Option Pricing for Symmetric L\'evy Returns with Applications

Abstract

This paper considers options pricing when the assumption of normality is replaced with that of the symmetry of the underlying distribution. Such a market affords many equivalent martingale measures (EMM). However we argue (as in the discrete-time setting of Klebaner and Landsman, 2007) that an EMM that keeps distributions within the same family is a "natural" choice. We obtain Black-Scholes type option pricing formulae for symmetric Variance-Gamma and symmetric Normal Inverse Gaussian models.