One-touch option 2026-10-07
A barrier contract paying a specified fixed amount if the underlying touches a specified barrier before expiry. Payment at touch and payment at expiry are different conventions. For payment at touch, valuation uses the truncated discounted Brownian first passage after converting a geometric stock barrier to a log-price level; discounting solely at expiry would price a different contract.
Under the Black-Scholes model pricing measure, write , where . Brownian continuity and immediate crossing on reaching a level make the strict up-crossing time equal almost surely to the hitting time . Its finite-time law has no atom at , so the convention before rather than at expiry does not affect the price.
For truncated discounted Brownian first passage, since payment occurs at the hitting time, discount there, not at expiry. The one-touch option price is
Set . The expression under the square root is nonnegative for every real , by this Black-Scholes identity. The discounted density satisfies . Applying part i yields the closed price
This formula also covers and negative rates. When , one may use , so the two prefactors simplify to and . At the expression is the undiscounted hitting probability, as a consistency check.