American Call Options Pricing With Modular Neural Networks

Abstract

An accurate valuation of American call options is critical in most financial decision making environments. However, traditional models like the Barone-Adesi Whaley (B-AW) and Binomial Option Pricing (BOP) methods fall short in handling the complexities of early exercise and market dynamics present in American options. This paper proposes a Modular Neural Network (MNN) model which aims to capture the key aspects of American options pricing. By dividing the prediction process into specialized modules, the MNN effectively models the non-linear interactions that drive American call options pricing. Experimental results indicate that the MNN model outperform both traditional models as well as a simpler Feed-forward Neural Network (FNN) across multiple stocks (AAPL, NVDA, QQQ), with significantly lower RMSE and nRMSE (by mean). These findings highlight the potential of MNNs as a powerful tool to improve the accuracy of predicting option prices.