On Pricing American Put Option on a Fixed Term: A Monte Carlo Approach

Abstract

This paper focuses primarily on pricing an American put option with a fixed term where the price process is geometric mean-reverting. The change of measure is assumed to be incorporated. Monte Carlo simulation was used to calculate the price of the option and the results obtained were analyzed. The option price was found to be $94.42 and the optimal stopping time was approximately one year after the option was sold which means that exercising early is the best for an American put option on a fixed term. Also, the seller of the put option should have sold $0.01 assets and bought $95.51 bonds to get the same payoff as the buyer at the end of one year for it to be a zero-sum game. In the simulation study, the parameters were varied to see the influence it had on the option price and the stopping time and it showed that it either increases or decreases the value of the option price and the optimal stopping time or it remained unchanged.