Option pricing
Smile dynamics
Traditionally, smile models have been assessed according to how well they fit market option prices across strikes and maturities. However, the pricing of most recent exotic structures, such as reverse cliquets or Napoleons, is more dependent on the…
Local cross-entropy
One way of addressing the inconsistency between exchange-traded options prices and the Black-Scholes model is to attempt to find alternative risk-neutral distributions that are more consistent. However, non-uniqueness means an additional criterion is…
Index volatility surface via moment-matching techniques
Peter Lee, Limin Wang and Abdelkerim Karim present a basket construction technique using Gram-Charlier-Edgeworth expansions. They show how to express basket option skews and smiles in terms of its underlying components, and demonstrate how market…
Switching off to save cash
High electricity price volatility over the European summer has raised awareness of interruptible power contracts, finds James Ockenden
To store or not to store
Natural Gas
Real option valuation and equity markets
Many non-financial assets can be viewed as ‘real options’ linked to some underlying variable such as a commodity price. Here, Thomas Dawson and Jennifer Considine show that the stock price of a well-known electricity generating company is significantly…
Enough’s enough
Brett Humphreys takes the guesswork out of determining how many simulations are needed to calculate value-at-risk
Why be backward?
Originally developed as a tool for calibrating smile models, so-called forward methods can also be used to price options and derive Greeks. Here, Peter Carr and Ali Hirsa apply the technique to the pricing of continuously exercisable American-style put…
Dealing with discrete dividends
Over the past year, we have published several papers on the issue of options on stocks with discrete dividends. At least three distinct models are used by practitioners, involving trade-offs between accuracy and tractability. Here, Remco Bos, Alexander…
Mean-reverting smiles
Commodity markets such as crude oil exhibit mean reversion as well as option smiles. The authors construct a model suitable for pricing exotic options in these markets
Exotic spectra
Eigenfunction expansions can also be applied to finance. The method is particularly suited to barrier and Asian options, with convergence properties that compare favourably with Monte Carlo.
The need for hybrid models
In response to the above article, the authors argue that pure firm-value approaches to default prediction are fundamentally flawed.?
Black-Scholes goes hypergeometric
Option pricing models
Hedge your Monte Carlo
Option pricing
Optional events and jumps
Masterclass – with JP Morgan