Discrete Delta Hedging under Stochastic Volatility and Jumps: A Monte Carlo Cost–Risk Frontier
Research Article
Open Access
CC BY

Discrete Delta Hedging under Stochastic Volatility and Jumps: A Monte Carlo Cost–Risk Frontier

Yue Li 1*
1 The Ohio State University
*Corresponding author: li.13232@buckeyemail.osu.edu
Published on 28 October 2025
Journal Cover
AEMPS Vol.234
ISSN (Print): 2754-1177
ISSN (Online): 2754-1169
ISBN (Print): 978-1-80590-487-8
ISBN (Online): 978-1-80590-488-5
Download Cover

Abstract

Delta hedging is a fundamental strategy in options risk management, relying on continuous adjustment of a replicating portfolio to eliminate risk. However, real markets exhibit features such as stochastic volatility and jumps that violate the assumptions of the Black–Scholes model, rendering perfect replication impossible and the market incomplete. In such cases, hedging can only reduce risk at best, and frequent rebalancing incurs significant transaction costs. This article investigates discrete delta hedging under stochastic volatility and jump-diffusion dynamics, quantifying the trade-off between hedging cost and risk reduction via Monte Carlo simulation. We construct a cost–risk frontier, analogous to an efficient frontier, that shows the minimal achievable risk for a given cost (and vice versa). The results demonstrate that increasing the hedge frequency (trading more often) generally lowers the variance of hedging errors but at a rapidly diminishing rate and with higher accumulated costs. Even with very frequent rebalancing, a residual risk remains due to jumps and unhedgeable volatility fluctuations. We discuss how this frontier can inform optimal hedging policies, balancing transaction costs against risk appetite, and we compare our findings with prior theoretical and empirical studies.

Keywords:

Stochastic Volatility, Transaction Costs, Jump-Diffusion.

View PDF
Li,Y. (2025). Discrete Delta Hedging under Stochastic Volatility and Jumps: A Monte Carlo Cost–Risk Frontier. Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences,234,14-22.

References

[1]. Black, F., & Scholes, M. (1973). The pricing of options and corporate liabilities. Journal of Political Economy, 81(3), 637–654.

[2]. Merton, R.C. (1976). Option pricing when underlying stock returns are discontinuous. Journal of Financial Economics, 3(1-2), 125–144.

[3]. Hull, J., & White, A. (1987). The pricing of options on assets with stochastic volatilities. Journal of Finance, 42(2), 281–300.

[4]. He, T., et al. (2006). Dynamic hedging under jump diffusion by using short-term options.

[5]. Boyle, P., & Emanuel, D. (1980). Discretely adjusted option hedges. Journal of Financial Economics, 8(3), 259–282.

[6]. Leland, H. (1985). Option pricing and replication with transactions costs. Journal of Finance, 40(5), 1283–1301.

[7]. Wilmott, P. (2022). A note on hedging: restricted but optimal delta hedging, mean, variance, jumps, stochastic volatility, and costs. Wilmott Journal 2022, 11 pages (DOI: 10.1002/WILJ.9).

[8]. Figlewski, S. (1989). Option arbitrage in imperfect markets. Journal of Finance, 44(5), 1289–1311.

[9]. Hoggard, T., Whalley, A.E., & Wilmott, P. (1994). Hedging option portfolios in the presence of transaction costs. Advances in Futures and Options Research, 7, 21–35.

[10]. Noorian, F., & Leong, P.H.W. (2014). Dynamic hedging of foreign exchange risk using stochastic model predictive control. 2014 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence for Financial Engineering & Economics (CIFEr), 439–446.

[11]. Heston, S. (1993). A closed-form solution for options with stochastic volatility with applications to bond and currency options. Review of Financial Studies, 6(2), 327–343.

Cite this article

Li,Y. (2025). Discrete Delta Hedging under Stochastic Volatility and Jumps: A Monte Carlo Cost–Risk Frontier. Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences,234,14-22.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

About volume

Volume title: Proceedings of ICFTBA 2025 Symposium: Global Trends in Green Financial Innovation and Technology

ISBN: 978-1-80590-487-8(Print) / 978-1-80590-488-5(Online)
Editor: Lukáš Vartiak, Sun Huaping
Conference date: 20 November 2025
Series: Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences
Volume number: Vol.234
ISSN: 2754-1169(Print) / 2754-1177(Online)