Group Members
Sarah Boese, Tracy Cui, Sam Johnston
Supervisors
Gianmarco Molino, Olekisii Mostovyi
Overview
In practice, financial models are not exact — as in any field, modeling based on real data introduces some degree of error. However, we must consider the effect error has on the calculations and assumptions we make on the model. In complete markets, optimal hedging strategies can be found for derivative securities; for example, the recursive hedging formula introduced in Steven Shreve’s “Stochastic Calculus for Finance I” gives an exact expression in the binomial asset model, and as a result the unique arbitrage-free price can be computed at any time for any derivative security.
In incomplete markets this cannot be accomplished; one possibility for computing optimal hedging strategies is the method of sequential regression. We considered this in discrete-time; in the (complete) binomial model we showed that the strategy of sequential regression introduced by Follmer and Schweizer is equivalent to Shreve’s recursive hedging formula, and in the (incomplete) trinomial model we both explicitly computed the optimal hedging strategy predicted by the Follmer-Schweizer decomposition and we showed that the strategy is stable under small perturbations.