An analytic pricing formula for lookback options under stochastic volatility

In this work, an analytic pricing formula for floating strike lookback options under Heston’s stochastic volatility model is derived by means of the homotopy analysis method. The fixed strike lookback options can then be priced on the basis of the results of floating strike and the put–call parity relation for lookback options.     

Equivalence of floating and fixed strike Asian and lookback options

We prove a symmetry relationship between floating strike and fixed strike Asian options for assets driven by general Lévy processes using a change of numéraire and the characteristic triplet of the dual process. We apply the same technique to prove a similar relationship between floating strike and fixed strike lookback options.     

Two Exotic Lookback Options

This paper formally analyses two exotic options with lookback features, referred to as extreme spread lookback options and look‐barrier options, first introduced by Bermin. The holder of such options receives partial protection from large price movements in the underlying, but at roughly the cost of a plain vanilla contract. This is achieved by increasing the leverage through either floating the strike price (for the case of extreme spread options) or introducing a partial barrier window (for the case of look‐barrier options). We show how to statically replicate the prices of these hybrid exotic derivatives with more elementary European binary options and their images, using new methods first introduced by Buchen and Konstandatos. These methods allow considerable simplification in the analysis, leading to closed‐form representations in the Black–Scholes framework.     

A mathematical modeling for the lookback option with jump-diffusion using binomial tree method

The binomial tree method (BTM), first proposed by Cox et al. (1979) [4] in diffusion models and extended by Amin (1993) [9] to jump-diffusion models, is one of the most popular approaches to pricing options. In this paper, we present a binomial tree method for lookback options in jump-diffusion models and show its equivalence to certain explicit difference scheme. We also prove the existence and convergence of the optimal exercise boundary in the binomial tree approximation to American lookback options and give the terminal value of the genuine exercise boundary. Further, numerical simulations are performed to illustrate the theoretical results.     

CEV下有交易费用的回望期权的定价研究

本文在研究服从CEV过程且无交易费用的回望期权定价模型的基础上,推导出CEV下有交易费用的回望期权定价模型,并利用变量转换和二叉树方法求解,最终给出了CEV下有交易费用的回望期权的近似解。     

A Modified Binomial Tree Method for Currency Lookback Options

Abstract The binomial tree method is the most popular numerical approach to pricing options. However, for currency lookback options, this method is not consistent with the corresponding continuous models, which leads to slow speed of convergence. On the basis of the PDE approach, we develop a consistent numerical scheme called the modified binomial tree method. It possesses one order of accuracy and its efficiency is demonstrated by numerical experiments. The convergence proofs are also produced in terms of numerical analysis and the notion of viscosity solution. Supported by National Science Foundation of China (No. 19871062)     

Pricing and Hedging of Lookback Options in Hyper-exponential Jump Diffusion Models

ABSTRACT

In this article, we consider the problem of pricing lookback options in certain exponential Lévy market models. While in the classic Black-Scholes models the price of such options can be calculated in closed form, for more general asset price model, one typically has to rely on (rather time-intense) Monte-Carlo or partial (integro)-differential equation (P(I)DE) methods. However, for Lévy processes with double exponentially distributed jumps, the lookback option price can be expressed as one-dimensional Laplace transform (cf. Kou, S. G., Petrella, G., & Wang, H. (2005). Pricing path-dependent options with jump risk via Laplace transforms. The Kyoto Economic Review, 74(9), 1–23.). The key ingredient to derive this representation is the explicit availability of the first passage time distribution for this particular Lévy process, which is well-known also for the more general class of hyper-exponential jump diffusions (HEJDs). In fact, Jeannin and Pistorius (Jeannin, M., & Pistorius, M. (2010). A transform approach to calculate prices and Greeks of barrier options driven by a class of Lévy processes. Quntitative Finance, 10(6), 629–644.) were able to derive formulae for the Laplace transformed price of certain barrier options in market models described by HEJD processes. Here, we similarly derive the Laplace transforms of floating and fixed strike lookback option prices and propose a numerical inversion scheme, which allows, like Fourier inversion methods for European vanilla options, the calculation of lookback options with different strikes in one shot. Additionally, we give semi-analytical formulae for several Greeks of the option price and discuss a method of extending the proposed method to generalized hyper-exponential (as e.g. NIG or CGMY) models by fitting a suitable HEJD process. Finally, we illustrate the theoretical findings by some numerical experiments.     

