Spectral Decomposition of Option Prices in Fast Mean-Reverting Stochastic Volatility Models

Using spectral decomposition techniques and singular perturbation theory, we develop a systematic method to approximate the prices of a variety of options in a fast mean-reverting stochastic volatility setting. Four examples are provided in order to demonstrate the versatility of our method. These include: European options, up-and-out options, double-barrier knock-out options, and options which pay a rebate upon hitting a boundary. For European options, our method is shown to produce option price approximations which are equivalent to those developed in [5]. [5] Jean-Pierre Fouque, George Papanicolaou, and Sircar Ronnie. Derivatives in Financial Markets with Stochas- tic Volatility. Cambridge University Press, 2000

Closed forms for European options in a local volatility model

Because of its very general formulation, the local volatility model does not have an analytical solution for European options. In this article, we present a new methodology to derive closed form solutions for the price of any European options. The formula results from an asymptotic expansion, terms of which are Black-Scholes price and related Greeks. The accuracy of the formula depends on the payoff smoothness and it converges with very few terms.

Spectral methods for volatility derivatives

In the first quarter of 2006 Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) introduced, as one of the listed products, options on its implied volatility index (VIX). This created the challenge of developing a pricing framework that can simultaneously handle European options, forward-starts, options on the realized variance and options on the VIX. In this paper we propose a new approach to this problem using spectral methods. We use a regime switching model with jumps and local volatility defined in \cite{FXrev} and calibrate it to the European options on the S&P 500 for a broad range of strikes and maturities. The main idea of this paper is to "lift" (i.e. extend) the generator of the underlying process to keep track of the relevant path information, namely the realized variance. The lifted generator is too large a matrix to be diagonalized numerically. We overcome this difficulty by applying a new semi-analytic algorithm for block-diagonalization. This method enables us to evaluate numerically the joint distribution between the underlying stock price and the realized variance, which in turn gives us a way of pricing consistently European options, general accrued variance payoffs and forward-starting and VIX options.Comment: to appear in Quantitative Financ

Pricing of the European Options by Spectral Theory

We discuss the efficiency of the spectral method for computing the value of the European Call Options, which is based upon the Fourier series expansion. We propose a simple approach for computing accurate estimates. We consider the general case, in which the volatility is time dependent, but it is immediate extend our methodology at the case of constant volatility. The advantage to write the arbitrage price of the European Call Options as Fourier series, is matter of computation complexity. Infact, the methods used to evaluate options of this kind have a high value of computation complexity, furthermore, them have not the capacity to manage it. We can define, by an easy analytical relation, the computation complexity of the problem in the framework of general theory of the ”Function Analysis”, called The Spectral Theory.Options Pricing, Computation Complexity.

Options and Efficiency in Multiperiod Security Markets

We extend the result of Ross (1976) that European options generate complete markets from the single-period to a multiperiod setting. We find that multiperiod European options on a trading strategy generate dynamic completeness for every arbitrage-free price process, provided that the trading strategy has non-negative terminal dividends and separates states at the terminal date. Furthermore, we show that if the uncertainty and information structure in an economy are such that the number of immediate successors of every non-terminal event is non-decreasing over time, then multiperiod European options on a trading strategy generate dynamic completeness for almost every arbitrage-free price process under a significantly weaker condition on the trading strategy's terminal dividends. This condition requires the trading strategy to have non- negative terminal dividends and to separate states at the terminal date conditional on the information available at the previous date. Finally, we examine the minimum number of options generating dynamic completeness for almost every arbitrage-free price process.

Robust Hedging of Variance Swaps: Discrete Sampling & Co-maturing European Options

In the practice of quantitative finance, model risk has raised significant concern and thus model-independent hedging is of particular interest to both academia and industry. In this thesis, we review two methods of constructing robust and model-independent hedging portfolios of variance swaps. One of them assumes a continuum of European options trade but does not require the underlying asset's price path to be continuous. However, the other assumes finite number of options quoted but requires the continuity of underlying asset's price path. We explore numerically the hedging performance as well as upper and lower bounds of several numerical examples by implementing these two methods. Finally, we try to combine these two methods and use an example to show an idea of a possible approach of doing this