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Value of a one-dollar touch claim at a higher barrier

Question

A stock currently trades at $1 and follows geometric Brownian motion; the risk-free rate is zero. A perpetual contract pays $1 at the first moment the stock price hits a level H>1H>1 (and nothing if it never does). What is the contract worth today?

Short answer

1/H1/H. With r=0r=0 the stock is a martingale under the risk-neutral measure. Stopping it at the hitting time of HH (it cannot go negative, so optional stopping applies) gives 1=H⋅P(hit H)1=H\cdot\mathbb{P}(\text{hit } H), hence the hit probability, and the claim's value, is 1/H1/H. Equivalently, holding 1/H1/H shares replicates it.

Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 6.1 Option Pricing, 'Black-Scholes formula D', p.146; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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