I perform a regression analysis to test two of the most famous heuristic rules existing in the literature about the behavior of the implied volatility surface. These rules are the sticky delta rule and the sticky strike rule. I present a new specification to test the sticky strike rule, which...

In recent years there has been a remarkable growth of volatility options. In particular, VIX options are among the most actively trading contracts at CBOE. These options exhibit upward sloping volatility skew and the shape of the skew is largely independent of the volatility level. To take into...

Target volatility options (TVO) are a new class of derivatives whose payoff depends on some measure of volatility. These options allow investors to take a joint exposure to the evolution of the underlying asset, as well as to its realized volatility. For instance, a target volatility call can be...

Outperformance options allow investors to benefit from a view on the relative performance of two underlying assets without taking any directional exposure to the evolution of the market. These structures exhibit high sensitivity to the correlation between the underlying assets and are usually...

This article presents a Markov chain framework to characterize the behavior of the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX index). Two possible regimes are considered: high volatility and low volatility. The specification accounts for deviations from normality and the existence of persistence in the...

This article postulates a flexible specification for the implied volatility surface, which accounts for the existence of volatility skew and term structure. I show that it is possible to express the local volatility function in terms of the implied volatility. I then obtain an analytic formula...

European quanto derivatives are usually priced using the well known quanto adjustment corresponding to the forward of the quantoed asset under the assumptions of the Black-Scholes model. In this article, I present the quanto adjustment corresponding to the local volatility model that allows...

The empirical tests of traditional structural models of credit risk tend to indicate that such models have been unsuccessful in the modeling of credit spreads. To address these negative findings some authors introduce single-factor stochastic volatility specifications and/or jumps.In the yield...

Empirical evidence shows that, in equity options markets, the slope of the skew is largely independent of the volatility level. Single-factor stochastic volatility models are not flexible enough to account for the stochastic behavior of the skew. On the other hand, multifactor stochastic...