Stock Prices (stock + price)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting

Kinds of Stock Prices

  • underlying stock price

  • Terms modified by Stock Prices

  • stock price behavior
  • stock price decline
  • stock price dynamics
  • stock price performance
  • stock price reaction
  • stock price response
  • stock price volatility

  • Selected Abstracts


    INVESTOR RELATIONS, LIQUIDITY, AND STOCK PRICES

    JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 4 2000
    Michael J. Brennan
    Although the first investor relations department was established by General Electric as long ago as 1952, the role of investor relations (IR) is one that has largely escaped scientific analysis and academic scrutiny. This article attempts to demonstrate the importance of a company's IR activities for its stock price by establishing a clear chain of causation between the following: 1,corporate IR activities and the number of stock analysts who follow the firm; 2,the number of analysts who follow the firm and the liquidity of trading in the firm's shares; 3,the liquidity of the firm's shares and its required rate of return, or cost of capital. The authors begin by presenting evidence that corporate IR activities, in the form of high levels of disclosure and presentations to investment analysts, increase the number of analysts who follow the firm by reducing their cost of acquiring information. Studies have also shown that more effective IR tends to improve the accuracy of analyst forecasts and the degree of agreement among analysts. Second, the authors summarize their own research showing that the number of analysts who follow a firm has a positive effect on the liquidity of the firm's shares. More specifically, their findings can be interpreted as saying that, for the average company, coverage by six additional analysts reduces "market-impact costs" (using a measure known as Kyle's lambda) by 28%, holding volume constant. And when the indirect effect of increased analyst coverage through expanded volume is taken into account, the reduction in trading costs is estimated to be as high as 85%. The final link in the chain of analysis is the growing evidence (much of it reviewed in the preceding article) that increased liquidity leads to a lower cost of capital and thus higher stock prices. In sum, a firm can reduce its cost of capital and increase its stock price through more effective investor relations activities, which reduce the cost of information to the market and to investment analysts in particular. [source]


    The Effects of a Baby Boom on Stock Prices and Capital Accumulation in the Presence of Social Security

    ECONOMETRICA, Issue 2 2003
    Andrew B. Abel
    Is the stock market boom a result of the baby boom? This paper develops an overlapping generations model in which a baby boom is modeled as a high realization of a random birth rate, and the price of capital is determined endogenously by a convex cost of adjustment. A baby boom increases national saving and investment and thus causes an increase in the price of capital. The price of capital is mean,reverting so the initial increase in the price of capital is followed by a decrease. Social Security can potentially affect national saving and investment, though in the long run, it does not affect the price of capital. [source]


    Intraday Behavior of Stock Prices and Trades around Insider Trading

    FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2010
    A. Can Inci
    Our evidence indicates that insiders' trades provide significant new information to market participants and they are incorporated more fully in stock prices as compared to noninsiders' trades. We find that market professionals do not front-run insiders' trades. Both insiders' purchases and sales result in significant contemporaneous and subsequent price impact, while sales by large shareholders result in a contemporaneous stock price decline that is subsequently reversed. The arrival of insider purchases reverse the prevailing negative order imbalances from third party trades and lead to piggy-backing by market professionals resulting in subsequent market purchase orders as well as stock price increases. [source]


    How Did the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut Affect Stock Prices?

    FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2008
    Gene Amromin
    We test the hypothesis that the 2003 dividend tax cut boosted US stock prices and thereby lowered the cost of equity capital. Using an event-study methodology, we attempt to identify an aggregate stock market effect by comparing the behavior of US common stock prices with that of foreign equities and the equities of real estate investment trusts (REITs). We also examine the relative cross-sectional response of prices of high- and low-dividend-paying stocks. We do not find any imprint of the dividend tax cut news on the value of the aggregate US stock market. On the other hand, high-dividend stocks outperformed low-dividend stocks by a few percentage points over the event windows, suggesting that the tax cut may have induced asset reallocation within equity portfolios. Finally, the positive abnormal return on nondividend paying US stocks in 2003 does not appear to be tied to tax cut news. [source]


