In this paper we analytically study the problem of pricing an arithmetically averaged Asian option in the path integral formalism. By a trick about the Dirac delta function, the measure of the path integral is defined by an effective action functional whose potential term is an exponential function. This path integral is evaluated by use of the Feynman-Kac theorem. After working out some auxiliary integrations involving Bessel and Whittaker functions, we arrive at the spectral expansion for the value of Asian options.
We derive a closed-form solution for the price of an average price as well as an average strike geometric Asian option, by making use of the path integral formulation. Our results are compared to a numerical Monte Carlo simulation. We also develop a pricing formula for an Asian option with a barrier on a control process, combining the method of images with a partitioning of the set of paths according to the average along the path. This formula is exact when the correlation is zero, and is approximate when the correlation increases.
In this paper we analyze American style of floating strike Asian call options belonging to the class of financial derivatives whose payoff diagram depends not only on the underlying asset price but also on the path average of underlying asset prices over some predetermined time interval. The mathematical model for the option price leads to a free boundary problem for a parabolic partial differential equation. Applying fixed domain transformation and transformation of variables we develop an efficient numerical algorithm based on a solution to a non-local parabolic partial differential equation…
We derive a series expansion by Hermite polynomials for the price of an arithmetic Asian option. This series requires the computation of moments and correlators of the underlying price process, but for a polynomial jump-diffusion, these are given in closed form, hence no numerical simulation is required to evaluate the series. This allows, for example, for the explicit computation of Greeks. The weight function defining the Hermite polynomials is a Gaussian density with scale $b$. We find that the rate of convergence for the series depends on $b$, for which we prove a lower bound to guarantee …
We derive a recursive formula for arithmetic Asian option prices with finite observation times in semimartingale models. The method is based on the relationship between the risk-neutral expectation of the quadratic variation of the return process and European option prices. The computation of arithmetic Asian option prices is straightforward whenever European option prices are available. Applications with numerical results under the Black-Scholes framework and the exponential Lévy model are proposed.
Conditional Asian options are recent market innovations, which offer cheaper and long-dated alternatives to regular Asian options. In contrast with payoffs from regular Asian options which are based on average asset prices, the payoffs from conditional Asian options are determined only by average prices above certain threshold. Due to the limited inclusion of prices, conditional Asian options further reduce the volatility in the payoffs than their regular counterparts and have been promoted in the market as viable hedging and risk management instruments for equity-linked life insurance product…
An analytic method for pricing American call options is provided; followed by an empirical method for pricing Asian call options. The methodology is the pricing theory presented in "A Modern Theory of Random Variation", by Patrick Muldowney, 2012.
In this paper we generalize and analyze the model for pricing American-style Asian options due to (Hansen and Jorgensen 2000) by including a continuous dividend rate $q$ and a general method of averaging of the floating strike. We focus on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the early exercise boundary. The first order Taylor series expansion of the early exercise boundary close to expiry is constructed. We furthermore propose an efficient numerical algorithm for determining the early exercise boundary position based on the front fixing method. Construction of the algorithm is based o…
The aim of this paper is to evaluate geometric Asian option by a mixed fractional subdiffusive Black-Scholes model. We derive a pricing formula for geometric Asian option when the underlying stock follows a time changed mixed fractional Brownian motion. We then apply the results to price Asian power options on the stocks that pay constant dividends when the payoff is a power function. Finally, lower bound of Asian options and some special cases are provided.
We present a rigorous study of the short maturity asymptotics for Asian options with continuous-time averaging, under the assumption that the underlying asset follows the Constant Elasticity of Variance (CEV) model. We present an analytical approximation for the Asian options prices which has the appropriate short maturity asymptotics, and demonstrate good numerical agreement of the asymptotic results with the results of Monte Carlo simulations and benchmark test cases for option parameters relevant in practical applications.
