# Mathematical finance

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Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling of financial markets. Generally, mathematical finance will derive and extend the mathematical or numerical models without necessarily establishing a link to financial theory, taking observed market prices as input. Mathematical consistency is required, not compatibility with economic theory. Thus, for example, while a financial economist might study the structural reasons why a company may have a certain share price, a financial mathematician may take the share price as a given, and attempt to use stochastic calculus to obtain the corresponding value of derivatives of the stock (see: Valuation of options; Financial modeling; Asset pricing ). The fundamental theorem of arbitrage-free pricing is one of the key theorems in mathematical finance, while the Black–Scholes equation and formula are amongst the key results. [1]

Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as science, engineering, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical science and specialized knowledge. The term "applied mathematics" also describes the professional specialty in which mathematicians work on practical problems by formulating and studying mathematical models.

A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities and derivatives at low transaction costs. Securities include stocks and bonds, and precious metals.

A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences and engineering disciplines, as well as in the social sciences.

## Contents

Mathematical finance also overlaps heavily with the fields of computational finance and financial engineering. The latter focuses on applications and modeling, often by help of stochastic asset models (see: Quantitative analyst ), while the former focuses, in addition to analysis, on building tools of implementation for the models. In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that require advanced quantitative techniques: derivatives pricing on the one hand, and risk- and portfolio management on the other. [2]

Computational finance is a branch of applied computer science that deals with problems of practical interest in finance. Some slightly different definitions are the study of data and algorithms currently used in finance and the mathematics of computer programs that realize financial models or systems.

Financial engineering is a multidisciplinary field involving financial theory, methods of engineering, tools of mathematics and the practice of programming. It has also been defined as the application of technical methods, especially from mathematical finance and computational finance, in the practice of finance.

A quantitative analyst is a person who specializes in the application of mathematical and statistical methods to financial and risk management problems. The occupation is similar to those in industrial mathematics in other industries.

French mathematician Louis Bachelier is considered the author of the first scholarly work on mathematical finance, published in 1900. But mathematical finance emerged as a discipline in the 1970s, following the work of Fischer Black, Myron Scholes and Robert Merton on option pricing theory.

Louis Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Bachelier was a French mathematician at the turn of the 20th century. He is credited with being the first person to model the stochastic process now called Brownian motion, as part of his PhD thesis The Theory of Speculation.

Fischer Sheffey Black was an American economist, best known as one of the authors of the famous Black–Scholes equation.

Myron Samuel Scholes is a Canadian-American financial economist. Scholes is the Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, and co-originator of the Black–Scholes options pricing model. Scholes is currently the chairman of the Board of Economic Advisers of Stamos Capital Partners. Previously he served as the chairman of Platinum Grove Asset Management and on the Dimensional Fund Advisors board of directors, American Century Mutual Fund board of directors and the Cutwater Advisory Board. He was a principal and limited partner at Long-Term Capital Management, L.P. and a managing director at Salomon Brothers. Other positions Scholes held include the Edward Eagle Brown Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago, senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, director of the Center for Research in Security Prices, and professor of finance at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Scholes earned his PhD at the University of Chicago.

Today many universities offer degree and research programs in mathematical finance.

## History: Q versus P

There are two separate branches of finance that require advanced quantitative techniques: derivatives pricing, and risk and portfolio management. One of the main differences is that they use different probabilities such as the risk-neutral probability (or arbitrage-pricing probability), denoted by "Q", and the actual (or actuarial) probability, denoted by "P".

### Derivatives pricing: the Q world

 Goal "extrapolate the present" Environment risk-neutral probability ${\displaystyle \mathbb {Q} }$ Processes continuous-time martingales Dimension low Tools Itō calculus, PDEs Challenges calibration Business sell-side

The goal of derivatives pricing is to determine the fair price of a given security in terms of more liquid securities whose price is determined by the law of supply and demand. The meaning of "fair" depends, of course, on whether one considers buying or selling the security. Examples of securities being priced are plain vanilla and exotic options, convertible bonds, etc.

In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is a market's feature whereby an individual or firm can quickly purchase or sell an asset without causing a drastic change in the asset's price. Liquidity is about how big the trade-off is between the speed of the sale and the price it can be sold for. In a liquid market, the trade-off is mild: selling quickly will not reduce the price much. In a relatively illiquid market, selling it quickly will require cutting its price by some amount.

