Abstract
What do we mean by option? An option is the right (but not the obligation) to buy or sell a risky asset at a prespecified fixed price within a specified period. An option is a financial instrument that allows —amongst other things— to make a bet on rising or falling values of an underlying asset. The underlying asset typically is a stock, or a parcel of shares of a company. Other examples of underlyings include stock indices (as the Dow Jones Industrial Average), currencies, or commodities. Since the value of an option depends on the value of the underlying asset, options and other related financial instruments are called derivatives (→ Appendix A2). An option is a contract between two parties about trading the asset at a certain future time. One party is the writer, often a bank, who fixes the terms of the option contract and sells the option. The other party ist the holder, who purchases the option, paying the market price, which is called premium. How to calculate a fair value of the premium is a central theme of this book. The holder of the option must decide what to do with the rights the option contract grants. The decision will depend on the market situation, and on the type of option. There are numerous different types of options, which are not all of interest to this book. In Chapter 1 we concentrate on standard options, also known as vanilla options. This Section 1.1 introduces important terms.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Seydel, R.U. (2006). Modeling Tools for Financial Options. In: Tools for Computational Finance. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-27926-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-27926-1_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-27923-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-27926-6
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)