Starting with observable annually compounded forward rates we derive a term structure model of interest rates. The model relies upon the assumption that a specific set of annually compounded forward rates is log-normally distributed. We derive solutions for interest rate caps and floors as well...

In a complete financial market every contingent claim can be hedged perfectly. In an incomplete market it is possible to stay on the safe side by superhedging. But such strategies may require a large amount of initial capital. Here we study the question what an investor can do who is unwilling...

An investor faced with a contingent claim may eliminate risk by (super-)hedging in a financial market. As this is often quite expensive, we study partial hedges, which require less capital and reduce the risk. In a previous paper we determined quantile hedges which succeed with maximal...

This paper is devoted to the problem of hedging contingent claims in the framework of a complete two-factor jump-diffusion model. In this context, it is well understood that every contingent claim can be hedged perfectly if one invests the unique arbitrage-free price. Based on the results of H....

Daily returns of financial assets are frequently found to exhibit positive autocorrelation at lag 1. When specifying a linear AR(l) conditional mean, one may ask how this predictability affects option prices. We investigate the dependence of option prices on autoregressive dynamics under...

It is common practice to identify the number and sources of shocks that move implied volatilities across space and time by applying Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to pooled covariance matrices of changes in implied volatilities. This approach, however, is likely to result in a loss of...

This paper considers the introduction of stock options in an (dynamically) incomplete securities market made up of a riskless bond and the stock. The stock price follows a geometric Brownian motion with constant drift. However, there is incomplete information about the unknown stochastic...

This paper introduces a benchmark model for financial markets, which is based on the unique characterization of a benchmark portfolio that is chosen to be the growth optimal portfolio. The general structure of risk premia for asset prices and portfolios is derived. Furthermore, the short rate is...

Using option prices the expectations of the market participants concerning the underlying asset can be extracted as well as the uncertainty surrounding these expectations. In this paper a mixture of lognormal density functions will be assumed to analyze options on three-month Euribor futures for...