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A closed-form approximation for pricing spread options on futures under a mean-reverting spot price model with multiscale stochastic volatility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2023

Seung-Yong Baek
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea
Jeong-Hoon Kim*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: jhkim96@yonsei.ac.kr
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Abstract

Commodity spot prices tend to revert to some long-term mean level and most commodity derivatives are based on futures prices, not on spot prices. So, we consider spread options on futures instead of spot or spot index, where the log spot price follows a mean-reverting process. The volatility of the mean-reverting process is driven by two different (fast and slow) scale factors. We use asymptotic analysis to obtain a closed-form approximation of the futures prices and a closed-form formula for the approximate prices of spread options on the futures. The overall improvement of our analytic formula over the classical Kirk–Bjerksund–Sternsland (KBS) formula is discussed via numerical experiments.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. The term-structures of WTI and Brent crude oil futures for the period from May 2022 to May 2024

Figure 1

Figure 2. The surface of the spread option price as a function of the correlation between two underlyings and the moneyness with $\epsilon =0.1$, $\delta =0.01$ and $T_0=0.5$.

Figure 2

Table 1. The spread option prices from the Kirk–Bjerksund–Stensland (KBS) result, our pricing formula and MC simulation with $\epsilon =0.1$, $\delta =0.01$ and $T_0=0.5$.

Figure 3

Figure 3. The behavior of the spread option prices for various values of $\epsilon$ with $\delta =0.01$ and $T_0=0.5$.

Figure 4

Figure 4. WTI and Brent option implied volatilities (dotted lines) and calibrated volatility skews (solid lines) for several choices of maturity.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Spread option prices against moneyness and time to maturity based on the calibrated parameters.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Market prices and spread option prices with the calibrated parameters.