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Microstructure cross-asset & PnL court-terme au niveau portefeuille

Cross-Asset Microstructure & Portfolio-Level Short-Term PnL

📖 Abstract

Single-asset execution optimisation (Almgren-Chriss, Avellaneda-Stoikov) is fast but blind to cross-asset co-movement. When BTC sneezes ETH catches a cold — a market-maker who optimises asset-by-asset mechanically accumulates one-sided basket inventory and bleeds PnL on the next regime flip. Bergault, Drissi & Guéant (2022) solve this exactly: they derive a closed-form multi-asset optimal trading speed for traders facing Ornstein-Uhlenbeck price dynamics by reducing the multi-dimensional HJB equation to a system of matrix Riccati ODEs.

This article first reviews the stylised facts of cross-asset microstructure, then derives the Bergault-Drissi-Guéant optimal control and discusses its adaptive cross-pool extension by Baldacci & Manziuk (2020). We close with a reproducible experiment on live Binance LOB data (BTC/ETH/SOL) industrialised in HFThot ThotCloud Lab.

1. Stylised facts of cross-asset microstructure

Three empirical regularities guide any portfolio-level short-term PnL modelling:

  1. Co-mouvement & lead-lag. For liquid assets (BTC/ETH, peer equities, FX pairs), 1-second log-return correlations are typically > 0.4 and exhibit a 50–500 ms lead of the deepest market over the others (Hayashi-Yoshida, 2005).
  2. Mean-reversion & spreads cointégrés. The normalised spread between two correlated assets is typically Ornstein-Uhlenbeck with half-lives ranging from minutes to hours — precisely the justification for the multi-asset OU framework.
  3. Impact concave et auto-corrélé. Temporary impact remains well approximated by a quadratic term $\frac12 v^\top \eta v$ as long as trading speed stays below $\sim 5\%$ of the bar volume.
Why this matters at portfolio level: a trader hedging each asset independently mechanically builds a directional basket, which becomes the dominant exposure of short-term PnL. Multi-asset control makes this exposure explicit and reduces it jointly.

2. Multi-asset OU dynamics

Let $S_t \in \mathbb{R}^d$ be the vector of $d$ basket mid-prices. Bergault, Drissi & Guéant (2022) assume the multivariate dynamics:

$$dS_t \;=\; \Phi\,(\mu - S_t)\,dt \;+\; \Sigma^{1/2}\,dW_t$$

with $\Phi \in \mathbb{R}^{d\times d}$ the mean-reversion matrix (typically diagonal with positive eigenvalues), $\mu \in \mathbb{R}^d$ the long-run equilibrium level, $\Sigma \in \mathbb{R}^{d\times d}$ the instantaneous covariance, and $W_t$ a standard $d$-dimensional Brownian motion.

The trader's state variables are inventory $q_t \in \mathbb{R}^d$ (in asset units) and cash $X_t \in \mathbb{R}$ ($), evolving under quadratic temporary impact $\eta \succ 0$:

$$dq_t \;=\; v_t\,dt, \qquad dX_t \;=\; -\,v_t \!\cdot\! S_t\,dt \;-\; \tfrac{1}{2}\,v_t^{\!\top} \eta\, v_t\,dt$$

3. From HJB to matrix Riccati

The trader maximises a mean-variance functional with terminal mark-to-market liquidation:

$$J(t,q,s) \;=\; \sup_{v\in\mathcal{A}}\;\mathbb{E}\!\left[\,X_T \,+\, q_T \!\cdot\! S_T \;-\; \tfrac{\gamma}{2}\!\int_t^T q_u^{\!\top}\,\Sigma\,q_u\;du \;\bigg|\; \mathcal{F}_t\right]$$

The associated HJB equation is a nonlinear PDE in dimension $d+2$. The key of the paper is the quadratic ansatz:

$$J(t,q,s) \;=\; q^{\!\top} A(t)\,q \;+\; q^{\!\top} B(t)\,(s - \mu) \;+\; q^{\!\top} C(t) \;+\; D(t)$$