We propose analytical approximations for the sensitivities (Greeks) of the Asian options in the Black-Scholes model, following from a small maturity/volatility approximation for the option prices which has the exact short maturity limit, obtained using large deviations theory. Numerical tests demonstrate good agreement of the proposed approximation with alternative numerical simulation results for cases of practical interest. We also study the qualitative properties of Asian Greeks, including new results for Rho, the sensitivity with respect to changes in the risk-free rate, and Psi, the sensi…
In this paper we present some results on Geometric Asian option valuation for affine stochastic volatility models with jumps. We shall provide a general framework into which several different valuation problems based on some average process can be cast, and we shall obtain close-form solutions for some relevant affine model classes.
We present a rigorous study of the short maturity asymptotics for Asian options with continuous-time averaging, under the assumption that the underlying asset follows a local volatility model. The asymptotics for out-of-the-money, in-the-money, and at-the-money cases are derived, considering both fixed strike and floating strike Asian options. The asymptotics for the out-of-the-money case involves a non-trivial variational problem which is solved completely. We present an analytical approximation for Asian options prices, and demonstrate good numerical agreement of the asymptotic results with …
In this paper we derive a series expansion for the price of a continuously sampled arithmetic Asian option in the Black-Scholes setting. The expansion is based on polynomials that are orthogonal with respect to the log-normal distribution. All terms in the series are fully explicit and no numerical integration nor any special functions are involved. We provide sufficient conditions to guarantee convergence of the series. The moment indeterminacy of the log-normal distribution introduces an asymptotic bias in the series, however we show numerically that the bias can safely be ignored in practic…
Contrary to the common view that exact pricing is prohibitive owing to the curse of dimensionality, this study proposes an efficient and unified method for pricing options under multivariate Black-Scholes-Merton (BSM) models, such as the basket, spread, and Asian options. The option price is expressed as a quadrature integration of analytic multi-asset BSM prices under a single Brownian motion. Then the state space is rotated in such a way that the quadrature requires much coarser nodes than it would otherwise or low varying dimensions are reduced. The accuracy and efficiency of the method is …
This paper studies the pricing of European-style Asian options when the price dynamics of the underlying risky asset are assumed to follow a Markov- modulated geometric Brownian motion; that is, the appreciation rate and the volatility of the underlying risky asset depend on unobservable states of the economy described by a continuous-time hidden Markov process. We derive the exact, explicit and closed-form solutions for European-style Asian options in a two-state regime switching model.
In the context of dealing with financial risk management problems it is desirable to have accurate bounds for option prices in situations when pricing formulae do not exist in the closed form. A unified approach for obtaining upper and lower bounds for Asian-type options, including options on VWAP, is proposed in this paper. The bounds obtained are applicable to the continuous and discrete-time frameworks for the case of time-dependent interest rates. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the accuracy of the bounds.
We discuss a semi-analytical method for solving SABR-type equations based on path integrals. In this approach, one set of variables is integrated analytically while the second set is integrated numerically via Monte-Carlo. This method, known in the literature as Conditional Monte-Carlo, leads to compact expressions functional on three correlated stochastic variables. The methodology is practical and efficient when solving Vanilla pricing in the SABR, Heston and Bates models with time depending parameters. Further, it can also be practically applied to pricing Asian options in the $β=0$ SABR mo…
The discrete sum of geometric Brownian motions plays an important role in modeling stochastic annuities in insurance. It also plays a pivotal role in the pricing of Asian options in mathematical finance. In this paper, we study the probability distributions of the infinite sum of geometric Brownian motions, the sum of geometric Brownian motions with geometric stopping time, and the finite sum of the geometric Brownian motions. These results are extended to the discrete sum of the exponential Lévy process. We derive tail asymptotics and compute numerically the asymptotic distribution function. …
In this paper, we study the asymptotic behavior of Asian option prices in the worst case scenario under an uncertain volatility model. We give a procedure to approximate the Asian option prices with a small volatility interval. By imposing additional conditions on the boundary condition and cutting the obtained Black-Scholes-Barenblatt equation into two Black-Scholes-like equations, we obtain an approximation method to solve the fully nonlinear PDE.
Barrieu, Rouault, and Yor [J. Appl. Probab. 41 (2004)] determined asymptotics for the logarithm of the distribution function of the Hartman-Watson distribution. We determine the asymptotics of the density. This refinement can be applied to the pricing of Asian options in the Black-Scholes model.
