Lambdia

Optimal stopping

4 artículos

One Subtraction Prices the Barrier Option Nobody Has a Formula For

An American call that only wakes up at 80 and dies for good at 125 has no closed form, and it cannot be simulated either, because a path runs forward while the exercise decision looks back. Every path that avoids the ceiling either visited the floor or never did, so the contract is one knock-out minus another and both come off a standard tree. The identity is exact to machine precision for European exercise at all seven grids tested, and for American exercise only in the continuous limit: the finite-tree residual falls from 0.532 percent at 45 steps to 0.043 percent at 3,394.

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The Put That Never Expires Has One Number for a Rule

An American put struck at 100 on a stock at 100, with no expiry date at all, is worth 23.21 when the rate is 5% and the volatility 30%. Removing the clock removes the time derivative from the pricing equation, which turns it into an ordinary differential equation solved by powers, and the exercise boundary collapses from a curve into the single level 1000/19 = 52.63. Its European twin, which cannot be exercised early, is worth exactly nothing, so every cent of the value is the right to stop.

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The Right to Stop a Balanced Deck Is Worth $2.62

Turning all fifty-two cards lands on exactly zero, which makes zero the floor rather than the value. Backward induction over the grid of remaining cards gives the exact rational 41984711742427/15997372030584, and a two-line argument shows the optimal policy can never finish below zero in any deal. The article carries the small-deck ladder, the stopping boundary the table actually produces, and two plausible rules that lose money against it.

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Three Rolls, One Decision, and 14/3

A die is rolled up to three times and you are paid the face you stop on. The reflex answer of 3.5 is the value of the same game with the right to stop deleted, and the real value is 14/3, reached by computing the game from its last roll backwards. The thresholds move as rolls run out, which is why a four is worth keeping late and worth rejecting early.

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