Stock Returns and Market Making with Inventory

Abstract

We study optimal trading strategy of a market maker with stock inventory. Following Avellaneda and Stoikov (2008), we assume the stock price follows a normal distribution. However, we take a constant expected rate of the stock return and assume that the stock volatility is an inverse function of the stock price level. We show that the optimal bid-ask spread of the market maker is wider for a higher expected rate of stock returns.