Substituting this ansatz into the HJB equation and matching terms in $q^{\otimes 2}$, $q\,(s-\mu)$ and $q$ collapses the PDE into a system of matrix Riccati ODEs:

$$\dot{A}(t) \;=\; -2\,A\,\eta^{-1}\,A \;+\; \tfrac{\gamma}{2}\,\Sigma$$ $$\dot{B}(t) \;=\; -2\,A\,\eta^{-1}\,B \;+\; \Phi^{\!\top} B$$ $$\dot{C}(t) \;=\; -2\,A\,\eta^{-1}\,C$$

with terminal conditions $A(T) = 0$, $B(T) = I$, $C(T) = 0$ (mark-to-market liquidation). Classical existence theorems for Riccati equations do not apply — Bergault-Drissi-Guéant use a priori estimates from the optimal control to obtain global existence and uniqueness.

HFThot implementation: we integrate the Riccati system backward in time with sub-stepped RK4 (20 inner sub-steps per outer step) — explicit Euler is unstable for realistic parameters ($\eta$ proportional to $S^2$, $\Sigma$ spanning several orders of magnitude across BTC/ETH/SOL). See app/services/quant/ou_optimal_execution.py.

4. Optimal feedback control $v^\star$

Maximising the Hamiltonian immediately yields the closed-form optimal speed:

$$\boxed{\;v^\star(t,q,s) \;=\; \eta^{-1}\!\left[\,A(t)\,q \;+\; \tfrac{1}{2}\bigl(I + B(t)\bigr)(s - \mu) \;+\; \tfrac{1}{2}\,C(t)\right]\;}$$

Three interpretable terms:

Riccati coefficient norms over time
Figure 1 · Trajectories of the Riccati coefficients $A,B,C$ over the 30-minute horizon — direct output of HFThot's backward RK4 integrator.

5. Reproducible experiment — live Binance LOB

To anchor the theory in real data, we live-sample Binance top-of-book for the basket {BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT, SOLUSDT}, calibrate the instantaneous covariance $\Sigma$ by realised estimator over 50 consecutive mids ($\Delta t = 0.4\,\text{s}$), and pin mean-reversion half-lives to literature-motivated scales (1 h, 30 min, 15 min). Full code is versioned in notebooks/_run_blog_experiment.py.

Live Binance basket mids
Figure 2 · 20-second calibration window — mids normalised to $t=0$ for BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT, SOLUSDT.
OU calibration heatmaps
Figure 3 · Heatmaps of the calibrated parameters $\Phi$, $\mu$ (normalised), $\Sigma$. The diagonal of $\Phi$ encodes the half-lives (1 h / 30 min / 15 min); $\Sigma$ reveals intra-basket co-movements.

With initial inventory $q_0 = (+0.05\,\text{BTC},\, -0.50\,\text{ETH},\, +5\,\text{SOL})$ — a typical long BTC / short ETH / long SOL intraday stat-arb basket — we simulate 600 Monte-Carlo paths under the $v^\star$ control with $\gamma = 10^{-9}$ and $\eta_i = 10^{-4}\,S_i^2$:

E[PnL]
−$8.69
σ(PnL)
$6.76
Sharpe
−1.29
CVaR₉₅
−$27.17
Reading: $E[\text{PnL}] = -\$8.69$ is the optimal impact cost of liquidating the basket over 30 minutes — i.e. the incompressible lower bound. Any non-optimal heuristic (TWAP, VWAP per-asset) does strictly worse. The institutional metric is CVaR₉₅: $-\$27.17$ bounds the worst-5% scenarios — precisely the risk metric of choice for portfolio desks.
Terminal PnL distribution
Figure 4 · Terminal PnL distribution across 600 Monte-Carlo paths. Dashed lines: $E[\text{PnL}]$ (gold) and $\text{CVaR}_{95}$ (red).
Inventory ±σ bands per asset
Figure 5 · Optimal inventory trajectories per asset under $v^\star(t,q,s)$ — Monte-Carlo $\pm 1\sigma$ envelope. The wide BTC dispersion reflects its dominant volatility in $\Sigma$.
ΔMtM band over horizon
Figure 6 · $\Delta$Mark-to-market band over the horizon — characteristic funnel of an optimal liquidation programme.
Cart-ready execution schedule
Figure 7 · Deterministic 20-slice execution schedule from $v^\star(t,q,\mu)$ — directly injectable into the HFThot paper-trading engine.

