Chooser option Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
The holder chooses at a specified time between a European call option and a European put option with the same later maturity and strike. Put-call parity makes its value equal to a call of the original maturity plus a put of the choice-time maturity with appropriately discounted strike.
Dupire equation 2026-10-06
For a non-dividend-paying stock and constant interest rate , discounted call prices satisfy . Strike differentiation recovers the discounted terminal density as ; differentiating the discounted payoff identity supplies the maturity derivative. Put-call parity implies the same equation for put prices.
The Brownian martingale representation theorem argument in part (a) also replicates the bounded put payoff. The discounted stock is a true martingale, so the elementary terminal payoff identity yields put-call parity
Set . Then , , and . Thus
Linearity of the Dupire equation and give
The initial payoff is , and . Therefore calls and puts obey the same maturity-strike differential equation, with their respective initial and boundary data.
The difference of the terminal European call option and European put option payoffs is . Replicating that difference by one share and a borrowing position gives conditional put-call parity
Thus the call is more valuable exactly when the right side is positive. With a put selected at equality, the chooser option payoff is
At equality both choices have the same price, even though their eventual payoffs can differ. Put-call parity assumes no dividends or other intermediate stock cash flows, as in the stated asset-price model.
Put . At the choice time,
Buy a European call option of strike and maturity , together with a European put option of strike and maturity . If the call is selected, the short-maturity put expires worthless. If the put is selected, sell the call and combine its value with the short-maturity put's cash payment; put-call parity makes this exactly enough to buy the maturity- put. This self-financing replication proves
It requires tradability of the priced options at the choice time, but not completeness of every other market claim. The identity also covers and .
Put
The call payoff is , and it is positive when
Writing for the standard normal density, the given risk-neutral pricing formula becomes
Completing the square gives
so the two tail integrals are and , where is the standard normal distribution function. Therefore the Black-Scholes formula is
The payoff identity
replicates the call-minus-put position by one stock and borrowing the present value of . Hence put-call parity gives
and therefore
The terminal payoffs satisfy the pointwise identity
Pricing both sides by discounted risk-neutral expectation gives
because the discounted stock is a martingale. Thus put-call parity is