We develop the idea of using Monte Carlo sampling of random portfolios to solve portfolio investment problems. We explore the need for more general optimization tools, and consider the means by which constrained random portfolios may be generated. DeVroye's approach to sampling the interior of a...

Local volatility models are widely used to manage many exotic options in a way consistent with available market prices of vanilla options. Once calibrated, a local volatility grid can be used in numerical methods such as PDE or Monte Carlo to price and hedge exotic options consistently with...

Monte Carlo simulation or probability simulation is a technique used to understand the impact of risk and uncertainty in financial and other forecasting models. It is very useful when complex financial instruments need to be priced. Exotic options are listed on the JSE on its Can-Do platform....

We introduce a new method to price American-style options on underlying investments governed by stochastic volatility (SV) models. The method does not require the volatility process to be observed. Instead, it exploits the fact that the optimal decision functions in the corresponding dynamic...

One-way coupling often occurs in multi-dimensional models in finance. In this paper, we present a dimension reduction technique for Monte Carlo (MC) methods, referred to as drMC, that exploits this structure for pricing plain-vanilla European options under a N-dimensional one-way coupled model,...

In this paper we consider the optimal stopping problem for general dynamic monetary utility functionals. Sufficient conditions for the Bellman principle and the existence of optimal stopping times are provided. Particular attention is payed to representations which allow for a numerical...

Market mechanisms are increasingly being used as a tool for allocating somewhat scarce but unpriced rights and resources, and the European Emission Trading Scheme is an example. By means of dynamic optimization in the contest of firms covered by such environmental regulations, this paper...

We investigate the relationship between the gas spot market and the price of gas storage capacity. Contrary to the common belief, the auction prices for gas storage are mostly affected by the volatility of current market prices rather than by the winter-summer price differences. This paper...

We develop highly-efficient parallel Partial Differential Equation (PDE) based pricing methods on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for multi-asset American options. Our pricing approach is built upon a combination of a discrete penalty approach for the linear complementarity problem arising due...

We present a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) parallelization of the computation of the price of exotic cross-currency interest rate derivatives via a Partial Differential Equation (PDE) approach. In particular, we focus on the GPU-based parallel pricing of long-dated foreign exchange (FX)...