A risky business: how to price derivatives

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A risky business: how to price derivatives

December 2008

A general formula for the multi-period case

The price for the option in an n period model is given by C=1(1+r)nk=0n(nk)qk(1q)nkyukdnk. Here (nk) denotes the number of ways in which one can choose k objects from a selection of n objects (called the binomial coefficient — you can read more in the Plus article Making the grade: Part II). Explicitly it is given by (nk)=n!k!(nk)!, where n!=n×(n1)×(n2)×...×2×1. The symbol yukdnk stands for y with a subscript consisting of k us and nk ds - these stand for the payoffs corresponding to the various combinations of good and bad periods.\ The expression k=0n(nk)qk(1q)nkyukdnk means that you should sum the terms of the form (nk)qk(1q)nkyukdnk in turn with k substituted by 0, 1, 2, etc, up to n.

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