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Black–Scholes

Black & Scholes 1973, Journal of Political Economy§II — Valuation of options

Closed-form European-option pricing under geometric Brownian motion of the underlying with constant volatility, constant risk-free rate, and log-normal terminal distribution. The crate consumes the closed-form pricer plus a bisection IV solver; the analytic layer composes against the kernel rather than re-implementing it.

Reference →

Authoritative references

  • Black, F. & Scholes, M. (1973). The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities. Journal of Political Economy 81(3), 637–654.
  • Hull, J. C. Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives (11th ed.), §15 (Black–Scholes–Merton) and §19 (Greek letters). Pearson, 2021.

Consumed by

  • Greeks — closed-form Black–Scholes Greeks and IV bisection.
  • Gex — per-strike Black–Scholes gamma.
  • IvChange — IV deltas computed against the same bisection result.

Closed-form formulas

For a European call on a non-dividend underlying S, strike K, time-to-expiration T, risk-free rate r, and volatility σ:

C=SN(d1)KerTN(d2)d1=ln(S/K)+(r+σ2/2)TσT,d2=d1σT

A continuous-dividend yield q enters by replacing S with SeqT. Puts follow by put-call parity.

The Greek letters used by the crate:

GreekDefinitionNotation
DeltaV/SΔ
Gamma2V/S2Γ
VegaV/σ (per 1.0 vol, not per 1 %)ν
ThetaV/t (per year)θ
RhoV/rρ

See Hull §19 for the closed-form derivations.

Implementation notes

  • Implied volatility is solved by bisection against the closed-form pricer. Maximum 30 iterations; the residual at the final bracket is surfaced on every GreekTick via the iv_error field. Consumers reading non-zero iv_error should treat the emission as a tightened-but-not-converged solve and gate downstream consumption per their own tolerance.
  • All Greeks are re-evaluated at the solved IV so that the emitted tick is internally consistent.
  • The pricing kernel sits inside the analytic; it does not re-implement the closed form separately.

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