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FinancialDerivative: American vs. European Call

Posted 8 years ago

To my knowledge, the American call option on a non-dividend paying stock has the same value as the European call option.

Why does it happen then that according to Mathematica they are not equal?

FinancialDerivative[{"European", "Call"}, {"StrikePrice" -> 100.00, "Expiration" -> 1},  
    {"InterestRate" -> 0.03, "Volatility" -> 0.2, "CurrentPrice" -> 100, "Dividend" -> 0.0}]

Out[5]= 9.4134

FinancialDerivative[{"American", "Call"}, {"StrikePrice" -> 100.00, "Expiration" -> 1},  
    {"InterestRate" -> 0.03, "Volatility" -> 0.2, "CurrentPrice" -> 100, "Dividend" -> 0.0}]

Out[5]= 9.24515

Next question:

The numbers of "Steps" in the following specification is some sort of placebo, right?

FinancialDerivative[{"American", "Call"}, {"StrikePrice" -> 100.00, 
"Expiration" -> 1},  {"InterestRate" -> 0.03, "Volatility" -> 0.2, 
"CurrentPrice" -> 100, "Dividend" -> 0.10}, Method -> "Binomial", 
"Steps" -> 200]
POSTED BY: Sandu Ursu
3 Replies

Sandu, I think it would be worth reporting this to the Wolfram development team as a bug.

POSTED BY: Jonathan Kinlay
Posted 8 years ago

A question would be then: what is the default number of steps used when pricing with the binomial model? To achieve a value indistinguishable from the Black-Scholes, in this case, one needs to use a number of steps higher than 10000. This, however, is a bit time consuming.

Suspicious.

POSTED BY: Sandu Ursu
POSTED BY: Jonathan Kinlay
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