A new look at the Heston characteristic function

Properties of the American price function in the Heston-type models

We study some properties of the American option price in the stochastic volatility Heston model. We first prove that, if the payoff function is convex and satisfies some regularity assumptions, then the option value function is increasing with respect to the volatility variable. Then, we focus on the standard put option and we extend to the Heston model some well known results in the Black and Scholes world, most by using probabilistic techniques. In particular, we study the exercise boundary, we prove the strict convexity of the value function in the continuation region, we extend to this mod…

Variational formulation of American option prices in the Heston Model

We give an analytical characterization of the price function of an American option in Heston-type models. Our approach is based on variational inequalities and extends recent results of Daskalopoulos and Feehan (2011). We study the existence and uniqueness of a weak solution of the associated degenerate parabolic obstacle problem. Then, we use suitable estimates on the joint distribution of the log-price process and the volatility process in order to characterize the analytical weak solution as the solution to the optimal stopping problem. We also rely on semi-group techniques and on the affin…

A comparison principle between rough and non-rough Heston models - with applications to the volatility surface

We present a number of related comparison results, which allow to compare moment explosion times, moment generating functions and critical moments between rough and non-rough Heston models of stochastic volatility. All results are based on a comparison principle for certain non-linear Volterra integral equations. Our upper bound for the moment explosion time is different from the bound introduced by Gerhold, Gerstenecker and Pinter (2018) and tighter for typical parameter values. The results can be directly transferred to a comparison principle for the asymptotic slope of implied volatility be…

On refined volatility smile expansion in the Heston model

It is known that Heston's stochastic volatility model exhibits moment explosion, and that the critical moment $s_+$ can be obtained by solving (numerically) a simple equation. This yields a leading order expansion for the implied volatility at large strikes: $σ_{BS}( k,T)^{2}T\sim Ψ(s_+-1) \times k$ (Roger Lee's moment formula). Motivated by recent "tail-wing" refinements of this moment formula, we first derive a novel tail expansion for the Heston density, sharpening previous work of Dragulescu and Yakovenko [Quant. Finance 2, 6 (2002), 443--453], and then show the validity of a refined expan…

在Heston模型下高效重要性采样：短期到期和深度虚值期权

Efficient Importance Sampling under Heston Model: Short Maturity and Deep Out-of-the-Money Options

本文提出在Heston模型下针对短期到期和深度虚值期权的高效重要性采样方法，通过大偏差原理和特殊缩放策略实现渐近最优的方差减少。

Exact Simulation of Wishart Multidimensional Stochastic Volatility Model

In this article, we propose an exact simulation method of the Wishart multidimensional stochastic volatility (WMSV) model, which was recently introduced by Da Fonseca et al. \cite{DGT08}. Our method is based onanalysis of the conditional characteristic function of the log-price given volatility level. In particular, we found an explicit expression for the conditional characteristic function for the Heston model. We perform numerical experiments to demonstrate the performance and accuracy of our method. As a result of numerical experiments, it is shown that our new method is much faster and rel…