Paper 3, Section II, J

Stochastic Financial Models
Part II, 2011

First, what is a Brownian motion?

(i) The price StS_{t} of an asset evolving in continuous time is represented as

St=S0exp(σWt+μt)S_{t}=S_{0} \exp \left(\sigma W_{t}+\mu t\right)

where WW is a standard Brownian motion, and σ\sigma and μ\mu are constants. If riskless investment in a bank account returns a continuously-compounded rate of interest rr, derive a formula for the time-0 price of a European call option on the asset SS with strike KK and expiry TT. You may use any general results, but should state them clearly.

(ii) In the same financial market, consider now a derivative which pays

Y={exp(T10Tlog(Su)du)K}+Y=\left\{\exp \left(T^{-1} \int_{0}^{T} \log \left(S_{u}\right) d u\right)-K\right\}^{+}

at time TT. Find the time-0 price for this derivative. Show that it is less than the price of the European call option which you derived in (i).