    Some Empirical Evidence to Support the Relationship Between Audit Reports and Stock Prices , The French Case

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDITING, Issue 3 2000
    Bahram Soltani
    Acting as an independent intermediary, the auditor facilitates market transactions by providing an ,opinion' on financial statements which should help to reduce the information asymmetry between the company and its potential investors. Whether audit qualifications have informational value to investors is a question that needs further investigation, as previous empirical studies on this issue yield mixed results. Moreover, a majority of the research papers in this area have been conducted in Anglo-Saxon countries, in contrast to continental European countries where very little attention has been paid to the auditors' role in stock markets. The present study is based on a large sample of qualified opinions (543 for the period 1986,1995), using different expected event dates and market models. The results of the study demonstrate the significant negative abnormal returns around the announcement dates of audit opinions. The empirical part of this study was carried out in the French market which has some significant differences from the UK and the USA markets. The author believes that the differences, in the area of reporting, level of disclosure, and accounting and auditing practices, can play an important role in the research field of event studies. [source]


    Discussion of An International Analysis of Earnings, Stock Prices and Bond Yields

    JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 3-4 2007
    Michael Bowe
    First page of article [source]


    Monetary Policy and Stock Prices in an Open Economy

    JOURNAL OF MONEY, CREDIT AND BANKING, Issue 8 2007
    GIORGIO DI GIORGIO
    monetary policy; stock prices; Taylor Rule; open-economy DSGE models; wealth effects This paper studies monetary policy in a two-country model where agents can invest their wealth in both stock and bond markets. In our economy the foreign country hosts the only active equity market where also residents of the home country can trade stocks of listed foreign firms. We show that, in order to achieve price stability, the Central Banks in both countries should grant a dedicated response to movements in stock prices driven by relative productivity shocks. Determinacy of rational expectations equilibria and approximation of the Wicksellian interest rate policy by simple monetary policy rules are also investigated. [source]


    The Effect of SOX Section 404: Costs, Earnings Quality, and Stock Prices

    THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 3 2010
    PETER ILIEV
    ABSTRACT This paper exploits a natural quasi-experiment to isolate the effects that were uniquely due to the Sarbanes,Oxley Act (SOX): U.S. firms with a public float under $75 million could delay Section 404 compliance, and foreign firms under $700 million could delay the auditor's attestation requirement. As designed, Section 404 led to conservative reported earnings, but also imposed real costs. On net, SOX compliance reduced the market value of small firms. [source]


    Do Stock Prices and Volatility Jump?

    THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 3 2004
    Option Prices, Reconciling Evidence from Spot
    This paper examines the empirical performance of jump diffusion models of stock price dynamics from joint options and stock markets data. The paper introduces a model with discontinuous correlated jumps in stock prices and stock price volatility, and with state-dependent arrival intensity. We discuss how to perform likelihood-based inference based upon joint options/returns data and present estimates of risk premiums for jump and volatility risks. The paper finds that while complex jump specifications add little explanatory power in fitting options data, these models fare better in fitting options and returns data simultaneously. [source]


    The Effect of Options on Stock Prices: 1973 to 1995

    THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 1 2000
    Sorin M. Sorescu
    I show that the effect of option introductions on underlying stock prices is best described by a two-regime switching means model whose optimal switch date occurs in 1981. In accordance with previous studies, I find positive abnormal returns for options listed during 1973 to 1980. By contrast, I find negative abnormal returns for options listed in 1981 and later. Possible causes for this switch include the introduction of index options in 1982, the implementation of regulatory changes in 1981, and the possibility that options expedite the dissemination of negative information. [source]


    Going Public without Governance: Managerial Reputation Effects

    THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 2 2000
    Armando Gomes
    This paper addresses the agency problem between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders. This problem is common among public firms in many countries where the legal system does not effectively protect minority shareholders against oppression by controlling shareholders. We show that even without any explicit corporate governance mechanisms protecting minority shareholders, controlling shareholders can implicitly commit not to expropriate them. Stock prices of such companies are significantly higher and firms are more likely go public because of this reputation effect. Moreover, insiders divest shares gradually over time, at a rate that is negatively related to the degree of moral hazard. [source]


