The Volatility Sneer


Book Description




The Volatility Surface


Book Description

Praise for The Volatility Surface "I'm thrilled by the appearance of Jim Gatheral's new book The Volatility Surface. The literature on stochastic volatility is vast, but difficult to penetrate and use. Gatheral's book, by contrast, is accessible and practical. It successfully charts a middle ground between specific examples and general models--achieving remarkable clarity without giving up sophistication, depth, or breadth." --Robert V. Kohn, Professor of Mathematics and Chair, Mathematical Finance Committee, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University "Concise yet comprehensive, equally attentive to both theory and phenomena, this book provides an unsurpassed account of the peculiarities of the implied volatility surface, its consequences for pricing and hedging, and the theories that struggle to explain it." --Emanuel Derman, author of My Life as a Quant "Jim Gatheral is the wiliest practitioner in the business. This very fine book is an outgrowth of the lecture notes prepared for one of the most popular classes at NYU's esteemed Courant Institute. The topics covered are at the forefront of research in mathematical finance and the author's treatment of them is simply the best available in this form." --Peter Carr, PhD, head of Quantitative Financial Research, Bloomberg LP Director of the Masters Program in Mathematical Finance, New York University "Jim Gatheral is an acknowledged master of advanced modeling for derivatives. In The Volatility Surface he reveals the secrets of dealing with the most important but most elusive of financial quantities, volatility." --Paul Wilmott, author and mathematician "As a teacher in the field of mathematical finance, I welcome Jim Gatheral's book as a significant development. Written by a Wall Street practitioner with extensive market and teaching experience, The Volatility Surface gives students access to a level of knowledge on derivatives which was not previously available. I strongly recommend it." --Marco Avellaneda, Director, Division of Mathematical Finance Courant Institute, New York University "Jim Gatheral could not have written a better book." --Bruno Dupire, winner of the 2006 Wilmott Cutting Edge Research Award Quantitative Research, Bloomberg LP




The Volatility Smile


Book Description

"The Volatility Smile: An Introduction for Students and Practitioners The Black-Scholes-Merton options model was the greatest innovation of 20th Century finance, and remains the most widely applied theory in all of finance. Despite this success, the model is fundamentally at odds with the observed behavior of option markets: a graph of implied volatilities against strike will typically display a curve or skew, which practitioners refer to as the smile, and which the model cannot explain. Option valuation is not a solved problem, and the past forty years have witnessed an abundance of new models that try to reconcile theory with markets. The Volatility Smile presents a unified treatment of the Black-Scholes-Merton model and the more advanced models that have replaced it. It is also a book about the principles of financial valuation and how to apply them. Celebrated author and quant Emanuel Derman and Michael B. Miller explain not just the mathematics but the ideas behind the models. By examining the foundations, the implementation, and the pros and cons of various models, and by carefully exploring their derivations and their assumptions, readers will learn not only how to handle the volatility smile but how to evaluate and build their own financial models. Topics covered include: The principles of valuation Static and dynamic replication The Black-Scholes-Merton model Hedging strategies Transaction costs The behavior of the volatility smile Implied distributions Local volatility models Stochastic volatility models Jump-diffusion models"--




Inside Volatility Arbitrage


Book Description

Today?s traders want to know when volatility is a sign that the sky is falling (and they should stay out of the market), and when it is a sign of a possible trading opportunity. Inside Volatility Arbitrage can help them do this. Author and financial expert Alireza Javaheri uses the classic approach to evaluating volatility -- time series and financial econometrics -- in a way that he believes is superior to methods presently used by market participants. He also suggests that there may be "skewness" trading opportunities that can be used to trade the markets more profitably. Filled with in-depth insight and expert advice, Inside Volatility Arbitrage will help traders discover when "skewness" may present valuable trading opportunities as well as why it can be so profitable.




New Research in Financial Markets


Book Description

This text reflects research by European scholars into financial economics. Topics include asset pricing in perfect markets, take-over bids, and the interplay between banks and financial markets.




