IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1204.3452.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Variance of Standard Option Returns

Author

Listed:
  • Adi Ben-Meir
  • Jeremy Schiff

Abstract

The vast majority of works on option pricing operate on the assumption of risk neutral valuation, and consequently focus on the expected value of option returns, and do not consider risk parameters, such as variance. We show that it is possible to give explicit formulae for the variance of European option returns (vanilla calls and puts, as well as barrier options), and that for American options the variance can be computed using a PDE approach, involving a modified Black-Scholes PDE. We show how the need to consider risk parameters, such as the variance, and also the probability of expiring worthless (PEW), arises naturally for individual investors in options. Furthermore, we show that a volatility smile arises in a simple model of risk-seeking option pricing.

Suggested Citation

  • Adi Ben-Meir & Jeremy Schiff, 2012. "The Variance of Standard Option Returns," Papers 1204.3452, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1204.3452
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.3452
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert C. Merton, 2005. "Theory of rational option pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 8, pages 229-288, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Joshua D. Coval & Tyler Shumway, 2001. "Expected Option Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 983-1009, June.
    3. Merton, Robert C & Scholes, Myron S & Gladstein, Mathew L, 1982. "The Returns and Risks of Alternative Put-Option Portfolio Investment Strategies," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(1), pages 1-55, January.
    4. Goyal, Amit & Saretto, Alessio, 2009. "Cross-section of option returns and volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 310-326, November.
    5. Merton, Robert C & Scholes, Myron S & Gladstein, Mathew L, 1978. "The Returns and Risk of Alternative Call Option Portfolio Investment Strategies," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(2), pages 183-242, April.
    6. Heston, Steven L, 1993. "A Closed-Form Solution for Options with Stochastic Volatility with Applications to Bond and Currency Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 327-343.
    7. Peter W. Duck & Chao Yang & David P. Newton & Martin Widdicks, 2009. "Singular Perturbation Techniques Applied To Multiasset Option Pricing," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 457-486, July.
    8. Liu, Jun & Pan, Jun, 2003. "Dynamic derivative strategies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 401-430, September.
    9. Martin Widdicks & Peter W. Duck & Ari D. Andricopoulos & David P. Newton, 2005. "The Black‐Scholes Equation Revisited: Asymptotic Expansions And Singular Perturbations," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 373-391, April.
    10. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    11. Mark Broadie & Paul Glasserman & Steven Kou, 1997. "A Continuity Correction for Discrete Barrier Options," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(4), pages 325-349, October.
    12. Hull, John C & White, Alan D, 1987. "The Pricing of Options on Assets with Stochastic Volatilities," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(2), pages 281-300, June.
    13. Broadie, Mark & Glasserman, Paul, 1997. "Pricing American-style securities using simulation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 21(8-9), pages 1323-1352, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    2. Peter Christoffersen & Ruslan Goyenko & Kris Jacobs & Mehdi Karoui, 2018. "Illiquidity Premia in the Equity Options Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(3), pages 811-851.
    3. Liu, Jun & Pan, Jun, 2003. "Dynamic derivative strategies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 401-430, September.
    4. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    5. Li, Chenxu & Ye, Yongxin, 2019. "Pricing and Exercising American Options: an Asymptotic Expansion Approach," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 1-1.
    6. Blessing Taruvinga & Boda Kang & Christina Sklibosios Nikitopoulos, 2018. "Pricing American Options with Jumps in Asset and Volatility," Research Paper Series 394, Quantitative Finance Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney.
    7. Sanjay K. Nawalkha & Xiaoyang Zhuo, 2022. "A Theory of Equivalent Expectation Measures for Contingent Claim Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(5), pages 2853-2906, October.
    8. Mark Broadie & Jerome B. Detemple, 2004. "ANNIVERSARY ARTICLE: Option Pricing: Valuation Models and Applications," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(9), pages 1145-1177, September.
    9. Ren-Raw Chen & Oded Palmon, 2005. "A Non-Parametric Option Pricing Model: Theory and Empirical Evidence," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 115-134, January.
    10. René Garcia & Richard Luger & Eric Renault, 2000. "Asymmetric Smiles, Leverage Effects and Structural Parameters," Working Papers 2000-57, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    11. Carvalho, Augusto & Guimaraes, Bernardo, 2018. "State-controlled companies and political risk: Evidence from the 2014 Brazilian election," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 66-78.
    12. Christoffersen, Peter & Heston, Steven & Jacobs, Kris, 2010. "Option Anomalies and the Pricing Kernel," Working Papers 11-17, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    13. Rui Vilela Mendes & M. J. Oliveira, 2006. "A data-reconstructed fractional volatility model," Papers math/0602013, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2007.
    14. Semih Yon & Cafer Erhan Bozdag, 2014. "Test of Log-Normal Process with Importance Sampling for Options Pricing," Proceedings of Economics and Finance Conferences 0401571, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    15. Markus Natter, 2018. "Options‐based benchmark indices—A review of performance and (in)appropriate measures," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(2), pages 271-288, February.
    16. Zura Kakushadze, 2016. "Volatility Smile as Relativistic Effect," Papers 1610.02456, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2017.
    17. Rosa Ferrentino & Luca Vota, 2022. "A Mathematical Model for the Pricing of Derivative Financial Products: the Role of the Banking Supervision and of the Model Risk," Journal of Finance and Investment Analysis, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 11(1), pages 1-2.
    18. Boris Ter-Avanesov & Homayoon Beigi, 2024. "MLP, XGBoost, KAN, TDNN, and LSTM-GRU Hybrid RNN with Attention for SPX and NDX European Call Option Pricing," Papers 2409.06724, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    19. Hong, Hui & Sung, Hao-Chang & Yang, Jingjing, 2018. "On profitability of volatility trading on S&P 500 equity index options: The role of trading frictions," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 295-307.
    20. Virmani, Vineet, 2014. "Model Risk in Pricing Path-dependent Derivatives: An Illustration," IIMA Working Papers WP2014-03-22, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1204.3452. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.