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Black's Approximation
In finance, Black's approximation is an approximate method for computing the value of an American call option on a stock paying a single dividend. It was described by Fischer Black in 1975.F. Black: Fact and fantasy in the use of options, FAJ, July–August 1975, pp.36 The Black–Scholes formula (hereinafter, "BS Formula") provides an explicit equation for the value of a call option on a non-dividend paying stock. In case the stock pays one or more discrete dividend(s) no closed formula is known, but several approximations can be used, or else the Black–Scholes PDE will have to be solved numerically. One such approximation is described here. See also Black–Scholes model#American options. The method essentially entails using the BS formula to compute the value of two European call options: (1) A European call with the same maturity as the American call being valued, but with the stock price reduced by the present value of the dividend, and (2) A European call that expires o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finance
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of financial economics bridges the two). Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance. In a financial system, assets are bought, sold, or traded as financial instruments, such as currencies, loans, bonds, shares, stocks, options, futures, etc. Assets can also be banked, invested, and insured to maximize value and minimize loss. In practice, risks are always present in any financial action and entities. A broad range of subfields within finance exist due to its wide scope. Asset, money, risk and investment management aim to maximize value and minimize volatility. Financial analysis is viability, stability, and profitabili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fischer Black
Fischer Sheffey Black (January 11, 1938 – August 30, 1995) was an American economist, best known as one of the authors of the Black–Scholes equation. Background Fischer Sheffey Black was born on January 11, 1938. He graduated from Harvard College in 1959 and received a PhD in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1964. He was initially expelled from the PhD program due to his inability to settle on a thesis topic, having switched from physics to mathematics, then to computers and artificial intelligence. Black joined the consultancy Bolt, Beranek and Newman, working on a system for artificial intelligence. He spent a summer developing his ideas at the RAND corporation. He became a student of MIT professor Marvin Minsky,Perry Mehrling, "Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance", Wiley (2005), 400 pages, and was later able to submit his research for completion of the Harvard PhD. Black joined Arthur D. Little, where he was first exposed to economic an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black–Scholes Model
The Black–Scholes or Black–Scholes–Merton model is a mathematical model for the dynamics of a financial market containing derivative investment instruments. From the parabolic partial differential equation in the model, known as the Black–Scholes equation, one can deduce the Black–Scholes formula, which gives a theoretical estimate of the price of European-style options and shows that the option has a ''unique'' price given the risk of the security and its expected return (instead replacing the security's expected return with the risk-neutral rate). The equation and model are named after economists Fischer Black and Myron Scholes; Robert C. Merton, who first wrote an academic paper on the subject, is sometimes also credited. The main principle behind the model is to hedge the option by buying and selling the underlying asset in a specific way to eliminate risk. This type of hedging is called "continuously revised delta hedging" and is the basis of more complicated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cumulative Distribution Function
In probability theory and statistics, the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of a real-valued random variable X, or just distribution function of X, evaluated at x, is the probability that X will take a value less than or equal to x. Every probability distribution supported on the real numbers, discrete or "mixed" as well as continuous, is uniquely identified by an ''upwards continuous'' ''monotonic increasing'' cumulative distribution function F : \mathbb R \rightarrow ,1/math> satisfying \lim_F(x)=0 and \lim_F(x)=1. In the case of a scalar continuous distribution, it gives the area under the probability density function from minus infinity to x. Cumulative distribution functions are also used to specify the distribution of multivariate random variables. Definition The cumulative distribution function of a real-valued random variable X is the function given by where the right-hand side represents the probability that the random variable X takes on a value less ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Standard Normal Distribution
In statistics, a normal distribution or Gaussian distribution is a type of continuous probability distribution for a real-valued random variable. The general form of its probability density function is : f(x) = \frac e^ The parameter \mu is the mean or expectation of the distribution (and also its median and mode), while the parameter \sigma is its standard deviation. The variance of the distribution is \sigma^2. A random variable with a Gaussian distribution is said to be normally distributed, and is called a normal deviate. Normal distributions are important in statistics and are often used in the natural and social sciences to represent real-valued random variables whose distributions are not known. Their importance is partly due to the central limit theorem. It states that, under some conditions, the average of many samples (observations) of a random variable with finite mean and variance is itself a random variable—whose distribution converges to a normal dist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Risk-free Interest Rate
The risk-free rate of return, usually shortened to the risk-free rate, is the rate of return of a hypothetical investment with scheduled payments over a fixed period of time that is assumed to meet all payment obligations. Since the risk-free rate can be obtained with no risk, any other investment having some risk will have to have a higher rate of return in order to induce any investors to hold it. In practice, to infer the risk-free interest rate in a particular currency, market participants often choose the yield to maturity on a risk-free bond issued by a government of the same currency whose risks of default are so low as to be negligible. For example, the rate of return on T-bills is sometimes seen as the risk-free rate of return in US dollars. Theoretical measurement As stated by Malcolm Kemp in chapter five of his book ''Market Consistency: Model Calibration in Imperfect Markets'', the risk-free rate means different things to different people and there is no consensus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volatility (finance)
In finance, volatility (usually denoted by ''σ'') is the degree of variation of a trading price series over time, usually measured by the standard deviation of logarithmic returns. Historic volatility measures a time series of past market prices. Implied volatility looks forward in time, being derived from the market price of a market-traded derivative (in particular, an option). Volatility terminology Volatility as described here refers to the actual volatility, more specifically: * actual current volatility of a financial instrument for a specified period (for example 30 days or 90 days), based on historical prices over the specified period with the last observation the most recent price. * actual historical volatility which refers to the volatility of a financial instrument over a specified period but with the last observation on a date in the past **near synonymous is realized volatility, the square root of the realized variance, in turn calculated using the sum of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Financial Models
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of financial economics bridges the two). Finance activities take place in Financial system, financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into Personal finance, personal, Corporate finance, corporate, and public finance. In a financial system, assets are bought, sold, or traded as Financial instrument, financial instruments, such as Currency, currencies, Loan, loans, Bond (finance), bonds, Share (finance), shares, Stock, stocks, Option (finance), options, Futures contract, futures, etc. Assets can also be Bank, banked, Investment, invested, and Insurance, insured to maximize value and minimize loss. In practice, Financial risk, risks are alway ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