Lattice Boltzmann methods for solving partial differential equations of exotic option pricing

This paper establishes a lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) with two amending functions for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) arising in Asian and lookback options pricing. The time evolution of stock prices can be regarded as the movement of randomizing particles in different directions, and the discrete scheme of LBM can be interpreted as the binomial models. With the Chapman-Enskog multi-scale expansion, the PDEs are recovered correctly from the continuous Boltzmann equation and the computational complexity is O(N), where N is the number of space nodes. Compared to the traditional LBM, the coefficients of equilibrium distribution and amending functions are taken as polynomials instead of constants. The stability of LBM is studied via numerical examples and numerical comparisons show that the LBM is as accurate as the existing numerical methods for pricing the exotic options and takes much less CPU time.     

Convergence of the binomial tree method for Asian options in jump-diffusion models

The binomial tree methods (BTM), first proposed by Cox, Ross and Rubinstein [J. Cox, S. Ross, M. Rubinstein, Option pricing: A simplified approach, J. Finan. Econ. 7 (1979) 229-264] in diffusion models and extended by Amin [K.I. Amin, Jump diffusion option valuation in discrete time, J. Finance 48 (1993) 1833-1863] to jump-diffusion models, is one of the most popular approaches to pricing options. In this paper, we present a binomial tree method for Asian options in jump-diffusion models and show its equivalence to certain explicit difference scheme. Employing numerical analysis and the notion of viscosity solution, we prove the uniform convergence of the binomial tree method for European-style and American-style Asian options.     

A note on the α-quantile option

Some properties of a class of path-dependent options based on the α-quantiles of Brownian motion are discussed. In particular, it is shown that such options are well behaved in relation to standard options and comparatively cheaper than an equivalent class of lookback options.     

Pricing of American lookback spread options

We find the closed form formula for the price of the perpetual American lookback spread option, whose payoff is the difference of the running maximum and minimum prices of a single asset. We solve an optimal stopping problem related to both maximum and minimum. We show that the spread option is equivalent to some fixed strike options on some domains, find the exact form of the optimal stopping region, and obtain the solution of the resulting partial differential equations. The value function is not differentiable. However, we prove the verification theorem due to the monotonicity of the maximum and minimum processes.     

DG method for the numerical pricing of two-asset European-style Asian options with fixed strike

The evaluation of option premium is a very delicate issue arising from the assumptions made under a financial market model, and pricing of a wide range of options is generally feasible only when numerical methods are involved. This paper is based on our recent research on numerical pricing of path-dependent multi-asset options and extends these results also to the case of Asian options with fixed strike. First, we recall the three-dimensional backward parabolic PDE describing the evolution of European-style Asian option contracts on two assets, whose payoff depends on the difference of the strike price and the average value of the basket of two underlying assets during the life of the option. Further, a suitable transformation of variables respecting this complex form of a payoff function reduces the problem to a two-dimensional equation belonging to the class of convection-diffusion problems and the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method is applied to it in order to utilize its solving potentials. The whole procedure is accompanied with theoretical results and differences to the floating strike case are discussed. Finally, reference numerical experiments on real market data illustrate comprehensive empirical findings on Asian options.     

Application of the Singularity-Separating Method to American Exotic Option Pricing

This paper is devoted to numerical methods for American barrier and lookback options, which are important examples of American exotic options. Since the singularity-separating method is adopted, accurate numerical results can be obtained very fast.     

