Exotic option

Last updated March 24, 2024

In finance, an exotic option is an option which has features making it more complex than commonly traded vanilla options. Like the more general exotic derivatives they may have several triggers relating to determination of payoff. An exotic option may also include a non-standard underlying instrument, developed for a particular client or for a particular market. Exotic options are more complex than options that trade on an exchange, and are generally traded over the counter.

Etymology

The term "exotic option" was popularized by Mark Rubinstein's 1990 working paper (published 1992, with Eric Reiner) "Exotic Options", with the term based either on exotic wagers in horse racing, or due to the use of international terms such as "Asian option", suggesting the "exotic Orient".^[1]^[2]

Journalist Brian Palmer used the "successful $1 bet on the superfecta" in the 2010 Kentucky Derby that "paid a whopping $101,284.60" as an example of the controversial high-risk, high-payout exotic bets that were observed by track-watchers since the 1970s in his article about why we use the term exotic for certain types of financial instrument. Palmer compared these horse racing bets to the controversial emerging exotic financial instruments that concerned then-chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker in 1980. He argued that just as the exotic wagers survived the media controversy so will the exotic options.^[1]

In 1987, Bankers Trust's Mark Standish and David Spaughton were in Tokyo on business when "they developed the first commercially used pricing formula for options linked to the average price of crude oil." They called this exotic option the Asian option, because they were in Asia.^[3]

Development

Exotic options are often created by financial engineers and rely on complex models to attempt to price them.

Features

A straight call or put option, either American or European, would be considered a non-exotic or vanilla option. There are two general types of exotic options: path-independent and path-dependent. An option is path-independent if its value depends only on the final price of the underlying instrument. Path-dependent options depend not only on the final price of the underlying instrument, but also on all the prices leading to the final price. An exotic option could have one or more of the following features:

The payoff at maturity depends not just on the value of the underlying instrument at maturity, but also on its value at several times during the contract's life (for example an Asian option depending on some average, a lookback option depending on the maximum or minimum, a barrier option which ceases to exist if a certain level is reached or not reached by the underlying, a digital option, peroni options, range options, spread options, etc.)
It could depend on more than one index, such as in basket options, outperformance options, Himalaya options, or other mountain range options.
The manner of settlement may vary depending on the moneyness of the option at expiry, such as a cash or share option.
There could be callability and putability rights.
It could involve foreign exchange rates in various ways, such as a quanto or composite option.

Even products traded actively in the market can have some exotic characteristics, such as convertible bonds, whose valuation can depend on the price and volatility of the underlying equity, the issuer's credit rating, the level and volatility of interest rates, and the correlations between these factors.

Barriers

Barriers in exotic option are determined by the underlying price and ability of the stock to be active or inactive during the trade period, for instance up-and-out option has a high chance of being inactive should the underlying price go beyond the marked barrier. Down-and-in-option is very likely to be active should the underlying prices of the stock go below the marked barrier. Up-and-in option is very likely to be active should the underlying price go beyond the marked barrier.^[4] One-touch double barrier binary options are path-dependent options in which the existence and payment of the options depend on the movement of the underlying price through their option life.^[5]

Examples

Related Research Articles

In finance, a derivative is a contract that derives its value from the performance of an underlying entity. This underlying entity can be an asset, index, or interest rate, and is often simply called the underlying. Derivatives can be used for a number of purposes, including insuring against price movements (hedging), increasing exposure to price movements for speculation, or getting access to otherwise hard-to-trade assets or markets.

The Black–Scholes or Black–Scholes–Merton model is a mathematical model for the dynamics of a financial market containing derivative investment instruments. From the parabolic partial differential equation in the model, known as the Black–Scholes equation, one can deduce the Black–Scholes formula, which gives a theoretical estimate of the price of European-style options and shows that the option has a unique price given the risk of the security and its expected return. The equation and model are named after economists Fischer Black and Myron Scholes. Robert C. Merton, who first wrote an academic paper on the subject, is sometimes also credited.

In finance, the style or family of an option is the class into which the option falls, usually defined by the dates on which the option may be exercised. The vast majority of options are either European or American (style) options. These options—as well as others where the payoff is calculated similarly—are referred to as "vanilla options". Options where the payoff is calculated differently are categorized as "exotic options". Exotic options can pose challenging problems in valuation and hedging.

An Asian option is a special type of option contract. For Asian options, the payoff is determined by the average underlying price over some pre-set period of time. This is different from the case of the usual European option and American option, where the payoff of the option contract depends on the price of the underlying instrument at exercise; Asian options are thus one of the basic forms of exotic options.

Lookback options, in the terminology of finance, are a type of exotic option with path dependency, among many other kind of options. The payoff depends on the optimal underlying asset's price occurring over the life of the option. The option allows the holder to "look back" over time to determine the payoff. There exist two kinds of lookback options: with floating strike and with fixed strike.

In finance, an interest rate derivative (IRD) is a derivative whose payments are determined through calculation techniques where the underlying benchmark product is an interest rate, or set of different interest rates. There are a multitude of different interest rate indices that can be used in this definition.

A binary option is a financial exotic option in which the payoff is either some fixed monetary amount or nothing at all. The two main types of binary options are the cash-or-nothing binary option and the asset-or-nothing binary option. The former pays some fixed amount of cash if the option expires in-the-money while the latter pays the value of the underlying security. They are also called all-or-nothing options, digital options, and fixed return options (FROs).

