Many providers of variable annuities such as pension funds and life insurers seek to hedge their exposure to embedded guarantees using longdated derivatives. This paper extends the benchmark approach to price and hedge long-dated equity index options using a combination of cash, bonds and...

This paper uses an alternative, parsimonious stochastic volatility model to describe the dynamics of a currency market for the pricing and hedging of derivatives. Time transformed squared Bessel processes are the basic driving factors of the minimal market model. The time transformation is...

The paper analyzes the simulated long-term behavior of well diversified portfolios in continuous financial markets. It focuses on the equi-weighted index and the market portfolio. The paper illustrates that the equally weighted portfolio constitutes a good proxy of the growth optimal portfolio,...

This paper derives a unified framework for portfolio optimization, derivative pricing, financial modeling and risk measurement. It is based on the natural assumption that investors prefer more or less, in the sense that the higher drift is preferred. Each such investor is shown to hold an...

Variable annuities (VAs) represent a marked change from earlier life products in the guarantees that they offer and it is no longer possible to manage the risks of these liabilities using traditional actuarial methods. Thinking about guarantees as options suggests applying risk neutral pricing...

This paper uses an alternative, parsimonious stochastic volatility model to describe the dynamics of a currency market for the pricing and hedging of derivatives. Time transformed squared Bessel processes are the basic driving factors of the minimal market model. The time transformation is...

In the years following the publication of Black and Scholes [7], numerous alternative models have been proposed for pricing and hedging equity derivatives. Prominent examples include stochastic volatility models, jump diffusion models, and models based on Levy processes. These all have their own...

This paper describes a two-factor model for a diversifed index that attempts to explain both the leverage effect and the implied volatility skews that are characteristic of index options. Our formulation is based on an analysis of the growth optimal portfolio and a corresponding random market...

The paper describes a continuous time share market model with a minimal number of factors. These factors are powers of Bessel processes. The asset prices are formed by ratios of the factors and have consequently leptokurtic return distributions. In this framework stochastic volatility with...