• It is not widely emphasized in the literature that derivatives are complex random quantities which should, by custom, be characterized by their probability density functions. • It is understood that Black-Scholes style of derivatives pricing represents an expected value, i.e. the...

The price of a European option can be computed as the expected value of the payoff function under the risk-neutral measure. For American options and path-dependent options in general, this principle cannot be applied. In this paper, we derive a model-free analytical formula for the implied...

A new method to retrieve the risk-neutral probability measure from observed option prices is developed and a closed form pricing formula for European options is obtained by employing a modified Gram-Charlier series expansion, known as the Gauss-Hermite expansion. This expansion converges for...

Long vanilla call option positions have unlimited profit potential and limited loss potential, and the opposite is true for short call option positions. Long vanilla puts do not have unlimited profit potential but, for commonly traded strikes, the maximum profit of a long put will be far greater...

We develop an ex-ante measure of expected stock returns based on analyst price targets. We then show that ex-ante measures of volatility, skewness, and kurtosis implied from stock option prices are positively related to the cross section of ex-ante expected stock returns. While expected returns...

Most of the empirical studies on stochastic volatility dynamics favor the 3/2 specification over the square-root (CIR) process in the Heston model. In the context of option pricing, the 3/2 stochastic volatility model is reported to be able to capture the volatility skew evolution better than...

This thesis investigates the predictive power of the Skewness and Kurtosis Adjusted Black Scholes model of Corrado and Su (1996) (CS) model in pricing three Australian option contracts (ANZ, BHP and CBA) maturing in March, June, September and December, during the 2007/2008 financial crisis...

Option prices seem to behave in ways inconsistent with the Black-Scholes model. Implied volatility varies with the strike price in a parabolic shape that is often called the volatility 'smile.' My objective in this paper is to identify implied probability distributions that might explain this...

We study the relation between option-implied skewness (IS) and the cross-section of option returns under daily hedging to better understand the pricing of skewness in isolation from lower moments. Creating portfolios of delta-hedged (D-hedged) and delta-vega-hedged (DV-hedged) options with daily...

This paper provides a number of relevant guidelines to build a consistent Volatility Smile accounting for the FX market conventions. This consistency is understood as fitting a model which is able to price vanilla options across all possible strikes given the knowledge of a few market...