A Note on the Pricing of Basket Options Using Taylor Approximations

Abstract

In this paper we propose a closed-form approximation for the price of basket options under a multivariate Black-Scholes model, based on Taylor expansions and the calculation of mixed exponential-power moments of a Gaussian distribution. Our numerical results show that a second order expansion provides accurate prices of spread options with low computational costs, even for out-of-the-money contracts.