Pricing two-asset rainbow options with the fast Fourier transform

  • Alexis Levendis Department of Actuarial Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
  • Eben Maré Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Keywords: Characteristic function, Fast Fourier transform, Rainbow option, Three-factor stochastic volatility, Two-factor geometric Brownian motion

Abstract

In this paper, we present a numerical method based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) to price call options on the minimum of two assets, otherwise known as two-asset rainbow options. We consider two stochastic processes for the underlying assets: two-factor geometric Brownian motion and three-factor stochastic volatility. We show that the FFT can achieve a certain level of convergence by carefully choosing the number of terms and truncation width in the FFT algorithm. Furthermore, the FFT converges at an exponential rate and the pricing results are closely aligned with the results obtained from a Monte Carlo simulation for complex models that incorporate stochastic volatility.

Published
2023-03-28
Section
Research Articles