Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-martingales-and-financial-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2009/b/5/c/solution

At , with underlying spot , the call option on a put option pays
Let . The underlying put option value is strictly decreasing and convex in , with limits at zero and zero at infinity. If , there is a unique at which that put value equals . Hence the compound option payoff is a decreasing convex curve from to zero on , followed by a horizontal zero segment. There is an upward kink at . If , the payoff is identically zero.
Figure 1.
A call on a put has positive payoff only below an exercise threshold
. Details.
For , the holder obtains the underlying put at no cost, so the payoff is its full value at . The discounted put price is a martingale under the risk-neutral measure. Using the tower property in the risk-neutral pricing,
Explicitly, this is with evaluated over . The intermediate choice time disappears when its exercise cost is zero.

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