Local martingales, bubbles and option prices

Alexander Cox () and David Hobson ()

Finance and Stochastics, 2005, vol. 9, issue 4, 477-492

Abstract: In this article we are interested in option pricing in markets with bubbles. A bubble is defined to be a price process which, when discounted, is a local martingale under the risk-neutral measure but not a martingale. We give examples of bubbles both where volatility increases with the price level, and where the bubble is the result of a feedback mechanism. In a market with a bubble many standard results from the folklore become false. Put-call parity fails, the price of an American call exceeds that of a European call and call prices are no longer increasing in maturity (for a fixed strike). We show how these results must be modified in the presence of a bubble. It turns out that the option value depends critically on the definition of admissible strategy, and that the standard mathematical definition may not be consistent with the definitions used for trading. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2005

Keywords: Bubbles; feedback; local martingales; derivative pricing; put-call parity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (130)

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DOI: 10.1007/s00780-005-0162-y

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