Pricing options and computing implied volatilities using neural networks

This paper proposes a data-driven approach, by means of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), to value financial options and to calculate implied volatilities with the aim of accelerating the corresponding numerical methods. With ANNs being universal function approximators, this method trains an optimized ANN on a data set generated by a sophisticated financial model, and runs the trained ANN as an agent of the original solver in a fast and efficient way. We test this approach on three different types of solvers, including the analytic solution for the Black-Scholes equation, the COS method for the Heston stochastic volatility model and Brent's iterative root-finding method for the calculation of implied volatilities. The numerical results show that the ANN solver can reduce the computing time significantly

Approximation with Random Bases: Pro et Contra

In this work we discuss the problem of selecting suitable approximators from families of parameterized elementary functions that are known to be dense in a Hilbert space of functions. We consider and analyze published procedures, both randomized and deterministic, for selecting elements from these families that have been shown to ensure the rate of convergence in $L_2$ norm of order $O(1/N)$, where $N$ is the number of elements. We show that both randomized and deterministic procedures are successful if additional information about the families of functions to be approximated is provided. In the absence of such additional information one may observe exponential growth of the number of terms needed to approximate the function and/or extreme sensitivity of the outcome of the approximation to parameters. Implications of our analysis for applications of neural networks in modeling and control are illustrated with examples.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0905.067

Theoretical Interpretations and Applications of Radial Basis Function Networks

Medical applications usually used Radial Basis Function Networks just as Artificial Neural Networks. However, RBFNs are Knowledge-Based Networks that can be interpreted in several way: Artificial Neural Networks, Regularization Networks, Support Vector Machines, Wavelet Networks, Fuzzy Controllers, Kernel Estimators, Instanced-Based Learners. A survey of their interpretations and of their corresponding learning algorithms is provided as well as a brief survey on dynamic learning algorithms. RBFNs' interpretations can suggest applications that are particularly interesting in medical domains

Universal Approximation of Markov Kernels by Shallow Stochastic Feedforward Networks

We establish upper bounds for the minimal number of hidden units for which a binary stochastic feedforward network with sigmoid activation probabilities and a single hidden layer is a universal approximator of Markov kernels. We show that each possible probabilistic assignment of the states of $n$ output units, given the states of $k\geq1$ input units, can be approximated arbitrarily well by a network with $2^{k-1}(2^{n-1}-1)$ hidden units.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure