Pricing exotic options using MSL-MC

Stochastic volatility (SV) models take a very important role in financial market, while there still exist some difficulties in estimating parameters in SV models. In this paper, a unified parameter estimation algorithm is proposed to estimate continuous-time SV model. Parameters in equity prices and volatilities stochastic processes are estimated separately after orthogonalization of Brownian motion in SV models. A closed-form of Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) and moment estimation results for four parameters in SV models are deducted. Five typical SV models are simulated to reveal the characteristics in empirical volatilities data. Parameter estimation results are presented to prove the convergence of estimation algorithm. We also compare our algorithm with Least Square (LS) estimations and numerical solutions of all the parameters in with MLE method, respectively. LS can only work in a specific form of SV models and the convergence speed is limited. Numerical solutions of the likelihood function with four parameters are unstable and can not converge to true values of all the parameters. Thus our algorithm works more efficiently than other methods.

Term Structure and Volatility: Lessons from the Eurodollar Markets

In this paper, we consider Asian options with counterparty risk under stochastic volatility models. We propose a simple way to construct stochastic volatility models through the market factor channel. In the proposed framework, we obtain an explicit pricing formula of Asian options with counterparty risk and illustrate the effects of systematic risk on Asian option prices. Specially, the U‐shaped and inverted U‐shaped curves appear when we keep the total risk of the underlying asset and the issuer's assets unchanged, respectively.

This thesis presents our study on using the hybrid stochastic-local volatility model for option pricing. Many researchers have demonstrated that stochastic volatility models cannot capture the whole volatility surface accurately, although the model parameters have been calibrated to replicate the market implied volatility data for near at-the-money strikes. On the other hand, the local volatility model can reproduce the implied volatility surface, whereas it does not consider the stochastic behaviour of the volatility. To combine the advantages of stochastic volatility (SV) and local volatility (LV) models, a class of stochastic-local volatility (SLV) models has been developed. The SLV model contains a stochastic volatility component represented by a volatility process and a local volatility component represented by a so-called leverage function. The leverage function can be roughly seen as a ratio between local volatility and conditional expectation of stochastic volatility. The difficulty of implementing the SLV model lies in the calibration of the leverage function. In the thesis, we first review the fundamental theories of stochastic differential equations and the classic option pricing models, and study the behaviour of the volatility in the context of FX market. We then introduce the SLV model and illustrate our implementation of the calibration and pricing procedure. We apply the SLV model to exotic option pricing in the FX market and compare pricing results of the SLV model with pure local volatility and pure stochastic volatility models. Numerical results show that the SLV model can match the implied volatility surface very well as well as improve the pricing performance for barrier options. In addition, we further discuss some extensions of the SLV project, such as parallelization potential for accelerating option pricing and pricing techniques for window barrier options. Although the SLV model we use in the thesis is not entirely new, we contribute to the research in the following aspects: 1) we investigate the hybrid volatility modeling thoroughly from theoretical backgrounds to practical implementations; 2) we resolve some critical issues in implementing the SLV model such as developing a fast and stable numerical method to derive the leverage function; and 3) we build a robust calibration and pricing platform under the SLV model, which can be extended for practical uses.