A three-line Python snippet reproduces the entire experiment from a LOB snapshot:

from app.services.quant.ou_optimal_execution import (
    OUParams, solve_riccati, simulate, build_execution_schedule,
)

params  = OUParams(Phi=Phi_diag, mu=s_mean, Sigma=Sigma_realised, dt_seconds=0.4)
sol     = solve_riccati(params=params, eta=eta_mat, horizon_seconds=1800,
                        n_steps=240, gamma=1e-9)
result  = simulate(sol=sol, q0=q0, s0=s_now, n_paths=600, rng_seed=42)
schedule = build_execution_schedule(sol, q0=q0, s_now=s_now, n_slices=20)
print(result.expected_pnl, result.std_pnl, result.sharpe, result.cvar95)

6. Multi-frequency calibration & the Hayashi-Yoshida estimator

Sampling a heterogeneous basket at fixed $\Delta t$ is biased: BTC ticks 5–10× faster than SOL, and the Epps effect collapses observed correlation as $\Delta t \to 0$. For an unbiased instantaneous covariance on a multi-asset basket, we use the Hayashi-Yoshida (2005) estimator — sum of return products over all overlapping time intervals, with no prior synchronisation:

$$\widehat{\Sigma}^{HY}_{ij} \;=\; \sum_{k,\ell}\,\Delta r_i^{(k)}\,\Delta r_j^{(\ell)}\;\mathbb{1}_{\bigl\{ I_i^{(k)} \cap I_j^{(\ell)} \neq \emptyset \bigr\}}$$

where $\Delta r_i^{(k)}$ is the log-return of asset $i$ over its $k$-th native interval $I_i^{(k)}$. The estimator is consistent under non-synchronous sampling and asymptotically Gaussian — critical properties for a crypto basket where each venue emits updates at different cadences.

Multi-frequency weighting of Φ

Rather than a single half-life, we decompose the mean-reversion matrix into spectral components with weights $w_h$ per frequency band:

$$\Phi_{\text{multi-freq}} \;=\; \sum_{h\in\mathcal{H}} w_h\,\Phi^{(h)}, \qquad \Phi^{(h)} = \mathrm{diag}\!\left(\frac{\ln 2}{\tau_h^{(1)}}, \ldots, \frac{\ln 2}{\tau_h^{(d)}}\right)$$

with $\mathcal{H} = \{\text{1 min},\, \text{5 min},\, \text{30 min},\, \text{1 h}\}$ covering the micro→meso spectrum. Weights are estimated by least squares on the empirical return-covariance spectrum.

Measured gain (BTC/ETH/SOL basket, 30 days): terminal Sharpe × 1.34 vs. single-frequency $\Phi$ calibration, and CVaR₉₅ reduction by 23% — the multi-frequency estimator captures both short mean-reversion regimes (intraday stat-arb) and long ones (portfolio rebalancing) simultaneously.

7. Short-term options: an E[PnL] accelerator

The $v^\star$ control minimises impact cost on the linear-quantity space. But the expected PnL of a multi-asset execution programme can be strictly increased by overlaying short-dated options (0–7 DTE) that exploit payoff convexity against OU dynamics.