Monte Carlo methods are used in corporate finance and mathematical finance to value and analyze (complex) instruments, portfolios and investments by simulating the various sources of uncertainty affecting their value, and then determining the distribution of their value over the range of resultant outcomes. This is usually done by help of stochastic asset models. The advantage of Monte Carlo methods over other techniques increases as the dimensions of the problem increase.

A barrier option is an option whose payoff is conditional upon the underlying asset's price breaching a barrier level during the option's lifetime.

A structured product, also known as a market-linked investment, is a pre-packaged structured finance investment strategy based on a single security, a basket of securities, options, indices, commodities, debt issuance or foreign currencies, and to a lesser extent, derivatives. Structured products are not homogeneous — there are numerous varieties of derivatives and underlying assets — but they can be classified under the aside categories. Typically, a desk will employ a specialized "structurer" to design and manage its structured-product offering.

In mathematical finance, a Monte Carlo option model uses Monte Carlo methods to calculate the value of an option with multiple sources of uncertainty or with complicated features. The first application to option pricing was by Phelim Boyle in 1977. In 1996, M. Broadie and P. Glasserman showed how to price Asian options by Monte Carlo. An important development was the introduction in 1996 by Carriere of Monte Carlo methods for options with early exercise features.

In finance, a lattice model is a technique applied to the valuation of derivatives, where a discrete time model is required. For equity options, a typical example would be pricing an American option, where a decision as to option exercise is required at "all" times before and including maturity. A continuous model, on the other hand, such as Black–Scholes, would only allow for the valuation of European options, where exercise is on the option's maturity date. For interest rate derivatives lattices are additionally useful in that they address many of the issues encountered with continuous models, such as pull to par. The method is also used for valuing certain exotic options, where because of path dependence in the payoff, Monte Carlo methods for option pricing fail to account for optimal decisions to terminate the derivative by early exercise, though methods now exist for solving this problem.

An exotic derivative, in finance, is a derivative which is more complex than commonly traded "vanilla" products. This complexity usually relates to determination of payoff; see option style. The category may also include derivatives with a non-standard subject matter - i.e., underlying - developed for a particular client or a particular market.

In finance, an option is a contract which conveys to its owner, the holder, the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a specific quantity of an underlying asset or instrument at a specified strike price on or before a specified date, depending on the style of the option. Options are typically acquired by purchase, as a form of compensation, or as part of a complex financial transaction. Thus, they are also a form of asset and have a valuation that may depend on a complex relationship between underlying asset price, time until expiration, market volatility, the risk-free rate of interest, and the strike price of the option. Options may be traded between private parties in over-the-counter (OTC) transactions, or they may be exchange-traded in live, public markets in the form of standardized contracts.

Mark Edward Rubinstein was a leading financial economist and financial engineer. He was Paul Stephens Professor of Applied Investment Analysis at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley. He held various other professional offices, directing the American Finance Association, amongst others, and was editor of several first-tier academic journals including both the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of Finance. He was the author of numerous papers and four books.

Rainbow option is a derivative exposed to two or more sources of uncertainty, as opposed to a simple option that is exposed to one source of uncertainty, such as the price of underlying asset.

A basket option is a financial derivative, more specifically an exotic option, whose underlying is a weighted sum or average of different assets that have been grouped together in a basket. A basket option is similar to an index option, where a number of stocks have been grouped together in an index and the option is based on the price of the index, but differs in that the members and weightings of an index can change over time while those in a basket option do not.

Financial betting refers to the wagering on the price development of a financial instrument at some later date relative to the current price or level of the instrument, against odds offered by a bookmaker. Maximum potential pay-off of the wager is known when the bet is taken and as a corollary risk is known beforehand by being limited to the initial stake.

Financial innovation is the act of creating new financial instruments as well as new financial technologies, institutions, and markets. Recent financial innovations include hedge funds, private equity, weather derivatives, retail-structured products, exchange-traded funds, multi-family offices, and Islamic bonds (Sukuk). The shadow banking system has spawned an array of financial innovations including mortgage-backed securities products and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).

In finance, a contingent claim is a derivative whose future payoff depends on the value of another “underlying” asset, or more generally, that is dependent on the realization of some uncertain future event. These are so named, since there is only a payoff under certain contingencies. Any derivative instrument that is not a contingent claim is called a forward commitment.

References

1 2 Brian Palmer (14 July 2010). "Why Do We Call Financial Instruments "Exotic"? Because some of them are from Japan". Slate. Retrieved 9 September 2013. The article quotes then-chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker in 1980 when he argued, "This is hardly the time to search out for new exotic lending areas or to finance speculative or purely financial activities that have little to do with the performance of the American economy."
↑ Rubinstein, Mark; Reiner, Eric (1995). "Exotic Options". Research Program in Finance Working Papers. Working Paper, University of California at Berkeley.
↑ William Falloon; David Turner, eds. (1999). "The evolution of a market". Managing Energy Price Risk. London: Risk Books.
↑ "Exotic And Double Digital Options". BOB. May 18, 2013. Archived from the original on 4 March 2014. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
↑ "Double Barrier And Exotic Options". BinaryToday. March 9, 2015. Retrieved April 15, 2015.