Financial/Actuarial Mathematics Seminar

Academic Year 2004-2005: Thursdays 3:10-4:00, 3088 East Hall



Optimal Portfolio Choice in the Bond Market

Sean Han

University of Minnesota and Ford Motor Company

January 13, 2005



Abstract

This talk emphasizes applications of Monte Carlo simulations to option pricing problems under stochastic volatility (SV) models. We first motivate multi-factor SV models from trading data such as S&P 500 and the foreign exchange GBP/USD. Variance reduction methods such as importance sampling and control variates for Monte Carlo methods to evaluate option prices are then introduced. We find that the interplay between asymptotic analysis from the PDE viewpoint and Monte Carlo simulations from the Probability viewpoint induces significant variance reduction power. Other potential applications of this general technique will be discussed.


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