    The Declining Value-relevance of Accounting Information and Non-Information-based Trading: An Empirical Analysis,

    CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 4 2004
    ALEX DONTOH
    Abstract Recently, a growing body of literature has suggested that financial statements have lost their value-relevance because of a shift from a traditional capital-intensive economy to a high-technology, service-oriented economy. These conclusions are based on studies that find a temporal decline in the association between stock prices and accounting information (earnings and book values). This paper empirically tests a theoretical prediction arising from the noisy rational expectations equilibrium model that suggests that the decline could be driven by non-information-based (NIB) trading activity, because such trading reduces the ability of stock prices to reflect accounting information. Specifically, Dontoh, Radhakrishnan, and Ronen (2004) show that when NIB trading increases, the R2s of a regression of stock price on accounting information declines. Our empirical tests confirm this prediction; that is, the decline in the association between stock prices and accounting information as measured by R2s is driven by an increase in NIB trading. [source]


    Managerial Risk-Taking Incentives and Executive Stock Option Repricing: A Study of US Casino Executives

    FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2005
    Daniel A. Rogers
    I examine the relation between managerial incentives from holdings of company stock and options and stock option repricing. Because options provide incentives to increase both risk and stock price, firms must realize that as options go underwater, executives might face incentives to invest in risky, negative NPV projects. Repricing may alleviate such incentives. I examine repricing activity by firms in the US gaming industry and find that risk-taking incentives from options are positively related to the incidence of executive option repricing. The results support the hypothesis that repricing assists firms in alleviating excessive risk-taking incentives of senior management. [source]


    Rational Pricing of Internet Companies Revisited

    FINANCIAL REVIEW, Issue 4 2001
    Eduardo S. Schwartz
    G12 Abstract In this article we expand and improve the Internet company valuation model of Schwartz and Moon (2000) in numerous ways. By using techniques from real options theory and modern capital budgeting, the earlier paper demonstrated that uncertainty about key variables plays a major role in the valuation of high growth Internet companies. Presently, we make the model more realistic by providing for stochastic costs and future financing, and also by including capital expenditures and depreciation in the analysis. Perhaps more importantly, we offer insights into the practical implementation the model. An important challenge to implementing the original model was estimating the various parameters of the model. Here, we improve the procedure by setting the speed of adjustment parameters equal to one another, by tying the implied half-life of the revenue growth process to analyst forecasts, and by inferring the risk-adjustment parameter from the observed beta of the company's stock price. We illustrate these extensions in a valuation of the company eBay. [source]


    Risk-taking incentives of executive stock options and the asset substitution problem

    ACCOUNTING & FINANCE, Issue 1 2005
    Gerald T. Garvey
    G32; D23; J33 Abstract Various theoretical models show that managerial compensation schemes can reduce the distortionary effects of financial leverage. There is mixed evidence as to whether highly levered firms offer less stock-based compensation, a common prediction of such models. Both the theoretical and empirical research, however, have overlooked the leverage provided by executive stock options. In principle, adjusting the exercise prices of executive stock options can mitigate the risk incentive effects of financial leverage. We show that the near-universal practice of setting option exercise prices near the prevailing stock price at the date of grant effectively undoes most of the effects of financial leverage. In a large cross-sectional sample of Canadian option-granting firms, we find evidence that executives' incentives to take equity risk are negatively rather than positively related to the leverage of their employers. [source]


    When do high-level managers believe they can influence the stock price?

    HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2010
    Antecedents of stock price expectancy cognitions
    Abstract Stock based rewards are often used to motivate high-level managers to take actions to increase the stock price of the firm. However, numerous constraints may weaken the perceived link between individual effort and stock price appreciation for many recipients. This study introduces a new construct, stock price expectancy, which we define as individuals' perceptions of influence over their firm's stock price. We examined its antecedents in a sample of 349 high-level U.S. managers and found that employment at corporate headquarters, firm size, hierarchical level, and contact with investment analysts predicted stock price expectancy perceptions. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


    Competition and Market Structure of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations

    INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF FINANCE, Issue 3-4 2007
    YOUNGSOO KIM
    ABSTRACT In this paper, we study the relation among market structure, trading costs, and competition in National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ). In particular, we address the following questions: Do NASDAQ dealers exercise market power and extract economic rents in setting bid-ask spread? How persistent is the market power of dominant dealers? Our estimate of the rent is approximately ¢8.76, or 0.54% of stock price. The half-life of the persistence of this rent is approximately 20 months for the entire sample, while the half-life of younger stocks tend to be shorter than those of more mature stocks. Our result supports Schultz: NASDAQ dealers make markets only for stocks where they have competitive advantages in accessing order flow and in information. It might take a while before a market maker poses effective competition to existing dominant market makers. In the meantime, incumbent market makers are able to exercise market power and appear to earn abnormally large profits. [source]


    Making Financial Goals and Reporting Policies Serve

    JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 4 2004
    Corporate Strategy: The Case of Progressive Insurance
    The main. nancial goal of Progressive Insurance, the third largest underwriter of auto insurance in the U.S., has remained the same since the late 1960s. Expressed in three words, "96 and grow," the goal tells the company's managers to pursue all growth opportunities while maintaining a "combined ratio" no higher than 96, or what amounts to a minimum 4% spread between revenues (premiums) and costs (including expected losses). Thanks in part to the clarity of mission provided by this goal, the company has produced an average 15% rate of growth in revenues and earnings, along with a remarkably stable 15% return for its shareholders, since going public in 1971. Progressive's simplicity and clarity of mission is also partly responsible for another of the company's distinctive policies: product pricing that, while disciplined, is aggressive and highly decentralized. Having invested some $500 million per year developing statistical models for pricing individual customer risks and acquisition costs, the company was among the. rst in its industry to underwrite "non-standard" risks. And aided by sophisticated pricing models, each of Progressive's 100 or so local product managers are charged with adapting those models to come up with premiums for their own regions. To go along with its strategic and organizational innovations, Progressive also has an innovative disclosure policy. Apart from SEC reports, the company's communications seldom mention earnings or earnings per share, and the company has never provided earnings guidance. With the passage of Reg. FD in late 2000, the company brie. y considered offering guidance. But in the spring of 2001, the board decided instead to provide monthly releases of its realized combined ratio. Since adoption of this new disclosure policy, Progressive has seen a 50% drop in the volatility of its stock price. [source]


    Identifying and Attracting the "right" Investors: Evidence on the Behavior of Institutional Investors

    JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 4 2004
    Brian Bushee
    This article summarizes the findings of research the author has conducted over the past seven years that aims to answer a number of questions about institutional investors: Are there significant differences among institutional investors in time horizon and other trading practices that would enable such investors to be classified into types on the basis of their observable behavior? Assuming the answer to the first is yes, do corporate managers respond differently to the pressures created by different types of investors, and, by implication, are certain kinds of investors more desirable from corporate management's point of view? What kinds of companies tend to attract each type of investor, and how does a company's disclosure policy affect that process? The author's approach identifies three categories of institutional investors: (1) "transient" institutions, which exhibit high portfolio turnover and own small stakes in portfolio companies; (2) "dedicated" holders, which provide stable ownership and take large positions in individual firms; and (3) "quasi-indexers," which also trade infrequently but own small stakes (similar to an index strategy). As might be expected, the disproportionate presence of transient institutions in a company's investor base appears to intensify pressure for short-term performance while also resulting in excess volatility in the stock price. Also not surprising, transient investors are attracted to companies with investor relations activities geared toward forward-looking information and "news events," like management earnings forecasts, that constitute trading opportunities for such investors. By contrast, quasi-indexers and dedicated institutions are largely insensitive to shortterm performance and their presence is associated with lower stock price volatility. The research also suggests that companies that focus their disclosure activities on historical information as opposed to earnings forecasts tend to attract quasi-indexers instead of transient investors. In sum, the author's research suggests that changes in disclosure practices have the potential to shift the composition of a firm's investor base away from transient investors and toward more patient capital. By removing some of the external pressures for short-term performance, such a shift could encourage managers to establish a culture based on long-run value maximization. [source]


