Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Publication
    Pricing European and American options under Heston's stochastic volatility model with accelerated explicit finite differencing methods
    (University College Dublin. School of Business. Centre for Financial Markets, 2010-06) ;
    We present an acceleration technique, effective for explicit finite difference schemes describing diffusive processes with nearly symmetric operators, called Super-Time- Stepping (STS). The technique is applied to the two-factor problem of option pricing under stochastic volatility. It is shown to significantly reduce the severity of the stability constraint known as the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy condition whilst retaining the simplicity of the chosen underlying explicit method. For European and American put options under Heston’s stochastic volatility model we demonstrate degrees of acceleration over standard explicit methods sufficient to achieve comparable, or superior, efficiencies to a benchmark implicit scheme. We conclude that STS is a powerful tool for the numerical pricing of options and propose them as the method-of-choice for exotic financial instruments in two and multi-factor models.
      568
  • Publication
    The Variance Gamma Self-Decomposable Process in Actuarial Modelling
    (University College Dublin. School of Business. Centre for Financial Markets, 2010-06-10) ;
    A scaled self-decomposable stochastic process put forward by Carr, Geman, Madan and Yor (2007) is used to model long term equity returns and options prices. This parsimonious model is compared to a number of other one-dimensional continuous time stochastic processes (models) that are commonly used in finance and the actuarial sciences. The comparisons are conducted along three dimensions: the models ability to fit monthly time series data on a number of different equity indices; the models ability to fit the tails of the times series and the models ability to calibrate to index option prices across strike price and maturities. The last criteria is becoming increasingly important given the popularity of capital gauranteed products that contain long term imbedded options that can be (at least partially) hedged by purchasing short term index options and rolling them over or purchasing longer term index options. Thus we test if the models can reproduce a typical implied volatility surface seen in the market.
      311
  • Publication
    A simple recursive numerical method for Bermudan option pricing under Lévy processes
    (University College Dublin. School of Business. Centre for Financial Markets, 2006-08)
    A numerical method is developed that can price options, including exotic options that can be priced recursively such as Bermudan options, when the underlying process is an exponential Lévy process with closed form conditional characteristic function. The numerical method is an extension of a recent quadrature option pricing method so that it can be applied with the use of fast Fourier transforms. Thus the method possesses desirable features of both transform and quadrature option pricing techniques since it can be applied for a very general set of underlying Lévy processes and can handle certain exotic features. To illustrate the method it is applied to European and Bermudan options for a log normal process, a jump diffusion process, a variance gamma process and a normal inverse Gaussian process.
      247
  • Publication
    Path dependent option pricing under Lévy processes applied to Bermudan options
    (University College Dublin. School of Business. Centre for Financial Markets, 2004-12)
    A model is developed that can price path dependent options when the underlying process is an exponential Lévy process with closed form conditional characteristic function. The model is an extension of a recent quadrature option pricing model so that it can be applied with the use of Fourier and Fast Fourier transforms. Thus the model possesses nice features of both Fourier and quadrature option pricing techniques since it can be applied for a very general set of underlying Lévy processes and can handle exotic path dependent features. The model is applied to European and Bermudan options for geometric Brownian motion, a jump-diffusion process, a variance gamma process and a normal inverse Gaussian process. However it must be noted that the model can also price other path dependent exotic options such as lookback and Asian options.
      644