Delta of an at-the-money call and its limit at expiry
Question
For a European call on a stock with no dividends, struck at the current spot price, roughly what is the option's delta? How does that delta move as the time to expiry shrinks toward zero?
Short answer
A little above , tending to exactly as expiry nears. With , , so slightly exceeds one half. As , and ; for options away from the money delta instead heads to or .
Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 6.2 The Greeks, 'Delta B', p.149; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Greeks and Numerical Sensitivities
- Derivation — From Binomial Trees to Black-Scholes in the Continuous Limit
- The Black-Scholes Formula Derived via Change of Measure
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