The mixed fractional Brownian motion ($mfBm$) has become quite popular in finance, since it allows one to model long-range dependence and self-similarity while remaining, for certain values of the Hurst parameter, arbitrage-free. In the present paper, we propose approximate closed-form solutions for pricing arithmetic Asian options on an underlying described by the $mfBm$. Specifically, we consider both arithmetic Asian options and arithmetic Asian power options, and we obtain analytical formulas for pricing them based on a convenient approximation of the strike price. Both the standard $mfBm$…
We study the short maturity asymptotics for prices of forward start Asian options under the assumption that the underlying asset follows a local volatility model. We obtain asymptotics for the cases of out-of-the-money, in-the-money, and at-the-money, considering both fixed strike and floating Asian options. The exponential decay of the price of an out-of-the-money forward start Asian option is handled using large deviations theory, and is controlled by a rate function which is given by a double-layer optimization problem. In the Black-Scholes model, the calculation of the rate function is sim…
Completeness of the eigenfunctions of a quantum mechanical system is crucial for its probability interpretation. By using the method of contour integral we give properly normalized eigenfunctions for both discrete and continuum spectrum of the Morse potential, and explicitly prove the completeness relation. As an application we use our spectral decomposition formula to study the problem of the pricing of an Asian option traded in financial markets.
The purpose of this note is to describe, in terms of a power series, the distribution function of the exponential functional, taken at some independent exponential time, of a spectrally negative Lévy process ξwith unbounded variation. We also derive a Geman-Yor type formula for Asian options prices in a financial market driven by e^ξ.
Cai, Song and Kou (2015) [Cai, N., Y. Song, S. Kou (2015) A general framework for pricing Asian options under Markov processes. Oper. Res. 63(3): 540-554] made a breakthrough by proposing a general framework for pricing both discretely and continuously monitored Asian options under one-dimensional Markov processes. In this note, under the setting of continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC), we explicitly carry out the inverse Z-transform and the inverse Laplace transform respectively for the discretely and the continuously monitored cases. The resulting explicit single Laplace transforms improve th…
We characterize the price of an Asian option, a financial contract, as a fixed-point of a non-linear operator. In recent years, there has been interest in incorporating changes of regime into the parameters describing the evolution of the underlying asset price, namely the interest rate and the volatility, to model sudden exogenous events in the economy. Asian options are particularly interesting because the payoff depends on the integrated asset price. We study the case of both floating- and fixed-strike Asian call options with arithmetic averaging when the asset follows a regime-switching ge…
The time average of geometric Brownian motion plays a crucial role in the pricing of Asian options in mathematical finance. In this paper we consider the asymptotics of the discrete-time average of a geometric Brownian motion sampled on uniformly spaced times in the limit of a very large number of averaging time steps. We derive almost sure limit, fluctuations, large deviations, and also the asymptotics of the moment generating function of the average. Based on these results, we derive the asymptotics for the price of Asian options with discrete-time averaging in the Black-Scholes model, with …
The 1993 Laplace transform approach of Geman and Yor is a celebrated advance in valuing Asian options. Its insights are fundamental from both a mathematical and a financial perspective. In this paper, we discuss two observations regarding the financial relevance of its results. First, we show that the Geman and Yor Laplace transform is not that of an Asian option price, as reported in Geman and Yor and other papers. We nonetheless show how the Geman and Yor Laplace transform can be used to obtain the price of an Asian option. Second, we find that following Geman and Yor these Laplace transfoms…
The distribution of a time integral of geometric Brownian motion is not well understood. To price an Asian option and to obtain measures of its dependence on the parameters of time, strike price, and underlying market price, it is essential to have the distribution of time integral of geometric Brownian motion and it is also required to have a way to manipulate its distribution. We present integral forms for key quantities in the price of Asian option and its derivatives ({\it{delta, gamma,theta, and vega}}). For example for any $a>0$ $\mathbb{E} [ (A_t -a)^+] = t -a + a^{2} \mathbb{E} [ (a+A_…
In this article we present new results for the pricing of arithmetic Asian options within a Black-Scholes context. To derive these results we make extensive use of the local scale invariance that exists in the theory of contingent claim pricing. This allows us to derive, in a natural way, a simple PDE for the price of arithmetic Asians options. In the case of European average strike options, a proper choice of numeraire reduces the dimension of this PDE to one, leading to a PDE similar to the one derived by Rogers and Shi. We solve this PDE, finding a Laplace-transform representation for the p…
