Certificate pricing using Discrete Event Simulations and System Dynamics theory

Abstract

The study proposes an innovative application of Discrete Event Simulations (DES) and System Dynamics (SD) theory to the pricing of a certain kind of certificates very popular among private investors and, more generally, in the context of wealth management. The paper shows how numerical simulation software mainly used in traditional engineering, such as industrial and mechanical engineering, can be successfully adapted to the risk analysis of structured financial products. The article can be divided into three macro-sections: in the first part a synthetic overview of the most widespread option pricing models in the quantitative finance branch is given to the readers together with the fundamental technical-instrumental background of the implemented DES and SD simulator. After dealing with some of the most popular models adopted for Equity and Equity index options, which are the most common underlying assets for the certificates structuring, we move, in the second part, to describe how the mathematical models can be integrated into a general simulation environment able to provide both DES and SD extensively used in the engineering field. The core stochastic differential equation (SDE) will therefore be translated, together with all its input parameters, into a visual block model which allows an immediate quantitative analysis of how market parameters and the other model variables can change over time. The possibility for the structurer to observe how the variables evolve day-by-day gives a strong sensitivity to evaluate how the price and the associated risk measures can be directly affected. The third part of the study compares the results obtained from the simulator designed by the authors with the more traditional pricing approaches, which consist in programming Matlab® codes for the numerical integration of the core stochastic dynamics through a Euler-Maruyama scheme. The comparison includes a price check using the Bloomberg® DLIB pricing module and a check directly against the valuation provided by the counterparty. In this section, real market cases will therefore be examined with a complete quantitative analysis of two of the most widespread categories of certificates in wealth management: Multi-asset Barrier Reverse Convertible with Issuer Callability and Multi-asset Express Certificate with conditional memory fixed coupon.