A stochastic hybrid model for pricing forward-start variance swaps

• Main Author: Roslan, Teh Raihana Nazirah
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: HA Statistics
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/24886/; http://doi.org/10.1063/1.5012176

Recently, market players have been exposed to the astounding increase in the trading volume of variance swaps. In this paper, the forward-start nature of a variance swap is being inspected, where hybridizations of equity and interest rate models are used to evaluate the price of discretely-sampled forward-start variance swaps. The Heston stochastic volatility model is being extended to incorporate the dynamics of the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (CIR) stochastic interest rate model. This is essential since previous studies on variance swaps were mainly focusing on instantaneous-start variance swaps without considering the interest rate effects. This hybrid model produces an efficient semi-closed form pricing formula through the development of forward characteristic functions. The performance of this formula is investigated via simulations to demonstrate how the formula performs for different sampling times and against the real market scenario. Comparison done with the Monte Carlo simulation which was set as our main reference point reveals that our pricing formula gains almost the same precision in a shorter execution time.