Exercise: Where does go?
The Black-Scholes PDE contains no . Yet Itô's expansion of does contain a term. The hedging construction is supposed to eliminate risk; how does it also happen to eliminate ?
Tasks
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Write out and step by step, identifying all terms. Verify that choosing cancels not only the term but also the in the term.
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Explain in one sentence why it's not coincidence that the same hedge ratio cancels both terms simultaneously.
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Consider an option whose payoff depends on two correlated assets: and with . Derive the hedging argument and the resulting 2D PDE. Does or appear?
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Suppose instead the asset jumps: where is a compound Poisson jump. Show that no longer creates a riskless portfolio — the jump risk is not hedgeable by trading only .
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What does the non-uniqueness of jump-option pricing tell you about the role of the hedging assumption in Black-Scholes?
Hint
For part 3, hedge with both and : , choose .