In this paper the Buchen's pricing formulae of (higher order) asset and bond binary options are incorporated into the pricing formula of power binary options and a pricing formula of "the normal distribution standard options" with the maturity payoff related to a power function and the density function of normal distribution is derived. And as their applications, pricing formulae of savings plans that provide a choice of indexing and discrete geometric average Asian options are derived and the fact that the price of discrete geometric average Asian option converges to the price of continuous g…
This paper focuses on the pricing of continuous geometric Asian options (GAOs) under a multifactor stochastic volatility model. The model considers fast and slow mean reverting factors of volatility, where slow volatility factor is approximated by a quadratic arc. The asymptotic expansion of the price function is assumed, and the first order price approximation is derived using the perturbation techniques for both floating and fixed strike GAOs. Much simplified pricing formulae for the GAOs are obtained in this multifactor stochastic volatility framework. The zeroth order term in the price app…
We consider the problem of finding model-independent bounds on the price of an Asian option, when the call prices at the maturity date of the option are known. Our methods differ from most approaches to model-independent pricing in that we consider the problem as a dynamic programming problem, where the controlled process is the conditional distribution of the asset at the maturity date. By formulating the problem in this manner, we are able to determine the model-independent price through a PDE formulation. Notably, this approach does not require specific constraints on the payoff function (e…
In a recent significant advance, using Laguerre series, the valuation of Asian options has been reduced by Dufresne to computing the negative moments of Yor's accumulation processes. For these he has given functional recursion rules whose probabilistic structure has been the object of intensive recent studies of Yor and co-workers. Stressing the role of Theta functions, this paper now solves these recursion rules and expresses these negative moments as linear combinations of certain Theta integrals. Using the Jacobi transformation formula, very rapidly and very stably convergent series for the…
This paper is motivated by questions about averages of stochastic processes which originate in mathematical finance, originally in connection with valuing the so-called Asian options. Starting with research of Yor's in 1992, these questions about exponential functionals of Brownian motion have been studied in terms of Bessel processes using Yor's 1980 Hartman-Watson theory. Consequences of this approach for valuing Asian options proper have been spelled out by Geman and Yor in 1993 whose Laplace transform results were in fact regarded as a noted advance. Unfortunately, a number of difficulties…
Averaging problems are ubiquitous in Finance with the valuation of the so-called Asian options on arithmetic averages as their most conspicuous form. There is an abundance of numerical work on them, and their stochastic structure has been extensively studied by Yor and his school. However, the analytical structure of these problems is largely unstudied. Our philosophy now is that such valuation problems should be considered as an extension of the theory of special functions: they lead to new problems about new classes of special functions which should be studied in terms of and using of the me…
In this article we consider the problem of pricing and hedging high-dimensional Asian basket options by Quasi-Monte Carlo simulation. We assume a Black-Scholes market with time-dependent volatilities and show how to compute the deltas by the aid of the Malliavin Calculus, extending the procedure employed by Montero and Kohatsu-Higa (2003). Efficient path-generation algorithms, such as Linear Transformation and Principal Component Analysis, exhibit a high computational cost in a market with time-dependent volatilities. We present a new and fast Cholesky algorithm for block matrices that makes t…
This paper proposes the sample path generation method for the stochastic volatility version of CGMY process. We present the Monte-Carlo method for European and American option pricing with the sample path generation and calibrate model parameters to the American style S\&P 100 index options market, using the least square regression method. Moreover, we discuss path-dependent options such as Asian and Barrier options.
We introduce signature payoffs, a family of path-dependent derivatives that are given in terms of the signature of the price path of the underlying asset. We show that these derivatives are dense in the space of continuous payoffs, a result that is exploited to quickly price arbitrary continuous payoffs. This approach to pricing derivatives is then tested with European options, American options, Asian options, lookback options and variance swaps. As we show, signature payoffs can be used to price these derivatives with very high accuracy.
