If each of your time steps is one week long, you are not modeling the stock price terribly well over a one-week time period, because you are saying that there are only two possible outcomes.
quote by John Hull
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The real challenge was to model all the interest rates simultaneously, so you could value something that depended not only on the three-month interest rate, but on other interest rates as well.
quote by John Hull
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Yes, our tree has an interesting shape. The center branches reflect the shape of the zero curve. When extreme parts of the tree are reached the branching pattern changes to accommodate the mean reversion.
quote by John Hull
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Briefly speaking, our conclusion is that stochastic volatility does not make a huge difference as far as the pricing is concerned if you get the average volatility right. It makes a big difference as far as hedging is concerned.
quote by John Hull
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
One important measurement issue concerns the fat tails problem that I mentioned earlier. VAR is concerned with extreme outcomes. If the tails of the probability distributions we are using are too thin, our VAR measures are likely to be too low.
quote by John Hull
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Alan White and I spent the next two or three years working together on this. We developed what is known a stochastic volatility model. This is a model where the volatility as well as the underlying asset price moves around in an unpredictable way.
quote by John Hull
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
In the interest rate area, traders have for a long time used a version of what is known as Black's model for European bond options; another version of the same model for caps and floors; and yet another version of the same model for European swap options.
quote by John Hull
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Our tree is actually a tree of the short-term interest rate. The average direction in which the short-term interest rate moves depends on the level of the rate. When the rate is very high, that direction is downward; when the rate is very low, it is upward.
quote by John Hull
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The HoLee model was the first term structure model. I remember reading their paper soon after it was published and as it was fairly different from many of the other papers that I had read, I had to read it quite a few times. I realized that it was a really important paper.
quote by John Hull
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!