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...

Hedging down-and-out puts (and up-and-out calls), where the maximum payoff is reached just before a barrier is hit that would render the claim worthless afterwards, is challenging. All hedging methods potentially lead to large errors when the underlying is already close to the barrier and 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...