The paper introduces a limit version of multiple stopping options such that the holder selects dynamically a weight function that control the distribution of the payments (benefits) over time. In applications for commodities and energy trading, a control process can represent the quantity that can be purchased by a fixed price at current time. In another example, the control represents the weight of the integral in a modification of the Asian option. The pricing for these options requires to solve a stochastic control problem. Some existence results and pricing rules are obtained via modificat…
The Istanbul options were first introduced by Michel Jacques in 1997. These derivatives are considered as an extension of the Asian options. In this paper, we propose an analytical approximation formula for a geometric Istanbul call option (GIC) under the Black-Scholes model. Our approximate pricing formula is obtained in closed-form using a second-order Taylor expansion. We compare our theoretical results with those of Monte-Carlo simulations using the control variates method. Finally, we study the effects of changes in the price of the underlying asset on the value of GIC.
In this paper we reformulate the problem of pricing options in a quantum setting. Our proposed algorithm involves preparing an initial state, representing the option price, and then evolving it using existing imaginary time simulation algorithms. This way of pricing options boils down to mapping an initial option price to a quantum state and then simulating the time dependence in Wick's imaginary time space. We numerically verify our algorithm for European options using a particular imaginary time evolution algorithm as proof of concept and show how it can be extended to path dependent options…
In this paper I develop a new computational method for pricing path dependent options. Using the path integral representation of the option price, I show that in general it is possible to perform analytically a partial averaging over the underlying risk-neutral diffusion process. This result greatly eases the computational burden placed on the subsequent numerical evaluation. For short-medium term options it leads to a general approximation formula that only requires the evaluation of a one dimensional integral. I illustrate the application of the method to Asian options and occupation time de…
In this paper we present a new multi-asset pricing model, which is built upon newly developed families of solvable multi-parameter single-asset diffusions with a nonlinear smile-shaped volatility and an affine drift. Our multi-asset pricing model arises by employing copula methods. In particular, all discounted single-asset price processes are modeled as martingale diffusions under a risk-neutral measure. The price processes are so-called UOU diffusions and they are each generated by combining a variable (Ito) transformation with a measure change performed on an underlying Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (…
In the framework of Black-Scholes-Merton model of financial derivatives, a path integral approach to option pricing is presented. A general formula to price European path dependent options on multidimensional assets is obtained and implemented by means of various flexible and efficient algorithms. As an example, we detail the cases of Asian, barrier knock out, reverse cliquet and basket call options, evaluating prices and Greeks. The numerical results are compared with those obtained with other procedures used in quantitative finance and found to be in good agreement. In particular, when prici…
In this paper, we extend the first-order asymptotics analysis of Fouque et al. to general path-dependent financial derivatives using Dupire's functional Ito calculus. The main conclusion is that the market group parameters calibrated to vanilla options can be used to price to the same order exotic, path-dependent derivatives as well. Under general conditions, the first-order condition is represented by a conditional expectation that could be numerically evaluated. Moreover, if the path-dependence is not too severe, we are able to find path-dependent closed-form solutions equivalent to the fist…
In this paper, we are concerned with the valuation of Catastrophic Mortality Bonds and, in particular, we examine the case of the Swiss Re Mortality Bond 2003 as a primary example of this class of assets. This bond was the first Catastrophic Mortality Bond to be launched in the market and encapsulates the behaviour of a well-defined mortality index to generate payoffs for bondholders. Pricing these type of bonds is a challenging task and no closed form solution exists in the literature. In our approach, we express the payoff of such a bond in terms of the payoff of an Asian put option and pres…
Since Hobson's seminal paper [D. Hobson: Robust hedging of the lookback option. In: Finance Stoch. (1998)] the connection between model-independent pricing and the Skorokhod embedding problem has been a driving force in robust finance. We establish a general pricing-hedging duality for financial derivatives which are susceptible to the Skorokhod approach. Using Vovk's approach to mathematical finance we derive a model-independent super-replication theorem in continuous time, given information on finitely many marginals. Our result covers a broad range of exotic derivatives, including lookback …
