This paper develops a closed form risk-neutral valuation model for pricing Europeanstyle options when the underlying has a mixture of transformed-normaldistributions. Specifically, we introduce the mixture of g distributions, which containsthe mixture of normal and lognormal distributions as a...

The gamma class of distributions encompasses several important distributionseither as special or limiting cases, or through simple transformations. In this paper,we established the link between the real and the risk neutral distributions, andprovided a formal proof for the existence of the risk...

This analysis reveals the restricted scope of approaches which utilise arbitrage based arguments toprice contingent claims whose payoffs are determined by the outcome of non-zero-sum valuationgames between financial market participants. Many examples of such model formulations can befound, for...

We price European-style options on assets whose probability distributions have two unknown parameters. We assume a pricing kernel which also has two unknown parameters. When certain conditions are met, a two-dimensional risk-neutral valuation relationship exists for the pricing of these options:...

This paper determines the value of asset tradeability in an option pricing framework.In our model, tradeability is valuable since it allows investors to exploit temporary mis-pricings of stocks. The model delivers several novel insights on the value of tradeability:The value of tradeability is...

Starting with the liberalization of electricity trading, this market grew rapidly overthe last decade. However, while spot and future markets are rather liquid nowadays,option trading is still limited. One of the potential reasons for this is that the spotprice process of electricity is still...

We develop a discrete-time stochastic volatility option pricing model, which exploits the informationcontained in high-frequency data. The Realized Volatility (RV) is used as a proxy of the unobservablelog-returns volatility. We model its dynamics by a simple but effective long-memory process:...

Thesis (MSc (Mathematical Sciences))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Life insurance and pension funds offer a wide range of products that are invested in a mix ofassets. These portfolios (II), underlying the products, are rebalanced back to predetermined fixedproportions on a regular basis. This is done by selling the better performing assets...

The inaccuracy of the Black-Scholes formula arises from two aspects: the formula is for European options while most real option contracts are American; the formula is based on the assumption that underlying asset prices follow a lognormal distribution while in the real world asset prices cannot...