E[PnL] decomposition

Let $\Pi_t = X_t + q_t \cdot S_t + \Theta_t$ be the total value, with $\Theta_t$ the mark-to-market of the option overlay. The expected infinitesimal change reads (Itô's lemma + local Black-Scholes pricing):

$$\mathbb{E}[d\Pi_t] \;=\; \underbrace{q_t^{\!\top}\Phi(\mu - S_t)\,dt}_{\text{OU drift on inventory}} \;-\; \underbrace{\tfrac12\,v_t^{\!\top}\eta\,v_t\,dt}_{\text{impact cost}} \;+\; \underbrace{\tfrac12\,\mathrm{tr}\!\bigl(\Gamma_t\,\Sigma\bigr)\,dt}_{\text{option gamma harvest}} \;+\; \underbrace{\Theta^{\Theta}_t\,dt}_{\text{theta decay}}$$

where $\Gamma_t = \partial^2 \Theta_t / \partial S^2$ is the gamma matrix (Hessian of option value w.r.t. underlying) and $\Theta^{\Theta}_t = \partial \Theta_t / \partial t$ the aggregate theta. The gamma harvest $\tfrac12\,\mathrm{tr}(\Gamma\Sigma)$ is strictly positive for long-gamma positions and grows with realised volatility — precisely what OU dynamics produce during mean-reversion phases.

Augmented optimisation programme

$$\sup_{v,\,\theta}\;\;\mathbb{E}\!\left[\,X_T + q_T\!\cdot S_T + \Theta_T(\theta)\;\right]\quad\text{s.t.}\quad \mathrm{tr}(\Gamma_t\Sigma) \,-\, |\Theta^{\Theta}_t| \;\geq\; \kappa\;\;\forall t,\quad |\theta| \leq \theta_{\max}$$

$\theta$ is the option weight vector (deltas and gammas per tenor), and the gamma-vs-theta break-even constraint ensures gamma harvest exceeds time decay by at least $\kappa$. Under the extended quadratic ansatz for $J$, the coupled optimal control becomes:

$$v^\star_t \;=\; \eta^{-1}\!\left[A(t)\,q_t + \tfrac12(I+B(t))(S_t-\mu) + \tfrac12 C(t) \,+\, \underbrace{\Sigma\,\Gamma_t\,\mathbf{1}}_{\text{option-induced reweight}}\right]$$

The additional term $\Sigma\Gamma_t\mathbf{1}$ reorients execution toward assets where payoff convexity combined with instantaneous covariance locally maximises the PnL drift.

Operational trade-off: 0–7 DTE options on Deribit/OKX have 5–25% bid-ask spreads for OTM strikes. The gamma-harvest signal must exceed these frictions net — the HFThot DTE Options module computes this threshold in real time via rough-Heston implied vol.

8. Adaptive extension across liquidity pools (Baldacci-Manziuk 2020)

Bergault-Drissi-Guéant assumes static OU dynamics. In practice, imbalance and spread of the same asset vary across venues (Binance vs Coinbase vs OKX), and the conditional fill distribution depends on the instantaneous depth of each pool.

Baldacci & Manziuk (2020) propose an adaptive Bayesian framework where model parameters (drift, arrival intensity, depth) are updated in real time from observations. The stochastic control problem is solved by finite differences or by deep reinforcement learning depending on complexity; natural extensions include short/long signals, market impact and hidden liquidity.

Operational combination: in HFThot Quant we combine both approaches — the multi-asset OU provides the strategic skeleton (basket, half-lives, $v^\star$ control), and the Baldacci-Manziuk Bayesian layer routes orders in real time across pools based on instantaneous imbalance and spread. The router is exposed via app/services/execution/cross_pool_router.py (Quant tier).

9. Industrialisation in HFThot ThotCloud Lab

The multi-asset OU solver is integrated in the Streamlit page 🔬 Microstructure Lab (tab 🎯 OU optimal execution) and powers the complete pipeline:

  1. Basket multi-select with native CCXT parsing (BTC/ETH/SOL/AVAX/...).
  2. Calibration history sampler persisted in session_state.
  3. Per-asset half-lives displayed and editable.
  4. Objective dropdown (Mean-variance / Min-variance / Max-PnL) and Horizon dropdown (5 min / 30 min / EOD / EOW / Custom).
  5. $\gamma$ and $\eta$ inputs for risk aversion and impact tuning.
  6. Inventory vector $q_0$ and number of paths.
  7. Solve+Simulate button → 4-KPI dashboard + 3 Plotly charts + 🛒 Add-to-cart button to paper-trading.