Pricing Lookback Options with Knock‐out Boundaries

In the last decade, many kinds of exotic options have been traded and introduced in the financial market. This paper describes a new kind of exotic option, lookback options with knock‐out boundaries. These options are knock‐out options whose pay‐offs depend on the extrema of a given securities price over a certain period of time. Closed form expressions for the price of seven kinds of lookback options with knock‐out boundaries are obtained in this article. The numerical studies have also been presented.     

求解美式回望期权的有限元方法

期权作为一种金融衍生产品,在欧美国家一直很受欢迎.由于其规避风险的特性,期权也吸引了中国投资者的兴趣.基于市场的需求,2015年初,上海证券交易所推出了中国首批期权产品,期权定价问题的研究热潮正席卷全球.本文研究的美式回望期权,是一种路径相关的期权,其支付函数不仅依赖于标的资产的现值,也依赖其历史最值.分析回望期权的特点,不难发现:1)这类期权空间变量的变化范围为二维无界不规则区域,难以应用数值方法直接求解;2)最佳实施边界未知,使得该问题变得高度非线性.本文的主要工作就是解决这两个困难,得到回望期权和最佳实施边界的数值逼近结果.现有的处理问题1)的有效方法是采用标准变量替换、计价单位变换以及Landau变换将定价模型化为一个[0,1]区间上的非线性抛物问题,本文也将沿用这些技巧处理问题1).进一步,采用有限元方法离散简化后的定价模型,并论证了数值解的非负性,提出了利用Newton法求解离散化的非线性系统.最后,通过数值模拟,验证了本文所提算法的高效性和准确性.     

Pricing Asian options of discretely monitored geometric average in the regime‐switching model

This paper provides analytic pricing formulas of discretely monitored geometric Asian options under the regime‐switching model. We derive the joint Laplace transform of the discount factor, the log return of the underlying asset price at maturity, and the logarithm of the geometric mean of the asset price. Then using the change of measures and the inversion of the transform, the prices and deltas of a fixed‐strike and a floating‐strike geometric Asian option are obtained. As the numerical results, we calculate the price of a fixed‐strike and a floating‐strike discrete geometric Asian call option using our formulas and compare with the results of the Monte Carlo simulation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Matching asymptotics in path-dependent option pricing

The valuation of path-dependent options in finance creates many interesting mathematical challenges. Among them are a large Delta and Gamma near the expiry leading to a big error in pricing those exotic options as well as European vanilla options. Also, the higher order corrections of the asymptotic prices of the derivatives in some stochastic volatility models are difficult to be evaluated. In this paper we use the method of matched asymptotic expansions to obtain more practical values of lookback and barrier option prices near the expiry. Our results verify that matching asymptotics is a useful tool for PDE methods in path-dependent option pricing.     

Two Efficient Parameterized Boundaries for Veneers Asian Option Pricing PDE

In this paper, we derive two general parameterized boundaries of finite difference scheme for Ve?e???s PDE which is used to price both fixed and floating strike Asian options. Using these two boundaries, we can deal with all kinds of situations, especially, some extreme cases, like overhigh volatility, very small volatility, etc, under which the Asian option is usually mispriced in many existing numerical methods. Numerical results show that our boundaries are pretty efficient.     

Mathematical analysis of pricing of lookback performance options

Lookback N-time period performance options are proposed. Explicit risk-neutral probability density functions for extrema of N-time period return rates are obtained over the time interval [0, T ], T ≤? 2N. Pricing formulae at t = 0 for lookback performance options with logarithm return rate are derived. The pricing formulae for lookback performance options with gross return rate at t = 0 can be derived similarly. Put-call parity relations at t = 0 for these options follow from these pricing formulae. Applications of lookback performance options are also discussed.     

CEV过程下回望期权定价的高精度收敛差分算法

主要研究了CEV过程下一类回望期权的定价的数值解法问题.首先对期权价格所满足的微分方程中的空间变量进行半离散化处理,得到了具体的半离散化差分格式,然后证明了该差分格式具有稳定性和收敛性.数值试验表明本文算法是一个稳定收敛的算法.