Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/iii/paper-38/4/b/solution

Buy half a call at each neighboring strike and sell one call at the middle strike. Its cost is
For fixed terminal stock price , the function is convex. Since is the midpoint, the payoff
is nonnegative for every . More explicitly, it is zero outside , equals on , and equals on . The negative cost and nonnegative payoff produce an arbitrage. This is the butterfly-spread arbitrage for nonconvex call prices.

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