Probability-free pricing of adjusted American lookbacks

Abstract

Consider an American option that pays G(X^*_t) when exercised at time t, where G is a positive increasing function, X^*_t := \sup_{s\le t}X_s, and X_s is the price of the underlying security at time s. Assuming zero interest rates, we show that the seller of this option can hedge his position by trading in the underlying security if he begins with initial capital X_0\int_{X_0}^{\infty}G(x)x^{-2}dx (and this is the smallest initial capital that allows him to hedge his position). This leads to strategies for trading that are always competitive both with a given strategy's current performance and, to a somewhat lesser degree, with its best performance so far. It also leads to methods of statistical testing that avoid sacrificing too much of the maximum statistical significance that they achieve in the course of accumulating data.