Foundations of Reinforcement Learning with Applications in Finance

This course is taught in 3 modules - (1) Markov Processes and Planning Algorithms, including Approximate Dynamic Programming (3 weeks), (2) Financial Trading problems cast as Stochastic Control, from the fields of Portfolio Management, Derivatives Pricing/Hedging, Order-Book Trading (2 weeks), and (3) Reinforcement Learning Algorithms, including Monte-Carlo, Temporal-Difference, Batch RL, Policy Gradient (4 weeks). The final week will cover practical aspects of RL in the industry, including an industry guest speaker. The course emphasizes the theory of RL, modeling the practical nuances of these finance problems, and strengthening the understanding through plenty of programming exercises. No pre-requisite coursework expected, but a foundation in undergraduate Probability, basic familiarity with Finance, and Python programming skills are required.