Analytical approximation for spread option pricing in local volatility model

Abstract

This paper introduces a methodology of analytical approximation in general European option-pricing case based on local volatility model and then apply it to price a European Spread Option. The approximation procedure is flexible in pricing financial derivatives with any form of volatility, drift rate, risk-free rate and payoff function. We also work out the explicit pricing formula up to the second-order approximation of spread option which is good-fitting compared with finite difference method and Monte Carlo simulation. The relative error compared to finite difference method is no more than 5%, which attests to the accuracy of our second-order closed-form formulas.