Optimal impulse control of a portfolio with a fixed transaction cost

The aim of this work is to investigate a portfolio optimization problem in presence of fixed transaction costs. We consider an economy with two assets: one risky, modeled by a geometric Brownian motion, and one risk-free which grows at a certain fixed rate. The agent is fully described by his/her utility function and the objective is to maximize the expected utility from the liquidation of wealth at a terminal date. We deal with different forms of utility functions (power, logarithmic and exponential utility), describing in each case how the fixed transaction costs influence the agent’s behavior. We show when it is optimal to recalibrate his/her portfolio and which are the best adjusted portfolios. We also analyze how the optimal strategy is influenced by the risk-aversion, as well as other model parameters.