History 230
Robert Brown, 1828
: Experimental study of the motion of particles
suspended in a liquid (Albert
Einstein, 1905 and Marian von
Smoluchowski, 1906). The motion (sto
chastic process) became known as
Brownian motion.
Louis Bachelier,
Théorie de la Speculation
, 1900
:
S
follows a
Brownian motion such as:
BUT a
Brownian motion and herefore
S
, may become negative
.
This difficulty is easily elim
inated by assuming that the
logarithm of
S
,
rather than
S
itself, follows a Brownian motion
.
In this case we
say that
S
follows a geometric Brownian motion.
t
t t
t
t
dW
dt
dS S
dW
dt
S
d
σ
μ
σ
μ
+
=
⇔
+
=
0
0
ln
t
t
dW
dt
dS
σ
μ
+
=
Derivative securities: Options - Black-Scholes model