An accurate and stable numerical method for option hedge parameters

Abstract

We propose an unconditionally stable numerical algorithm, which uses the Feynman-Kac formula of the Black-Scholes equation to obtain accurate option prices and hedge parameters. We discretize the asset and time using uniform grid points. We approximate the option values by piecewise quadratic polynomials for each time step and integrate them analytically over the log-normal distribution. The piecewise quadratic approximation gives the third-order convergence in the asset direction, and the analytic integration reduces truncation error in the time direction. The estimation errors are propagated backward in time following the convection and diffusion characteristics of the Black-Scholes equation, which assures the unconditional stability of our method. The vectorized code implementation reduces the time complexity. The convergence test shows that our approach outperforms the Crank-Nicolson scheme of the finite difference method in both time and asset directions, and the stability test verifies that our method is stable as the Crank-Nicolson. Furthermore, we show that our algorithm reduces the price errors and hedge parameter errors by more than 50% from the benchmark.