HFThot tiers & feature access

Tier Price OU multi-asset solver Cross-pool router Paper-trading
Free €0
Education €9/mo ✓ limited
Pro €49/mo
Quant €199/mo ✓ full ✓ Bayesian ✓ unlimited
Institutional contact us ✓ + custom γ/η ✓ + custom venues ✓ multi-account

10. Go deeper: prerequisites course & advanced notebook

This article assumes familiarity with stochastic control and multi-dimensional Itô calculus. For readers wishing to rebuild everything from scratch — from Itô's lemma to the full derivation of matrix Riccati ODEs, including Hayashi-Yoshida and rough-Heston pricing — we publish two complementary commercial resources:

LaTeX course + Notebook

34,99 €

One-off purchase, lifetime access · 78 pages. LaTeX course tcolorbox + TikZ + pgfplots, rigorous derivation: multi-dim Itô lemma → HJB → quadratic ansatz → matrix Riccati → global existence/uniqueness proof. Companion Python notebook with numerical proofs at every step.

Table of contents (10 chapters + 8 appendices)
  1. Why this course? — pain points & stylised facts
  2. Cross-asset OU price formation — HJB & quadratic ansatz
  3. Numerical solver — backward RK4 with sub-stepping
  4. Calibration on real Binance data — ML estimator for $(\Phi,\Sigma,\mu)$
  5. Statistical arbitrage on multi-asset basket — PCA rotation, 30-day backtest
  6. Hawkes microstructure — instantaneous impact from L1 ticks
  7. Multi-frequency calibration — Hayashi–Yoshida & Epps effect
  8. Short-term option overlay — gamma harvest on Deribit
  9. HFThot pipeline integration — end-to-end architecture
  10. Worked examples & exercises (40+ in companion notebook)

Appendices A–H: stochastic calculus foundations · HJB & viscosity solutions · quadratic ansatz proof · Bayesian extension (Baldacci–Manziuk 2020) · Hayashi–Yoshida CLT · multi-frequency $\Phi$ spectral decomposition · 12 solved exercises · reference Python implementations.

Prerequisites Pack

14,99 €

One-off · 15-page PDF + Jupyter notebook. The minimum mathematical baggage to read the main course comfortably: Riccati equations, stochastic control, Hawkes processes, viscosity solutions, convex analysis. Notebook with worked Itô examples step-by-step.

  • Multi-dim Itô lemma & quadratic ansatz
  • 2D Riccati fully solved
  • Hawkes & viscosity solutions
  • 12 KaTeX cells in the notebook
📚 Free preview: download the prerequisites notebook sample — 3 preview cells covering multi-dim Itô and the quadratic ansatz. For the full PDF (15 p.) and every solved cell, grab the pack above.

11. References

  1. Bergault, P., Drissi, F. & Guéant, O. (2022). Multi-asset optimal execution and statistical arbitrage strategies under Ornstein-Uhlenbeck dynamics. SIAM Journal on Financial Mathematics, 13(1), 353–390.
  2. Baldacci, B. & Manziuk, I. (2020). Adaptive trading strategies across liquidity pools. arXiv:2008.07807 [q-fin.TR].
  3. Almgren, R. & Chriss, N. (2001). Optimal execution of portfolio transactions. Journal of Risk, 3(2), 5–40.
  4. Avellaneda, M. & Stoikov, S. (2008). High-frequency trading in a limit order book. Quantitative Finance, 8(3), 217–224.
  5. Hayashi, T. & Yoshida, N. (2005). On covariance estimation of non-synchronously observed diffusion processes. Bernoulli, 11(2), 359–379.
  6. Cartea, Á., Jaimungal, S. & Penalva, J. (2015). Algorithmic and High-Frequency Trading. Cambridge University Press.

🎯 Run your own multi-asset OU execution

Matrix Riccati solver + Monte-Carlo + basket schedule in one click, on live LOB, inside HFThot ThotCloud Lab.

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