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How to Evaluate Trading Strategies: Single Agent Market Replay or Multiple Agent Interactive Simulation?

Author

Listed:
  • Tucker Hybinette Balch
  • Mahmoud Mahfouz
  • Joshua Lockhart
  • Maria Hybinette
  • David Byrd

Abstract

We show how a multi-agent simulator can support two important but distinct methods for assessing a trading strategy: Market Replay and Interactive Agent-Based Simulation (IABS). Our solution is important because each method offers strengths and weaknesses that expose or conceal flaws in the subject strategy. A key weakness of Market Replay is that the simulated market does not substantially adapt to or respond to the presence of the experimental strategy. IABS methods provide an artificial market for the experimental strategy using a population of background trading agents. Because the background agents attend to market conditions and current price as part of their strategy, the overall market is responsive to the presence of the experimental strategy. Even so, IABS methods have their own weaknesses, primarily that it is unclear if the market environment they provide is realistic. We describe our approach in detail, and illustrate its use in an example application: The evaluation of market impact for various size orders.

Suggested Citation

  • Tucker Hybinette Balch & Mahmoud Mahfouz & Joshua Lockhart & Maria Hybinette & David Byrd, 2019. "How to Evaluate Trading Strategies: Single Agent Market Replay or Multiple Agent Interactive Simulation?," Papers 1906.12010, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1906.12010
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Martin D. Gould & Mason A. Porter & Stacy Williams & Mark McDonald & Daniel J. Fenn & Sam D. Howison, 2010. "Limit Order Books," Papers 1012.0349, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2013.
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    5. Martin D. Gould & Mason A. Porter & Stacy Williams & Mark McDonald & Daniel J. Fenn & Sam D. Howison, 2013. "Limit order books," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(11), pages 1709-1742, November.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Andrea Coletta & Aymeric Moulin & Svitlana Vyetrenko & Tucker Balch, 2022. "Learning to simulate realistic limit order book markets from data as a World Agent," Papers 2210.09897, arXiv.org.
    2. Antonio Briola & Jeremy Turiel & Riccardo Marcaccioli & Alvaro Cauderan & Tomaso Aste, 2021. "Deep Reinforcement Learning for Active High Frequency Trading," Papers 2101.07107, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.
    3. Andrea Coletta & Joseph Jerome & Rahul Savani & Svitlana Vyetrenko, 2023. "Conditional Generators for Limit Order Book Environments: Explainability, Challenges, and Robustness," Papers 2306.12806, arXiv.org.
    4. Bruno Gašperov & Stjepan Begušić & Petra Posedel Šimović & Zvonko Kostanjčar, 2021. "Reinforcement Learning Approaches to Optimal Market Making," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(21), pages 1-22, October.
    5. Michael Karpe, 2020. "An overall view of key problems in algorithmic trading and recent progress," Papers 2006.05515, arXiv.org.
    6. Penghang Liu & Kshama Dwarakanath & Svitlana S Vyetrenko & Tucker Balch, 2022. "Limited or Biased: Modeling Sub-Rational Human Investors in Financial Markets," Papers 2210.08569, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    7. David Byrd, 2019. "Explaining Agent-Based Financial Market Simulation," Papers 1909.11650, arXiv.org.
    8. Joseph Jerome & Gregory Palmer & Rahul Savani, 2022. "Market Making with Scaled Beta Policies," Papers 2207.03352, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2022.
    9. Song Wei & Andrea Coletta & Svitlana Vyetrenko & Tucker Balch, 2023. "INTAGS: Interactive Agent-Guided Simulation," Papers 2309.01784, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    10. Selim Amrouni & Aymeric Moulin & Jared Vann & Svitlana Vyetrenko & Tucker Balch & Manuela Veloso, 2021. "ABIDES-Gym: Gym Environments for Multi-Agent Discrete Event Simulation and Application to Financial Markets," Papers 2110.14771, arXiv.org.
    11. Andrea Coletta & Matteo Prata & Michele Conti & Emanuele Mercanti & Novella Bartolini & Aymeric Moulin & Svitlana Vyetrenko & Tucker Balch, 2021. "Towards Realistic Market Simulations: a Generative Adversarial Networks Approach," Papers 2110.13287, arXiv.org.
    12. Nicolas Cofre & Magdalena Mosionek-Schweda, 2023. "A simulated electronic market with speculative behaviour and bubble formation," Papers 2311.12247, arXiv.org.
    13. Joseph Jerome & Leandro Sanchez-Betancourt & Rahul Savani & Martin Herdegen, 2022. "Model-based gym environments for limit order book trading," Papers 2209.07823, arXiv.org.

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