Local Volatility - Development

Development

The concept of a local volatility was developed when Bruno Dupire and Emanuel Derman and Iraj Kani noted that there is a unique diffusion process consistent with the risk neutral densities derived from the market prices of European options.

Derman and Kani described and implemented a local volatility function to model instantaneous volatility. They used this function at each node in a binomial options pricing model. The tree successfully produced option valuations consistent with all market prices across strikes and expirations. The Derman-Kani model was thus formulated with discrete time and stock-price steps. The key continuous-time equations used in local volatility models were developed by Bruno Dupire in 1994. Dupire's equation states


\frac{\partial C}{\partial T} = \frac{1}{2} \sigma^2(K,T; S_0)K^2 \frac{\partial^2C}{\partial K^2}-(r - q)K \frac{\partial C}{\partial K} - qC

Read more about this topic:  Local Volatility

Famous quotes containing the word development:

    “Theories of child development and guidelines for parents are not cast in stone. They are constantly changing and adapting to new information and new pressures. There is no “right” way, just as there are no magic incantations that will always painlessly resolve a child’s problems.”
    —Lawrence Kutner (20th century)

    “Good schools are schools for the development of the whole child. They seek to help children develop to their maximum their social powers and their intellectual powers, their emotional capacities, their physical powers.”
    —James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)

    “On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and received his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.”
    —Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)