Читать книгу Binary Options - Hamish Raw - Страница 44

When there is a large amount of time to the expiry of the bet then theta behaves in an unusual manner. Fig 2.6.1 is Fig 2.2.1 but with a different time scale along the horizontal axis. The horizontal axis is now expressed in years and what the graph illustrates is that as time to expiry increases for an out-of-the-money upbet, the value of the upbet decreases. This implies that the curious situation would exist whereby an investor could buy the upbet with years to expiry, hope that the underlying does not rise, and still see his investment increase in value over time. In effect, the out-of-the-money upbet with sufficient time remaining to expiry has a positive theta.

The more ambitious reader may wish to shut their eyes and try and figure this one out, but for those of whom want to push on to the next subject here’s the intuitive answer. This out-of-the-money upbet is constrained by the prices zero and 50. However close the underlying gets to the strike and irrespective of how much time is specified in the contract, the upbet cannot breach 50. And on the downside the probability of an event can never be negative so the upbet is restricted to zero. Increasing the time to expiry therefore has a decreasing effect on the price of the upbet close to the strike, as the probability of the upbet travelling through the strike cannot exceed 50%. But at the same time the increased time increases the probability of the underlying travelling to zero thereby ensuring a losing bet. Obviously this extreme case applies to downbets as well.

Is this quirk of any relevance? Probably not a lot. But consider an insurance contract (binary option) written at Lloyd’s of London…a contract with a lengthy ‘tail’. Food for thought?