In the zero-interest local volatility model , the risk-neutral pricing value of the European contingent claim , for and , isThe compound Poisson transition law of a driftless square-root diffusion proves finiteness and this conditional-expectation formula. Alternatively, substituting into the pricing equation for a local volatility model gives and , with terminal values . Hence and . The conditional-expectation calculation verifies that this formal solution is the price of the unbounded claim. The delta hedge holds stocks and bank units.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 38 2 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
A trading strategy chooses a vector of holdings for the period , with measurable with respect to . Its end-of-period wealth is . Rebalancing at date is self-financing whennew holdings cost exactly the value released by the old holdings. With fixed initial capital , the equivalent gains identity isA European contingent claim is a maturity- payoff measurable with respect to . It is attainable if there exists a predictable self-financing strategy and an initial capital for which almost surely. Such a strategy is a replicating strategy, and is its initial replication cost. Holdings are understood only up to the maturity being replicated.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 202 4 b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
With zero interest rate, the bank account is constant. The risky asset is a continuous local martingale by assumption, while the European contingent claim priceis a true martingale by the defining property of conditional expectation. Thus the original probability measure is an equivalent local martingale measure for all traded discounted prices. The fundamental theorem of asset pricing then excludes arbitrage for admissible self-financing strategies.
Power option 2026-10-05
A power option is a European contingent claim whose payoff is a fixed power of the terminal underlying price. In the Black-Scholes model, its value is when the required moments are finite.
For a local volatility model with bank account , a nonnegative classical solution ofdefines a possible price of a European contingent claim. Indeed, Itô formula gives , a local martingale. Thus the same equivalent local martingale measure works for the market augmented by this price. For an admissible trading strategy whose discounted wealth is bounded below, the discounted gains are a local martingale bounded below, hence a supermartingale by localization and the Fatou lemma. A zero-cost terminal gain that is nonnegative and strictly positive with positive probability would then contradict the supermartingale expectation inequality. This proves the absence of arbitrage for such strategies. If is bounded on the finite time interval, its discounted value is a bounded martingale and consequently . Nonnegativity alone guarantees the local martingale calculation, not this latter equality for every possible solution.