Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Discussion Papers,
Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science

No 2006/20: Closed form spread option valuation

Petter Bjerksund () and Gunnar Stensland ()
Additional contact information
Petter Bjerksund: Dept. of Finance and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH , Department of Finance and Management Science, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway
Gunnar Stensland: Dept. of Finance and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH , Department of Finance and Management Science, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway

Abstract: This paper considers the valuation of a spread call when asset prices are lognormal. The implicit strategy of the Kirk formula is to exercise if the price of the long asset exceeds a given power function of the price of the short asset. We derive a formula for the spread call value, conditional on following this feasible but non-optimal exercise strategy. Numerical investigations indicate that the lower bound produced by our formula is extremely accurate. The precision is much higher than the Kirk formula. Moreover, optimizing with respect to the strategy parameters (which corresponds to the Carmona-Durrleman procedure) yields only a marginal improvement of accuracy (if any).

Keywords: Spread option; closed form; valuation formula; lognormal asset prices

JEL-codes: C63; D81; G12; G13

18 pages, December 1, 2006

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