IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/543.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the robustness of least-squares Monte Carlo (LSM) for pricing American derivatives

Author

Listed:
  • Manuel Moreno
  • Javier R. Navas

Abstract

This paper analyses the robustness of Least-Squares Monte Carlo, a technique recently proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz (2001) for pricing American options. This method is based on least-squares regressions in which the explanatory variables are certain polynomial functions. We analyze the impact of different basis functions on option prices. Numerical results for American put options provide evidence that a) this approach is very robust to the choice of different alternative polynomials and b) few basis functions are required. However, these conclusions are not reached when analyzing more complex derivatives.

Suggested Citation

  • Manuel Moreno & Javier R. Navas, 2001. "On the robustness of least-squares Monte Carlo (LSM) for pricing American derivatives," Economics Working Papers 543, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    • Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:543
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/543.pdf
    File Function: Whole Paper
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ho, T S & Stapleton, Richard C & Subrahmanyam, Marti G, 1997. "The Valuation of American Options with Stochastic Interest Rates: A Generalization of the Geske-Johnson Technique," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 827-840, June.
    2. Carriere, Jacques F., 1996. "Valuation of the early-exercise price for options using simulations and nonparametric regression," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 19-30, December.
    3. Breen, Richard, 1991. "The Accelerated Binomial Option Pricing Model," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(2), pages 153-164, June.
    4. Carr, Peter, 1998. "Randomization and the American Put," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(3), pages 597-626.
    5. Roll, Richard, 1977. "An analytic valuation formula for unprotected American call options on stocks with known dividends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 251-258, November.
    6. 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..
    7. Courtadon, Georges, 1982. "A More Accurate Finite Difference Approximation for the Valuation of Options," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(5), pages 697-703, December.
    8. Parkinson, Michael, 1977. "Option Pricing: The American Put," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(1), pages 21-36, January.
    9. Boyle, Phelim P., 1988. "A Lattice Framework for Option Pricing with Two State Variables," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(1), pages 1-12, March.
    10. Jing-Zhi Huang & Marti G. Subrahmanyam & G. George Yu, 1999. "Pricing And Hedging American Options: A Recursive Integration Method," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Marco Avellaneda (ed.), Quantitative Analysis In Financial Markets Collected Papers of the New York University Mathematical Finance Seminar, chapter 8, pages 219-239, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. Bunch, David S & Johnson, Herb, 1992. "A Simple and Numerically Efficient Valuation Method for American Puts Using a Modified Geske-Johnson Approach," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 809-816, June.
    12. Brennan, Michael J & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 1977. "The Valuation of American Put Options," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 449-462, May.
    13. David S. Bunch & Herb Johnson, 2000. "The American Put Option and Its Critical Stock Price," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 2333-2356, October.
    14. Broadie, Mark & Detemple, Jerome, 1996. "American Option Valuation: New Bounds, Approximations, and a Comparison of Existing Methods," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(4), pages 1211-1250.
    15. Ju, Nengjiu, 1998. "Pricing an American Option by Approximating Its Early Exercise Boundary as a Multipiece Exponential Function," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(3), pages 627-646.
    16. Boyle, Phelim P., 1977. "Options: A Monte Carlo approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 323-338, May.
    17. S. D. Jacka, 1991. "Optimal Stopping and the American Put," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(2), pages 1-14, April.
    18. Longstaff, Francis A & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 2001. "Valuing American Options by Simulation: A Simple Least-Squares Approach," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt43n1k4jb, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    19. Longstaff, Francis A & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 2001. "Valuing American Options by Simulation: A Simple Least-Squares Approach," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(1), pages 113-147.
    20. Boyle, Phelim & Broadie, Mark & Glasserman, Paul, 1997. "Monte Carlo methods for security pricing," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 21(8-9), pages 1267-1321, June.
    21. Johnson, H. E., 1983. "An Analytic Approximation for the American Put Price," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 141-148, March.
    22. Geske, Robert, 1979. "A note on an analytical valuation formula for unprotected American call options on stocks with known dividends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 375-380, December.
    23. Geske, Robert & Johnson, Herb E, 1984. "The American Put Option Valued Analytically," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(5), pages 1511-1524, December.
    24. Barone-Adesi, Giovanni & Whaley, Robert E, 1987. "Efficient Analytic Approximation of American Option Values," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(2), pages 301-320, June.