This thesis presents our study on using the hybrid stochastic-local volatility model for option pricing. Many researchers have demonstrated that stochastic volatility models cannot capture the whole volatility surface accurately, although the model parameters have been calibrated to replicate the market implied volatility data for near at-the-money strikes. On the other hand, the local volatility model can reproduce the implied volatility surface, whereas it does not consider the stochastic behaviour of the volatility. To combine the advantages of stochastic volatility (SV) and local volatility (LV) models, a class of stochastic-local volatility (SLV) models has been developed. The SLV model contains a stochastic volatility component represented by a volatility process and a local volatility component represented by a so-called leverage function. The leverage function can be roughly seen as a ratio between local volatility and conditional expectation of stochastic volatility. The difficulty of implementing the SLV model lies in the calibration of the leverage function. In the thesis, we first review the fundamental theories of stochastic differential equations and the classic option pricing models, and study the behaviour of the volatility in the context of FX market. We then introduce the SLV model and illustrate our implementation of the calibration and pricing procedure. We apply the SLV model to exotic option pricing in the FX market and compare pricing results of the SLV model with pure local volatility and pure stochastic volatility models. Numerical results show that the SLV model can match the implied volatility surface very well as well as improve the pricing performance for barrier options. In addition, we further discuss some extensions of the SLV project, such as parallelization potential for accelerating option pricing and pricing techniques for window barrier options. Although the SLV model we use in the thesis is not entirely new, we contribute to the research in the following aspects: 1) we investigate the hybrid volatility modeling thoroughly from theoretical backgrounds to practical implementations; 2) we resolve some critical issues in implementing the SLV model such as developing a fast and stable numerical method to derive the leverage function; and 3) we build a robust calibration and pricing platform under the SLV model, which can be extended for practical uses.

In this paper we consider the range of prices consistent with no arbitrage for European options in a general stochastic volatility model. We give conditions under which the infimum and the supremum of the possible option prices are equal to the intrinsic value of the option and to the current price of the stock, respectively, and show that these conditions are satisfied in most of the stochastic volatility models from the financial literature. We also discuss properties of Black–Scholes hedging strategies in stochastic volatility models where the volatility is bounded.

In this work we study the effects by including threshold, constant and time-dependent correlation in stochastic volatility (SV) models to capture the asymmetry relationship between stock returns and volatility. We develop SV models which include only time-dependent correlated innovations and both threshold and time-dependent correlation, respectively. It has been shown in literature that the SV model with only constant correlation does a better job of capturing asymmetry than threshold stochastic volatility (TSV) model. We show here that the SV model with time-dependent correlation performs better than the model with constant correlation on capturing asymmetry, and the comprehensive model with both threshold and time-dependently correlated innovations dominates models with pure threshold, constant and time-dependent correlation, and both threshold and constant correlation as well. In our comprehensive model, volatility and returns are time-dependently correlated, where the time-varying correlation is negative, and the volatility is more persistent, less volatile and higher following negative returns as expected. An empirical study is provided to illustrate our findings.

This article introduces a discrete‐time fractional stochastic volatility model (FSV) based on fractional Gaussian noise. The new model includes the standard stochastic volatility model as a special case and has the same limit as the fractional integrated stochastic volatility (FISV) model, which is the continuous‐time fractional Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process. A simulated maximum likelihood method, which maximizes the time‐domain log‐likelihood function calculated by the importance sampling technique, and a frequency‐domain quasi maximum likelihood method (or quasi Whittle) are employed to estimate the model parameters. Simulation studies suggest that, while both estimation methods can accurately estimate the model, the simulated maximum likelihood method outperforms the quasi Whittle method. As an illustration, we fit the FSV and FISV models with the proposed estimation techniques to the S&P 500 composite index over a sample period spanning 45 years.

In this paper, an additional factor is introduced into the Heston–Hull–White (HHW) hybrid model, which originally combines the Heston stochastic volatility model and the Hull–White stochastic interest rate model, to capture the correlation between the underlying price and the interest rate, while at the same time preserve the analytical tractability. With the analytical solution to the characteristic function of the underlying price being successfully derived, a closed‐form pricing formula for European options under the two‐factor HHW hybrid model is presented. Numerical experiments are also carried out to show the effect of the newly introduced factor. To further demonstrate the importance of introducing the correlation, we have also conducted an empirical study, comparing the performance of our model and that of the HHW model, based on European options written on S&P 500 index.