    SIX CHALLENGES IN DESIGNING EQUITY-BASED PAY

    JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 3 2003
    Brian J. Hall
    The past two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the equitybased pay of U.S. corporate executives, an increase that has been driven almost entirely by the explosion of stock option grants. When properly designed, equity-based pay can raise corporate productivity and shareholder value by helping companies attract, motivate, and retain talented managers. But there are good reasons to question whether the current forms of U.S. equity pay are optimal. In many cases, substantial stock and option payoffs to top executives,particularly those who cashed out much of their holdings near the top of the market,appear to have come at the expense of their shareholders, generating considerable skepticism about not just executive pay practices, but the overall quality of U.S. corporate governance. At the same time, many companies that have experienced sharp stock price declines are now struggling with the problem of retaining employees holding lots of deep-underwater options. This article discusses the design of equity-based pay plans that aim to motivate sustainable, or long-run, value creation. As a first step, the author recommends the use of longer vesting periods and other requirements on executive stock and option holdings, both to limit managers' ability to "time" the market and to reduce their incentives to take shortsighted actions that increase near-term earnings at the expense of longer-term cash flow. Besides requiring "more permanent" holdings, the author also proposes a change in how stock options are issued. In place of popular "fixed value" plans that adjust the number of options awarded each year to reflect changes in the share price (and that effectively reward management for poor performance by granting more options when the price falls, and fewer when it rises), the author recommends the use of "fixed number" plans that avoid this unintended distortion of incentives. As the author also notes, there is considerable confusion about the real economic cost of options relative to stock. Part of the confusion stems, of course, from current GAAP accounting, which allows companies to report the issuance of at-the-money options as costless and so creates a bias against stock and other forms of compensation. But, coming on top of the "opportunity cost" of executive stock options to the company's shareholders, there is another, potentially significant cost of options (and, to a lesser extent, stock) that arises from the propensity of executives and employees to place a lower value on company stock and options than well-diversified outside investors. The author's conclusion is that grants of (slow-vesting) stock are likely to have at least three significant advantages over employee stock options: ,they are more highly valued by executives and employees (per dollar of cost to shareholders); ,they continue to provide reasonably strong ownership incentives and retention power, regardless of whether the stock price rises or falls, because they don't go underwater; and ,the value of such grants is much more transparent to stockholders, employees, and the press. [source]


    INVESTOR RELATIONS, LIQUIDITY, AND STOCK PRICES

    JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 4 2000
    Michael J. Brennan
    Although the first investor relations department was established by General Electric as long ago as 1952, the role of investor relations (IR) is one that has largely escaped scientific analysis and academic scrutiny. This article attempts to demonstrate the importance of a company's IR activities for its stock price by establishing a clear chain of causation between the following: 1,corporate IR activities and the number of stock analysts who follow the firm; 2,the number of analysts who follow the firm and the liquidity of trading in the firm's shares; 3,the liquidity of the firm's shares and its required rate of return, or cost of capital. The authors begin by presenting evidence that corporate IR activities, in the form of high levels of disclosure and presentations to investment analysts, increase the number of analysts who follow the firm by reducing their cost of acquiring information. Studies have also shown that more effective IR tends to improve the accuracy of analyst forecasts and the degree of agreement among analysts. Second, the authors summarize their own research showing that the number of analysts who follow a firm has a positive effect on the liquidity of the firm's shares. More specifically, their findings can be interpreted as saying that, for the average company, coverage by six additional analysts reduces "market-impact costs" (using a measure known as Kyle's lambda) by 28%, holding volume constant. And when the indirect effect of increased analyst coverage through expanded volume is taken into account, the reduction in trading costs is estimated to be as high as 85%. The final link in the chain of analysis is the growing evidence (much of it reviewed in the preceding article) that increased liquidity leads to a lower cost of capital and thus higher stock prices. In sum, a firm can reduce its cost of capital and increase its stock price through more effective investor relations activities, which reduce the cost of information to the market and to investment analysts in particular. [source]


