Comparing equally out-of-the-money calls and puts
Question
In a Black-Scholes world, compare a call struck above the current stock price with a put struck below it (same expiry). Which is worth more?
Short answer
The call. The lognormal distribution is right-skewed, so a rise is more likely than reaching down in the measure that matters, and a positive rate also raises the forward toward the call strike. For example, with , , , the call is about and the put about .
Adapted from Crack, Heard on the Street, Q2.51, p.31; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Reading the Implied Vol Surface — Moneyness, Term Structure, and Quoting Conventions
- Derivation — From Binomial Trees to Black-Scholes in the Continuous Limit
- The Black-Scholes Formula Derived via Change of Measure
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