Doubling a call's maturity from 100 to 200 days
Question
You see the price of a European call with days to expiry. Roughly how should the price of the same call with days to expiry compare?
Short answer
Higher, but well under double: roughly times for a near-the-money call. Option value is driven by (the ATM approximation is ), so doubling scales it by about . Far from the money or with large rates the ratio differs, but it stays below for a non-dividend call.
Adapted from Crack, Heard on the Street, Q2.21, p.27; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- The Black-Scholes PDE, Formula and Implied Volatility
- Derivation — From Binomial Trees to Black-Scholes in the Continuous Limit
- The Black-Scholes Formula Derived via Change of Measure
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