Certain exotic options cannot be valued using closed-form solutions or even by numerical methods assuming constant volatility. Many exotics are priced in a local volatility framework. Pricing under local volatility has become a field of extensive research in finance, and various models are...

The valuation of options and many other derivative instruments requires an estimation of exante or forward looking volatility. This paper adopts a Bayesian approach to estimate stock price volatility. We find evidence that overall Bayesian volatility estimates more closely approximate the...

We address a number of technical problems with the popular Practitioner Black-Scholes (PBS) method for valuing options. The method amounts to a two-stage procedure in which fitted values of implied volatilities (IV) from a linear regression are plugged into the Black-Scholes formula to obtain...

This paper proposes a new method for pricing American options that uses importance sampling to reduce estimator bias and variance in simulation-and-regression based methods. Our suggested method uses regressions under the importance measure directly, instead of under the nominal measure as is...

Recently it was shown that the estimated American call prices obtained with regression and simulation based methods can be significantly improved on by using put-call symmetry. This paper extends these results and demonstrates that it is also possible to significantly reduce the variance of the...

Investment decisions usually involve the assessment of more than one financial asset or investment project (real asset). The most appropriate way to analyze the viability of a real asset is not to study it in isolation but as part of a portfolio with correlations between the input variables of...

In this paper, we evaluate American-style, path-dependent derivatives with an artificial intelligence technique. Specifically, we use swarm intelligence to find the optimal exercise boundary for an American-style derivative. Swarm intelligence is particularly efficient (regarding computation and...

This paper proposes the sample path generation method for the stochastic volatility version of the 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...

We present the Forest of Stochastic Trees (FOST) method for pricing multiple exercise options by simulation. The proposed method uses stochastic trees in place of binomial trees in the Forest of Trees algorithm originally proposed to value swing options, hence extending that method to allow for...

The field of computational finance is evolving ever faster. This book collects a number of novel contributions on the use of computational methods and techniques for modelling financial asset prices, returns, and volatility, and on the use of numerical methods for pricing, hedging, and risk...