Options and Futures

Introduksjon

The objective of this course is to provide students with a solid understanding of the pricing and hedging of options and futures contracts and the relevance of those contracts in practice. Due to the remarkable growth in the use of financial derivative instruments in risk management and asset management, a clear understanding of derivative markets is essential to all specialists in finance. The course is designed around the central concepts of arbitrage, replication and hedging. In addition, the practical relevance of those theoretical concepts will be strongly emphasized through real-world applications and examples throughout the semester. This course would also prepare students for more advanced courses on derivatives.

Kursets innhold

• Introduction to derivatives markets and derivative instruments
• Basic strategies, insurance, hedging and speculation using options and futures
• Financial forwards and futures: pricing and hedging
• Commodity forwards and futures: pricing and cross-hedging
• Parity and other option price relations
• Binomial option pricing and implementation in Excel or R
• Black-Scholes option pricing
• Option Greeks and hedging