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View Full Version : Capital Structure/Volatility Smile


Laocoön
10-20-2001, 11:08 AM
Consider a company with stock trading at $100 per share, with no debt, and with implied volatility of 20% annually. Black-Scholes prices for one-year European calls are as follows, based on exercise price, and assuming 0% interest rate:

50 50.00
70 30.25
90 13.59
110 4.29
130 1.01

Now suppose that the same company has debt such that $50 per share of stock must be repaid in one year, but otherwise the same assets and the same number of shares of stock (now worth $50.00 a share). If the value of debt plus equity has a lognormal future distribution (as implied by the prior, debt-free example), then one-year European call prices must be as follows (with Black-Scholes implied volatility, ignoring the capital structure, given last):

20 30.25 52.0%
40 13.59 42.6%
60 4.29 38.4%
80 1.01 35.9%

bongo
10-24-2001, 01:55 PM
Was there supposed to be more to this post?

Laocoön
10-24-2001, 06:53 PM
No; I just thought it was a remarkably simple explanation for the volatility smirk, and one that I hadn't seen in any literature.

bongo
10-25-2001, 04:45 PM
Ahh. I'd never heard of the volatility smile, so I needed the conclusion, "and that explains the volatility smile!"

Weatherman
10-25-2001, 05:12 PM
On 2001-10-25 16:45, bongo wrote:
Ahh. I'd never heard of the volatility smile, so I needed the conclusion, "and that explains the volatility smile!"


Don't feel bad. I've heard of it and I'm still not sure what his conclusion is supposed to be.