    25. Kim, In Joon, 1990. "The Analytic Valuation of American Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(4), pages 547-572.
    26. 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.
    27. Peter Carr & Robert Jarrow & Ravi Myneni, 2008. "Alternative Characterizations Of American Put Options," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financial Derivatives Pricing Selected Works of Robert Jarrow, chapter 5, pages 85-103, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    28. Whaley, Robert E., 1981. "On the valuation of American call options on stocks with known dividends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 207-211, June.
    29. Barraquand, Jérôme & Martineau, Didier, 1995. "Numerical Valuation of High Dimensional Multivariate American Securities," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(3), pages 383-405, September.
    30. Rendleman, Richard J, Jr & Bartter, Brit J, 1979. "Two-State Option Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 34(5), pages 1093-1110, December.
    31. Schwartz, Eduardo S., 1977. "The valuation of warrants: Implementing a new approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 79-93, January.
    32. Cox, John C. & Ross, Stephen A. & Rubinstein, Mark, 1979. "Option pricing: A simplified approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 229-263, September.
    33. 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.
    34. Brennan, Michael J. & Schwartz, Eduardo S., 1978. "Finite Difference Methods and Jump Processes Arising in the Pricing of Contingent Claims: A Synthesis," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(3), pages 461-474, September.
    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. Mark Broadie & Jérôme Detemple, 1996. "Recent Advances in Numerical Methods for Pricing Derivative Securities," CIRANO Working Papers 96s-17, CIRANO.
    2. Minqiang Li, 2010. "A quasi-analytical interpolation method for pricing American options under general multi-dimensional diffusion processes," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 177-217, July.
    3. 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.
    4. Ruas, João Pedro & Dias, José Carlos & Vidal Nunes, João Pedro, 2013. "Pricing and static hedging of American-style options under the jump to default extended CEV model," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4059-4072.
    5. Zhongkai Liu & Tao Pang, 2016. "An efficient grid lattice algorithm for pricing American-style options," International Journal of Financial Markets and Derivatives, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 5(1), pages 36-55.
    6. 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.
    7. In oon Kim & Bong-Gyu Jang & Kyeong Tae Kim, 2013. "A simple iterative method for the valuation of American options," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(6), pages 885-895, May.
    8. Antonio Cosma & Stefano Galluccio & Paola Pederzoli & O. Scaillet, 2012. "Valuing American Options Using Fast Recursive Projections," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 12-26, Swiss Finance Institute.
    9. Ben-Ameur, Hatem & de Frutos, Javier & Fakhfakh, Tarek & Diaby, Vacaba, 2013. "Upper and lower bounds for convex value functions of derivative contracts," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 69-75.
    10. Mark Broadie & Jerome B. Detemple, 2004. "ANNIVERSARY ARTICLE: Option Pricing: Valuation Models and Applications," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(9), pages 1145-1177, September.
    11. Cosma, Antonio & Galluccio, Stefano & Pederzoli, Paola & Scaillet, Olivier, 2020. "Early Exercise Decision in American Options with Dividends, Stochastic Volatility, and Jumps," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(1), pages 331-356, February.
    12. Chockalingam, Arun & Muthuraman, Kumar, 2015. "An approximate moving boundary method for American option pricing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(2), pages 431-438.
    13. Barone-Adesi, Giovanni, 2005. "The saga of the American put," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 2909-2918, November.
    14. Song-Ping Zhu, 2006. "An exact and explicit solution for the valuation of American put options," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(3), pages 229-242.
    15. Muthuraman, Kumar, 2008. "A moving boundary approach to American option pricing," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 3520-3537, November.
    16. Chuang-Chang Chang & Jun-Biao Lin & Wei-Che Tsai & Yaw-Huei Wang, 2012. "Using Richardson extrapolation techniques to price American options with alternative stochastic processes," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 383-406, October.
    17. Minqiang Li, 2010. "Analytical approximations for the critical stock prices of American options: a performance comparison," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 75-99, April.
    18. Cassimon, D. & Engelen, P.J. & Thomassen, L. & Van Wouwe, M., 2007. "Closed-form valuation of American call options on stocks paying multiple dividends," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 33-48, March.
    19. Philipp N. Baecker, 2007. "Real Options and Intellectual Property," Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Springer, number 978-3-540-48264-2, December.
    20. Jérôme Detemple, 2014. "Optimal Exercise for Derivative Securities," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 459-487, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Least-Squares Monte Carlo; option pricing; American options;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C15 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Statistical Simulation Methods: General
    • C60 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - General
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing

    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:upf:upfgen:543. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.upf.edu/ .

    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.