In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It postulates that, holding all else equal, in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good, or other traded item such as labor or liquid financial assets, will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded will equal the quantity supplied, resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity transacted.

In finance, an option is a contract which gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset or instrument at a specified strike price prior to or on a specified date, depending on the form of the option. The strike price may be set by reference to the spot price of the underlying security or commodity on the day an option is taken out, or it may be fixed at a discount or at a premium. The seller has the corresponding obligation to fulfill the transaction – to sell or buy – if the buyer (owner) "exercises" the option. An option that conveys to the owner the right to buy at a specific price is referred to as a call; an option that conveys the right of the owner to sell at a specific price is referred to as a put. Both are commonly traded, but the call option is more frequently discussed.

Once a fair price has been determined, the sell-side trader can make a market on the security. Therefore, derivatives pricing is a complex "extrapolation" exercise to define the current market value of a security, which is then used by the sell-side community. Quantitative derivatives pricing was initiated by Louis Bachelier in The Theory of Speculation ("Théorie de la spéculation", published 1900), with the introduction of the most basic and most influential of processes, the Brownian motion, and its applications to the pricing of options. [3] [4] The Brownian motion is derived using the Langevin equation and the discrete random walk. [5] Bachelier modeled the time series of changes in the logarithm of stock prices as a random walk in which the short-term changes had a finite variance. This causes longer-term changes to follow a Gaussian distribution. [6]

Brownian motion or pedesis is the random motion of particles suspended in a fluid resulting from their collision with the fast-moving molecules in the fluid.

In physics, Langevin equation is a stochastic differential equation describing the time evolution of a subset of the degrees of freedom. These degrees of freedom typically are collective (macroscopic) variables changing only slowly in comparison to the other (microscopic) variables of the system. The fast (microscopic) variables are responsible for the stochastic nature of the Langevin equation.

A random walk is a mathematical object, known as a stochastic or random process, that describes a path that consists of a succession of random steps on some mathematical space such as the integers. An elementary example of a random walk is the random walk on the integer number line, , which starts at 0 and at each step moves +1 or −1 with equal probability. Other examples include the path traced by a molecule as it travels in a liquid or a gas, the search path of a foraging animal, the price of a fluctuating stock and the financial status of a gambler: all can be approximated by random walk models, even though they may not be truly random in reality. As illustrated by those examples, random walks have applications to engineering and many scientific fields including ecology, psychology, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology as well as economics. Random walks explain the observed behaviors of many processes in these fields, and thus serve as a fundamental model for the recorded stochastic activity. As a more mathematical application, the value of π can be approximated by the use of random walk in an agent-based modeling environment. The term random walk was first introduced by Karl Pearson in 1905.

The theory remained dormant until Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, along with fundamental contributions by Robert C. Merton, applied the second most influential process, the geometric Brownian motion, to option pricing. For this M. Scholes and R. Merton were awarded the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Black was ineligible for the prize because of his death in 1995. [7]

Robert Cox Merton is an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, especially the first continuous-time option pricing model, the Black–Scholes–Merton model. In 1993 Merton co-founded hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. In 1997 he received the Nobel Prize for his contributions in Economics.

A geometric Brownian motion (GBM) is a continuous-time stochastic process in which the logarithm of the randomly varying quantity follows a Brownian motion with drift. It is an important example of stochastic processes satisfying a stochastic differential equation (SDE); in particular, it is used in mathematical finance to model stock prices in the Black–Scholes model.

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics, is an award for outstanding contributions to the field of economics, and generally regarded as the most prestigious award for that field. The award's official name is The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

The next important step was the fundamental theorem of asset pricing by Harrison and Pliska (1981), according to which the suitably normalized current price P0 of a security is arbitrage-free, and thus truly fair only if there exists a stochastic process Pt with constant expected value which describes its future evolution: [8]

${\displaystyle P_{0}=\mathbf {E} _{0}(P_{t})}$

(1 )

A process satisfying ( 1 ) is called a "martingale". A martingale does not reward risk. Thus the probability of the normalized security price process is called "risk-neutral" and is typically denoted by the blackboard font letter "${\displaystyle \mathbb {Q} }$".

