Past exam of the mathematical models of financial derivatives course of the University of Oxford / 2021 / 3 / a

For a long position in the claim, hold $-V_S$ shares and bank value $S{V}_S-V$ so that claim plus hedge has zero initial value. The Black-Scholes equation and Itô's formula show that the total position is self-financing and its Brownian and drift terms cancel. Equivalently, the positive replicating portfolio holds $V_S$ shares and bond value $V-S{V}_S$.

Under the usual growth, integrability and admissibility conditions, no-arbitrage forces the claim price to be $V$: a different price could be traded against the replicating portfolio. The qualification matters because an arbitrary formal PDE solution without a suitable financial class need not be a valid price.

Let ${\tau }_B=\inf \{u\ge t:S_u\le B\}$. While the contract is alive, the down-and-out put pays $(K-S_T{)}^{+}{1}_{\{{\tau }_B>T\}}$ at maturity; a prior touch has already knocked it out.

The truncated terminal payoff can be represented by the ordinary European-price combinationAt maturity its three regions areIndeed it is zero below $B$, equals $K-S$ between $B$ and $K$, and is zero above $K$. This supplies the terminal building block for reflection.

The zero-below-barrier property is a property of the terminal payoff. Before maturity, $F(S,t)$ need not vanish for $S<B$, because the ordinary European contracts can still finish above $B$. The killed barrier option price, rather than this unrestricted European combination, is zero after a touch.

Put $q=1-2r/{\sigma }^2$. The Black-Scholes reflection symmetry maps $F$ to $(S/B{)}^{q}F(B^2/S,t)$, which solves the same PDE. Their difference vanishes at $S=B$. For $S>B$ at maturity the reflected argument is below $B$, where the terminal function in part ii is zero. Thus the boundary and terminal data of the alive down-and-out put are satisfied:The killed-domain Feynman-Kac formula identifies this solution with the discounted payoff conditional on survival. For $S\le B$, or after any prior barrier hit, the actual price is zero. The reflected difference is a formula on the alive domain $S>B$; extending that algebraic expression to $S<B$ generally gives a nonzero, possibly negative function and is not a valid barrier-option price.