SIMPLIFIED HEDGE FOR PATH-DEPENDENT DERIVATIVES

Abstract

Path-dependent derivatives are typically difficult to hedge. Traditional dynamic delta hedging does not perform well because of the difficulty to evaluate the Greeks and the high cost of constantly rebalancing. We propose to price and hedge path-dependent derivatives by constructing simplified alternatives that preserve certain distributional properties of their terminal payoffs, and that can be hedged by semi-static replication. The method is illustrated by a geometric Asian option and by a lookback option in the Black–Scholes setting, for which explicit forms of the simplified alternatives exist. Extensions to a Lévy market and to a Heston stochastic volatility model are discussed as well.