A Mellin transform approach to barrier option pricing

From Continuous to Discrete: Studies on Continuity Corrections and Monte Carlo Simulation with Applications to Barrier Options and American Options Menghui Cao This dissertation 1) shows continuity corrections for first passage probabilities of Brownian bridge and barrier joint probabilities, which are applied to the pricing of two-dimensional barrier and partial barrier options, and 2) introduces new variance reduction techniques and computational improvements to Monte Carlo methods for pricing American options. The joint distribution of Brownian motion and its first passage time has found applications in many areas, including sequential analysis, pricing of barrier options, and credit risk modeling. There are, however, no simple closed-form solutions for these joint probabilities in a discrete-time setting. Chapter 2 shows that, discrete two-dimensional barrier and partial barrier joint probabilities can be approximated by their continuous-time probabilities with remarkable accuracy after shifting the barrier away from the underlying by a factor of βσ √ ∆t. We achieve this through a uniform continuity correction theorem on the first passage probabilities for Brownian bridge, extending relevant results in Siegmund (1985a). The continuity corrections are applied to the pricing of two-dimensional barrier and partial barrier options, extending the results in Broadie, Glasserman & Kou (1997) on one-dimensional barrier options. One interesting aspect is that for type B partial barrier options, the barrier correction cannot be applied throughout one pricing formula, but only to some barrier values and leaving the other unchanged, the direction of correction may also vary within one

Most of the option pricing problems have nonsmooth payoff. In barrier options certain aspects of the option are triggered if the asset price becomes too high or too low. Standard smoothing schemes used to solve problems with nonsmooth payoff do not work well for the barrier option because a discontinuity is introduced in the time domain each time a barrier is applied. An improved smoothing strategy is introduced for smoothing the A ‐stable Cranck‐Nicolson scheme at each time when a barrier is applied. A partial differential equation (PDE) approach is utilized for the evaluation of complex option pricing models under stochastic volatility which brings major mathematical and computational challenges for estimation and stability of the estimates. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Pricing Continuously Monitored Barrier Options Under the Sabr Model: A Closed-Form Approximation

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of the Monte Carlo antithetic variate and control variate methods in pricing knock-out barrier options compared to the standard Monte Carlo method. The main problem in barrier option pricing is the high variance of estimates, which can reduce the accuracy and efficiency of results. The standard Monte Carlo method often requires a very large number of simulations to achieve stable results, which is computationally inefficient. To address this issue, this study employs variance reduction techniques, antithetic variate, and control variate. The findings indicate that both methods offer higher accuracy in price estimation compared to the standard Monte Carlo method. Further analysis reveals that the control variate method is more effective for pricing up and out barrier call options and down and out barrier call options, while the antithetic variate method excels in pricing up and out barrier put options and down and out barrier put options. This study underscores the importance of selecting the appropriate method according to the type of option involved to achieve accurate and efficient estimations.

Author index of volume 144

Pricing Bounds on Barrier Options

Implementation of the modified Monte Carlo simulation for evaluate the barrier option prices

In this article barrier options are analytically evaluated under the regime-switching model, with the volatility of the underlying price being allowed to jump between different states following a Markov chain. The target barrier option prices are expressed in a Fourier cosine series after a particular approximation formula is obtained. The accuracy and efficiency of the newly derived formula are demonstrated through numerical experiments, demonstrating the formula’s potential for practical applications. TOPICS:Analysis of individual factors/risk premia, factor-based models, options Key Findings • Barrier options are analytically evaluated under the regime-switching model. • This approximation formula is written in the form of a converged Fourier cosine series. • The formula is shown to be very accurate and efficient, and has a great potential to be applied in practice.

The pricing and static hedging of multi-step double barrier options

Barrier option pricing under the 2-hypergeometric stochastic volatility model

We discuss here an alternative interpretation of the familiar binomial lattice approach to option pricing, illustrating it with reference to pricing of barrier options, one- and two-sided, with fixed, moving or partial barriers, and also the pricing of American put options. It has often been observed that if one tries to price a barrier option using a binomial lattice, then one can find slow convergence to the true price unless care is taken over the placing of the grid points in the lattice; see, for example, the work of Boyle & Lau [2]. The placing of grid points is critical whether one uses a dynamic programming approach, or a Monte Carlo approach, and this can make it difficult to compute hedge ratios, for example. The problems arise from translating a crossing of the barrier for the continuous diffusion process into an event for the binomial approximation. In this article, we show that it is not necessary to make clever choices of the grid positioning, and by interpreting the nature of the binomial approximation appropriately, we are able to derive very quick and accurate pricings of barrier options. The interpretation we give here is applicable much more widely, and helps to smooth out the ‘odd-even’ ripples in the option price as a function of time-to-go which are a common feature of binomial lattice pricing.

A discontinuity is introduced each time a barrier is applied, and standard smoothing schemes do not work well when used to solve problems with non-smooth payoff. An improved smoothing strategy was introduced in [M. Yousuf, Efficient Smoothing of Crank–Nicolson Method for Pricing Barrier Options Under Stochastic Volatility, Published Online: Jul 10, 2008, DOI: 10.1002/pamm.200700249, 1081101–1081102.] for smoothing A-stable Cranck–Nicolson scheme at each time a barrier is applied. In the present work, we are extending the results to develop a fourth order smoothing scheme for pricing barrier options under stochastic volatility. Partial differential equation approach is utilized for the valuation of complex option pricing models under stochastic volatility which brings major mathematical and computational challenges for estimation of stability of the estimates. Efficient parallel version of the scheme is constructed using splitting technique. Convergence table and graphs are given to demonstrate the performance of the smoothing scheme.

Pricing Barrier Options and Credit Default Swaps (CDS) in Spectrally One-Sided Levy Models: The Parabolic Laplace Inversion Method

We consider the problem of pricing derivative securities which involve a barrier clause. We give general techniques to calculate, or estimate accurately, barrier option prices, using methods for estimating diffusion process boundary hitting times. The solution gives a simple, easy–to–use, method for calculating barrier option prices.

An accurate approximation to barrier option prices with discrete fixed-amount dividends: Nonlinear dynamics