The relationship ( 1 ) must hold for all times t: therefore the processes used for derivatives pricing are naturally set in continuous time.

The quants who operate in the Q world of derivatives pricing are specialists with deep knowledge of the specific products they model.

Securities are priced individually, and thus the problems in the Q world are low-dimensional in nature. Calibration is one of the main challenges of the Q world: once a continuous-time parametric process has been calibrated to a set of traded securities through a relationship such as (1), a similar relationship is used to define the price of new derivatives.

The main quantitative tools necessary to handle continuous-time Q-processes are Itō's stochastic calculus, simulation and partial differential equations (PDE's).

### Risk and portfolio management: the P world

 Goal "model the future" Environment real-world probability ${\displaystyle \mathbb {P} }$ Processes discrete-time series Dimension large Tools multivariate statistics Challenges estimation Business buy-side

Risk and portfolio management aims at modeling the statistically derived probability distribution of the market prices of all the securities at a given future investment horizon.
This "real" probability distribution of the market prices is typically denoted by the blackboard font letter "${\displaystyle \mathbb {P} }$", as opposed to the "risk-neutral" probability "${\displaystyle \mathbb {Q} }$" used in derivatives pricing. Based on the P distribution, the buy-side community takes decisions on which securities to purchase in order to improve the prospective profit-and-loss profile of their positions considered as a portfolio.

For their pioneering work, Markowitz and Sharpe, along with Merton Miller, shared the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, for the first time ever awarded for a work in finance.

The portfolio-selection work of Markowitz and Sharpe introduced mathematics to investment management. With time, the mathematics has become more sophisticated. Thanks to Robert Merton and Paul Samuelson, one-period models were replaced by continuous time, Brownian-motion models, and the quadratic utility function implicit in mean–variance optimization was replaced by more general increasing, concave utility functions. [9] Furthermore, in recent years the focus shifted toward estimation risk, i.e., the dangers of incorrectly assuming that advanced time series analysis alone can provide completely accurate estimates of the market parameters. [10]

Much effort has gone into the study of financial markets and how prices vary with time. Charles Dow, one of the founders of Dow Jones & Company and The Wall Street Journal, enunciated a set of ideas on the subject which are now called Dow Theory. This is the basis of the so-called technical analysis method of attempting to predict future changes. One of the tenets of "technical analysis" is that market trends give an indication of the future, at least in the short term. The claims of the technical analysts are disputed by many academics.

## Criticism

Over the years, increasingly sophisticated mathematical models and derivative pricing strategies have been developed, but their credibility was damaged by the financial crisis of 2007–2010. Contemporary practice of mathematical finance has been subjected to criticism from figures within the field notably by Paul Wilmott, and by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book The Black Swan. [11] Taleb claims that the prices of financial assets cannot be characterized by the simple models currently in use, rendering much of current practice at best irrelevant, and, at worst, dangerously misleading. Wilmott and Emanuel Derman published the Financial Modelers' Manifesto in January 2009 [12] which addresses some of the most serious concerns. Bodies such as the Institute for New Economic Thinking are now attempting to develop new theories and methods. [13]

In general, modeling the changes by distributions with finite variance is, increasingly, said to be inappropriate. [14] In the 1960s it was discovered by Benoit Mandelbrot that changes in prices do not follow a Gaussian distribution, but are rather modeled better by Lévy alpha-stable distributions. [15] The scale of change, or volatility, depends on the length of the time interval to a power a bit more than 1/2. Large changes up or down are more likely than what one would calculate using a Gaussian distribution with an estimated standard deviation. But the problem is that it does not solve the problem as it makes parametrization much harder and risk control less reliable. [11] See also Variance gamma process#Option pricing.

## Mathematical finance articles

See also Outline of finance: § Financial mathematics; § Mathematical tools; § Derivatives pricing.