    To buy or to sell: cultural differences in stock market decisions based on price trends

    JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DECISION MAKING, Issue 4 2008
    Li-Jun Ji
    Abstract Four studies compared the stock market decisions of Canadians and Chinese. In two studies using simple stock market trends, compared with Chinese, Canadians were more willing to sell and less willing to buy falling stock. But when the stock price was rising, the opposite occurred: Canadians were more willing to buy and less willing to sell. A third study showed that for complex stock price trends, Canadians were strongly influenced by the most recent price trends: they tended to predict that recent trends would continue and made selling decisions without considering the rest of the trend patterns; whereas the Chinese made reversal predictions for the dominant trends and made decisions that took both recent and early trends into consideration. Study 4 replicated the finding with experienced individual investors. These findings are consistent with the previous literature on different lay theories of change held by Chinese and North Americans. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    Residual income, non-earnings information, and information content

    JOURNAL OF FORECASTING, Issue 6 2009
    Ruey S. Tsay
    Abstract We extend Ohlson's (1995) model and examine the relationship between returns and residual income that incorporate analysts' earnings forecasts and other non-earnings information variables in the balance sheet, namely default probability and agency cost of a debt covenant contract. We further divide the sample based on bankruptcy (agency) costs, earnings components and growth opportunities of a firm to explore how these factors affect the returns,residual income link. We find that the relative predictive ability for contemporaneous stock price by considering other earnings and non-earnings information is better than that of models without non-earnings information. If the bankruptcy (agency) cost of a firm is higher, its information role in the firm's equity valuation becomes more important and the accuracy of price prediction is therefore higher. As for non-earnings information, if bankruptcy (agency) cost is lower, the information role becomes more relevant, and the earnings response coefficient is hence higher. Moreover, the decomposition of unexpected residual income into permanent and transitory components induces more information than that of the unexpected residual income alone. The permanent component has a larger impact than the transitory component in explaining abnormal returns. The market and industry properties and growth opportunity also have incremental explanatory power in valuation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    Nonlinear Cointegration Relationships Between Non-Life Insurance Premiums and Financial Markets

    JOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE, Issue 3 2009
    Fredj Jawadi
    The aim of this article is to study the adjustment dynamics of the non-life insurance premium (NLIP) and test its dependence to the financial markets in five countries (Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States). First, we justify the linkage between the insurance and the financial markets by the underwriting cycle theory and financial models of insurance pricing. Second, we examine the relationship between the NLIP, the interest rate, and the stock price using the recent developments of nonlinear econometrics. We use threshold cointegration models: the switching transition error correction models (STECM). We show that STECM perform better than a linear error correction model (LECM) to reproduce the NLIP dynamics. Our empirical results show that the adjustment of the NLIP in France, Japan, and the United States is rather discontinuous, asymmetrical, and nonlinear. Moreover, we suggest a strong evidence of significant linkages between insurance and financial markets, show two regimes for the NLIP, and find that the NLIP adjustment toward equilibrium is time varying with a convergence speed that varies according to the insurance disequilibrium size. [source]


    PRICING AND HEDGING AMERICAN OPTIONS ANALYTICALLY: A PERTURBATION METHOD

    MATHEMATICAL FINANCE, Issue 1 2010
    Jin E. Zhang
    This paper studies the critical stock price of American options with continuous dividend yield. We solve the integral equation and derive a new analytical formula in a series form for the critical stock price. American options can be priced and hedged analytically with the help of our critical-stock-price formula. Numerical tests show that our formula gives very accurate prices. With the error well controlled, our formula is now ready for traders to use in pricing and hedging the S&P 100 index options and for the Chicago Board Options Exchange to use in computing the VXO volatility index. [source]