This paper introduces a general class of stochastic volatility models that can serve as a basis for modeling and estimating simultaneous equation systems involving multivariate volatility processes. The class consists of processes obtained as monotone polynomial transformations of so-called stochastic autoregressive volatility (SARV) models. The class permits a flexible modeling of volatility and avoids strong distributional assumptions. Most of the standard stochastic volatility models are incorporated in the framework, including the lognormal autoregressive model and stochastic volatility generalizations of GARCH and EGARCH. General conditions for strict statinarity, ergodicity, and the existence of finite lower-order unconditional moments for SARV are established. Closed-form expressions for the lowerorder moments constitute the basis for the proposed generalized method of moments estimation procedure. As an illustration we consider an informationdriven model of the return volatility–trading volume system for financial assets. Parameters with structural interpretation are estimated and an extended Kalmanfilter procedure allows for the construction of volatility forecasts based on the bivariate return-volume series. Empirical results are based on daily NYSE data for IBM over 1973–1991.

The stochastic volatility model usually incorporates asymmetric effects by introducing the negative correlation between the innovations in returns and volatility. In this paper, we propose a new asymmetric stochastic volatility model, based on the leverage and size effects. The model is a generalization of the exponential GARCH (EGARCH) model of Nelson (1991). We consider categories for asymmetric effects, which describes the difference among the asymmetric effect of the EGARCH model, the threshold effects indicator function of Glosten et al. (1992), and the negative correlation between the innovations in returns and volatility. The new model is estimated by the efficient importance sampling method of Liesenfeld and Richard (2003), and the finite sample properties of the estimator are investigated using numerical simulations. Four financial time series are used to estimate the alternative asymmetric stochastic volatility (SV) models, with empirical asymmetric effects found to be statistically significant in each case. The empirical results for S&P 500 and Yen/USD returns indicate that the leverage and size effects are significant, supporting the general model. For Tokyo stock price index (TOPIX) and USD/AUD returns, the size effect is insignificant, favoring the negative correlation between the innovations in returns and volatility. We also consider standardized t distribution for capturing the tail behavior. The results for Yen/USD returns show that the model is correctly specified, while the results for three other data sets suggest there is scope for improvement.

This paper studies a mean-variance investment-reinsurance problem under a new stochastic volatility model, namely the 4/2 stochastic volatility model. Solving this problem requires a deep understanding of a class of parabolic partial differential equations (PPDEs). By the parametrix method and the integral transform method, we derive explicit solutions to the PPDEs in several special cases. Through the Lie symmetry analysis, we obtain a four-parameter family of the 4/2 stochastic volatility models such that the corresponding PPDEs have closed-form solutions. The efficient strategy and the efficient frontier of the mean-variance problem are represented by using the closed-form solutions to PPDEs. Numerical examples for the obtained efficient frontier are provided by Monto Carlo method.

A New Class of Discrete-Time Stochastic Volatility Model with Correlated Errors

The conventional control variate method proposed by Kemna and Vorst for evaluating Asian options using the Black-Scholes model utilizes a constant control parameter.We generalize this method, applying it to a stochastic control process through the martingale representation of the conventional control. This generalized control variate has zero variance in the optimal case, whereas the conventional control can only reduce its variance by a finite factor. By means of option price approximations, the generalized control is reduced to a linear martingale control. It is straightforward to extend this martingale control to a non-linear situation such as the American Asian option problem. From the variance analysis of martingales, the performance of control variate methods depends on the distance between the approximate martingale and the optimal martingale. This measure becomes helpful for the design of control variate methods for complex problems such as Asian options using stochastic volatility models.We demonstrate multiple choices of controls and test them with Monte Carlo and quasi-Monte Carlo simulations. Quasi-Monte Carlo methods perform significantly better after adding a control when using the two-step control variate method, while the variance reduction ratios increase to 320 times for randomized quasi-Monte Carlo methods, compared with 60 times for Monte Carlo simulations with a control.

Equity-linked annuity pricing with cliquet-style guarantees in regime-switching and stochastic volatility models with jumps