  In the seminal paper on optimal execution of portfolio transactions, Almgren
and Chriss (2001) define the optimal trading strategy to liquidate a fixed
volume of a single security under price uncertainty. Yet there exist
situations, such as in the power market, in which the volume to be traded can
only be estimated and becomes more accurate when approaching a specified
delivery time. During the course of execution, a trader should then constantly
adapt their trading strategy to meet their fluctuating volume target. In this
paper, we develop a model that accounts for volume uncertainty and we show that
a risk-averse trader has benefit in delaying their trades. More precisely, we
argue that the optimal strategy is a trade-off between early and late trades in
order to balance risk associated with both price and volume. By incorporating a
risk term related to the volume to trade, the static optimal strategies
suggested by our model avoid the explosion in the algorithmic complexity
usually associated with dynamic programming solutions, all the while yielding
competitive performance.