Modular Pricing of Options


Book Description

From a technical point of view, the celebrated Black and Scholes option pricing formula was originally developed using a separation of variables technique. However, already Merton mentioned in his seminal 1973 pa per, that it could have been developed by using Fourier transforms as well. Indeed, as is well known nowadays, Fourier transforms are a rather convenient solution technique for many models involving the fundamental partial differential equation of financial economics. It took the community nearly another twenty years to recognize that Fourier transform is even more useful, if one applies it to problems in financial economics without seeking an explicit analytical inverse trans form. Heston (1993) probably was the first to demonstrate how to solve a stochastic volatility option pricing model quasi analytically using the characteristic function of the problem, which is nothing else than the Fourier transform of the underlying Arrow /Debreu-prices, and doing the inverse transformation numerically. This opened the door for a whole bunch of new closed form solutions in the transformed Fourier space and still is one of the most active research areas in financial economics.




Modeling Derivatives in C++


Book Description

This book is the definitive and most comprehensive guide to modeling derivatives in C++ today. Providing readers with not only the theory and math behind the models, as well as the fundamental concepts of financial engineering, but also actual robust object-oriented C++ code, this is a practical introduction to the most important derivative models used in practice today, including equity (standard and exotics including barrier, lookback, and Asian) and fixed income (bonds, caps, swaptions, swaps, credit) derivatives. The book provides complete C++ implementations for many of the most important derivatives and interest rate pricing models used on Wall Street including Hull-White, BDT, CIR, HJM, and LIBOR Market Model. London illustrates the practical and efficient implementations of these models in real-world situations and discusses the mathematical underpinnings and derivation of the models in a detailed yet accessible manner illustrated by many examples with numerical data as well as real market data. A companion CD contains quantitative libraries, tools, applications, and resources that will be of value to those doing quantitative programming and analysis in C++. Filled with practical advice and helpful tools, Modeling Derivatives in C++ will help readers succeed in understanding and implementing C++ when modeling all types of derivatives.




Market Expectations and Option Prices


Book Description

This book is a slightly revised version of my doctoral dissertation which has been accepted by the Department of Economics and Business Administration of the Justus-Liebig-Universitat Giessen in July 2002. I am indebted to my advisor Prof. Dr. Volbert Alexander for encouraging and supporting my research. I am also grateful to the second member of the doctoral committee, Prof. Dr. Horst Rinne. Special thanks go to Dr. Ralf Ahrens for providing part of the data and to my colleague Carsten Lang, who spent much time reading the complete first draft. Wetzlar, January 2003 Martin Mandler Contents 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Part I Theoretical Foundations 2 Arbitrage Pricing and Risk-Neutral Probabilities........ .. 7 2.1 Arbitrage Pricing in the Black/Scholes-Merton Model... . . .. . 7 2.2 The Equivalent Martingale Measure and Risk-Neutral Valuation ............................................... 11 2.3 Extracting Risk-Neutral Probabilities from Option Prices. . . .. 13 2.4 Summary............................................... 15 Appendix 2A: The Valuation Function in the Black/Scholes-Merton Model .................................................. 16 Appendix 2B: Some Further Details on the Replication Strategy ... 21 3 Survey of the Related Literature .......................... 23 3.1 The Information Content of Forward and Futures Prices. . . .. . 24 3.2 The Information Content of Implied Volatilities ............. 25 3.2.1 Implied Volatilities and the Risk-Neutral Probability Density .......................................... 27 3.2.2 The Term Structure of Implied Volatilities. . . . . . . .. . . 29 . 3.2.3 The Forecasting Information in Implied Volatilities. . .. 30 3.2.4 Implied Correlations as Forecasts of Future Correlations 43 VIII Contents 3.3 The Skewness Premium ..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . 45 . . . . . . .




Derivatives


Book Description

Robert Whaley has more than twenty-five years of experience in the world of finance, and with this book he shares his hard-won knowledge in the field of derivatives with you. Divided into ten information-packed parts, Derivatives shows you how this financial tool can be used in practice to create risk management, valuation, and investment solutions that are appropriate for a variety of market situations.