julia
Urena, Miguel
Hu, Carrie
Portfolio Management
Risk Management
We present a reinforcement-learning (RL) framework for dynamic hedging of equity index option exposures under realistic transaction costs and position limits. We hedge a normalized option-implied equity exposure (one unit of underlying delta, offset via SPY) by trading the underlying index ETF, using the option surface and macro variables only as state information and not as a direct pricing engine. Building on the "deep hedging" paradigm of Buehler et al. (2019), we design a leak-free environment, a cost-aware reward function, and a lightweight stochastic actor-critic agent trained on daily end-of-day panel data constructed from SPX/SPY implied volatility term structure, skew, realized volatility, and macro rate context. On a fixed train/validation/test split, the learned policy improves risk-adjusted performance versus no-hedge, momentum, and volatility-targeting baselines (higher point-estimate Sharpe); only the GAE policy's test-sample Sharpe is statistically distinguishable from zero, although confidence intervals overlap with a long-SPY benchmark so we stop short of claiming formal dominance. Turnover remains controlled and the policy is robust to doubled transaction costs. The modular codebase, comprising a data pipeline, simulator, and training scripts, is engineered for extensibility to multi-asset overlays, alternative objectives (e.g., drawdown or CVaR), and intraday data. From a portfolio management perspective, the learned overlay is designed to sit on top of an existing SPX or SPY allocation, improving the portfolio's mean-variance trade-off with controlled turnover and drawdowns. We discuss practical implications for portfolio overlays and outline avenues for future work.
title Deep Hedging with Reinforcement Learning: A Practical Framework for Option Risk Management
topic Portfolio Management
Risk Management
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.12420