A 'Horse Race' Among Competing Option Pricing Models Using S&P 500 Index Options
34 Pages Posted: 24 Mar 2008
Date Written: February 1, 2007
Abstract
The last three decades have witnessed a whole array of option pricing models. We compare the predictive performances of a selection of models by carrying out a horse race on S&P 500 index options along the lines of Jackwerth and Rubinstein (2001). The models we consider include: Black-Scholes, trader rules, Heston's stochastic volatility model, Merton's jump diffusion models with and without stochastic volatility, and more recent Levy type models. Trader rules still dominate mathematically more sophisticated models, and the performance of the trader rules is further improved by incorporating the stable index skew pattern documented in Li and Pearson (2005). Furthermore, after incorporating the stable index skew pattern, the Black-Scholes model beats all mathematically more sophisticated models in almost all cases. Mathematically more sophisticated models vary in their overall performance and their relative accuracy in forecasting future volatility levels and future volatility skew shapes.
Keywords: option pricing models, performance comparison, implied skew
JEL Classification: G12, G13
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Transform Analysis and Asset Pricing for Affine Jump-Diffusions
By Darrell Duffie, Jun Pan, ...
-
Transform Analysis and Asset Pricing for Affine Jump-Diffusions
By Darrell Duffie, Jun Pan, ...
-
The Impact of Jumps in Volatility and Returns
By Michael S. Johannes, Bjorn Eraker, ...
-
Implied Volatility Functions: Empirical Tests
By Bernard Dumas, Jeff Fleming, ...
-
Recovering Risk Aversion from Option Prices and Realized Returns
-
Recovering Probabilities and Risk Aversion from Option Prices and Realized Returns
-
Stock Return Characteristics, Skew Laws, and the Differential Pricing of Individual Equity Options
By Gurdip Bakshi, Nikunj Kapadia, ...
-
Stock Return Characteristics, Skew Laws, and the Differential Pricing of Individual Equity Options
By Nikunj Kapadia, Gurdip Bakshi, ...
-
Nonparametric Estimation of State-Price Densities Implicit in Financial Asset Prices
By Yacine Ait-sahalia and Andrew W. Lo