    TERM STRUCTURES OF IMPLIED VOLATILITIES: ABSENCE OF ARBITRAGE AND EXISTENCE RESULTS

    MATHEMATICAL FINANCE, Issue 1 2008
    Martin Schweizer
    This paper studies modeling and existence issues for market models of stochastic implied volatility in a continuous-time framework with one stock, one bank account, and a family of European options for all maturities with a fixed payoff function h. We first characterize absence of arbitrage in terms of drift conditions for the forward implied volatilities corresponding to a general convex h. For the resulting infinite system of SDEs for the stock and all the forward implied volatilities, we then study the question of solvability and provide sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of a solution. We do this for two examples of h, namely, calls with a fixed strike and a fixed power of the terminal stock price, and we give explicit examples of volatility coefficients satisfying the required assumptions. [source]


    PROPERTIES OF OPTION PRICES IN MODELS WITH JUMPS

    MATHEMATICAL FINANCE, Issue 3 2007
    Erik Ekström
    We study convexity and monotonicity properties of option prices in a model with jumps using the fact that these prices satisfy certain parabolic integro,differential equations. Conditions are provided under which preservation of convexity holds, i.e., under which the value, calculated under a chosen martingale measure, of an option with a convex contract function is convex as a function of the underlying stock price. The preservation of convexity is then used to derive monotonicity properties of the option value with respect to the different parameters of the model, such as the volatility, the jump size, and the jump intensity. [source]


    A MULTINOMIAL APPROXIMATION FOR AMERICAN OPTION PRICES IN LÉVY PROCESS MODELS

    MATHEMATICAL FINANCE, Issue 4 2006
    Ross A. Maller
    This paper gives a tree-based method for pricing American options in models where the stock price follows a general exponential Lévy process. A multinomial model for approximating the stock price process, which can be viewed as generalizing the binomial model of Cox, Ross, and Rubinstein (1979) for geometric Brownian motion, is developed. Under mild conditions, it is proved that the stock price process and the prices of American-type options on the stock, calculated from the multinomial model, converge to the corresponding prices under the continuous time Lévy process model. Explicit illustrations are given for the variance gamma model and the normal inverse Gaussian process when the option is an American put, but the procedure is applicable to a much wider class of derivatives including some path-dependent options. Our approach overcomes some practical difficulties that have previously been encountered when the Lévy process has infinite activity. [source]


    PRICING EQUITY DERIVATIVES SUBJECT TO BANKRUPTCY

    MATHEMATICAL FINANCE, Issue 2 2006
    Vadim Linetsky
    We solve in closed form a parsimonious extension of the Black,Scholes,Merton model with bankruptcy where the hazard rate of bankruptcy is a negative power of the stock price. Combining a scale change and a measure change, the model dynamics is reduced to a linear stochastic differential equation whose solution is a diffusion process that plays a central role in the pricing of Asian options. The solution is in the form of a spectral expansion associated with the diffusion infinitesimal generator. The latter is closely related to the Schrödinger operator with Morse potential. Pricing formulas for both corporate bonds and stock options are obtained in closed form. Term credit spreads on corporate bonds and implied volatility skews of stock options are closely linked in this model, with parameters of the hazard rate specification controlling both the shape of the term structure of credit spreads and the slope of the implied volatility skew. Our analytical formulas are easy to implement and should prove useful to researchers and practitioners in corporate debt and equity derivatives markets. [source]


    CRITICAL PRICE NEAR MATURITY FOR AN AMERICAN OPTION ON A DIVIDEND-PAYING STOCK IN A LOCAL VOLATILITY MODEL

    MATHEMATICAL FINANCE, Issue 3 2005
    Etienne ChevalierArticle first published online: 10 JUN 200
    We consider an American put option on a dividend-paying stock whose volatility is a function of the stock value. Near the maturity of this option, an expansion of the critical stock price is given. If the stock dividend rate is greater than the market interest rate, the payoff function is smooth near the limit of the critical price. We deduce an expansion of the critical price near maturity from an expansion of the value function of an optimal stopping problem. It turns out that the behavior of the critical price is parabolic. In the other case, we are in a less regular situation and an extra logarithmic factor appears. To prove this result, we show that the American and European critical prices have the same first-order behavior near maturity. Finally, in order to get an expansion of the European critical price, we use a parity formula for exchanging the strike price and the spot price in the value functions of European puts. [source]