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Journal of Banking & Finance Vol. 32 No. 12 2008

Long term spread option valuation and hedging

M. A. H. Dempster1; Elena Medova1; Ke Tang2,1,3

1 University of Cambridge · 2 Renmin University of China · 3 Institute of Economics

Abstract

This paper investigates the valuation and hedging of spread options on two commodity prices which in the long run are in dynamic equilibrium (i.e., cointegrated). The spread exhibits properties different from its two underlying commodity prices and should therefore be modelled directly. This approach offers significant advantages relative to the traditional two price methods since the correlation between two asset returns is notoriously hard to model. In this paper, we propose a two factor model for the spot spread and develop pricing and hedging formulae for options on spot and futures spreads. Two examples of spreads in energy markets – the crack spread between heating oil and WTI crude oil and the location spread between Brent blend and WTI crude oil – are analyzed to illustrate the results.

DOI
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2008.04.004
Volume
32
Issue
12
Pages
2530-2540
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

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