Pricing and Hedging Basket Options with Exact Moment Matching

Abstract: Theoretical models applied to option pricing should take into account the empirical characteristics of the underlying financial time series. In this paper, we show how to price basket options when assets follow a shifted log-normal process with jumps capable of accommodating negative skewness. Our technique is based on the Hermite polynomial expansion that can match exactly the first m moments of the model implied-probability distribution. This method is shown to provide superior results for basket options not only with respect to pricing but also for hedging.