hard · Market Microstructure

An Almgren-Chriss optimizer is calibrated for a trader with risk-aversion parameter lambda = 0.001 (in units of cost per share-squared). The optimizer determines that trading 500,000 shares over 5 days minimizes the sum of expected market impact and timing risk.

If the trader's risk aversion doubles to lambda = 0.002 while the stock's volatility and liquidity parameters remain unchanged, what is the most likely change to the optimal execution schedule?

  1. The trader slows execution, spreading shares over 10 days to reduce temporary market impact per period.
  2. The trader accelerates execution, concentrating more shares in earlier periods to reduce exposure to price-volatility risk, accepting higher temporary impact costs.
  3. The optimal schedule is unchanged because risk aversion affects the cost function's intercept, not the slope of the optimal trajectory.
  4. The trader switches to a TWAP schedule because the Almgren-Chriss framework no longer applies at higher risk aversion.

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