## Notes

1. Johnson, Tim (September 2009). "What is financial mathematics?". +Plus Magazine. Retrieved 28 March 2014.
2. "Quantitative Finance". About.com. Retrieved 28 March 2014.
3. E., Shreve, Steven (2004). Stochastic calculus for finance. New York: Springer. ISBN   9780387401003. OCLC   53289874.
4. Stephen., Blyth (2013). Introduction to Quantitative Finance. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 157. ISBN   9780199666591. OCLC   868286679.
5. B., Schmidt, Anatoly (2005). Quantitative finance for physicists : an introduction. San Diego, Calif.: Elsevier Academic Press. ISBN   9780080492209. OCLC   57743436.
6. Bachelir, Louis. "The Theory of Speculation" . Retrieved 28 March 2014.
7. Lindbeck, Assar. "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1969-2007". Nobel Prize. Retrieved 28 March 2014.
8. Brown, Angus (1 Dec 2008). "A risky business: How to price derivatives". Price+ Magazine. Retrieved 28 March 2014.
9. Karatzas, Ioannis; Shreve, Steve (1998). Methods of Mathematical Finance. Secaucus, NJ, USA: Springer-Verlag New York, Incorporated. ISBN   9780387948393.
10. Meucci, Attilio (2005). Risk and Asset Allocation. Springer. ISBN   9783642009648.
11. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2007). The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House Trade. ISBN   978-1-4000-6351-2.
12. "Financial Modelers' Manifesto". Paul Wilmott's Blog. January 8, 2009. Retrieved June 1, 2012.
13. Gillian Tett (April 15, 2010). "Mathematicians must get out of their ivory towers". Financial Times .
14. Svetlozar T. Rachev; Frank J. Fabozzi; Christian Menn (2005). Fat-Tailed and Skewed Asset Return Distributions: Implications for Risk Management, Portfolio Selection, and Option Pricing. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN   978-0471718864.
15. B. Mandelbrot, "The variation of certain Speculative Prices", The Journal of Business 1963

## Related Research Articles

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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 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 regardless of the risk of the security and its expected return. The formula led to a boom in options trading and provided mathematical legitimacy to the activities of the Chicago Board Options Exchange and other options markets around the world. It is widely used, although often with some adjustments, by options market participants.

In mathematical finance, a risk-neutral measure is a probability measure such that each share price is exactly equal to the discounted expectation of the share price under this measure. This is heavily used in the pricing of financial derivatives due to the fundamental theorem of asset pricing, which implies that in a complete market a derivative's price is the discounted expected value of the future payoff under the unique risk-neutral measure. Such a measure exists if and only if the market is arbitrage-free.

Rational pricing is the assumption in financial economics that asset prices will reflect the arbitrage-free price of the asset as any deviation from this price will be "arbitraged away". This assumption is useful in pricing fixed income securities, particularly bonds, and is fundamental to the pricing of derivative instruments.

Monte Carlo methods are used in corporate finance and mathematical finance to value and analyze (complex) instruments, portfolios and investments by simulating the various sources of uncertainty affecting their value, and then determining the distribution of their value over the range of resultant outcomes. This is usually done by help of stochastic asset models. The advantage of Monte Carlo methods over other techniques increases as the dimensions of the problem increase.

In mathematical finance, a Monte Carlo option model uses Monte Carlo methods to calculate the value of an option with multiple sources of uncertainty or with complicated features. The first application to option pricing was by Phelim Boyle in 1977. In 1996, M. Broadie and P. Glasserman showed how to price Asian options by Monte Carlo. In 2001 F. A. Longstaff and E. S. Schwartz developed a practical Monte Carlo method for pricing American-style options.

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In finance, a price (premium) is paid or received for purchasing or selling options. This article discusses the calculation of this premium in general. For further detail, see Mathematical finance #Derivatives pricing: the Q world for discussion of the mathematics, Financial engineering for the implementation, as well as Financial modeling #Quantitative finance generally.

In finance, a lattice model is a technique applied to the valuation of derivatives, where a discrete time model is required. For equity options, a typical example would be pricing an American option, where a decision as to option exercise is required at "all" times before and including maturity. A continuous model, on the other hand, such as Black–Scholes, would only allow for the valuation of European options, where exercise is on the option's maturity date. For interest rate derivatives lattices are additionally useful in that they address many of the issues encountered with continuous models, such as pull to par. The method is also used for valuing certain exotic options, where because of path dependence in the payoff, Monte Carlo methods for option pricing fail to account for optimal decisions to terminate the derivative by early exercise., though methods now exist for solving this problem.

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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:

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Quantum finance is an interdisciplinary research field, applying theories and methods developed by quantum physicists and economists in order to solve problems in finance. It is a branch of econophysics.