摘要
The cross-fertilization between artificial intelligence and computational finance has resulted in some of the most active research areas in financial engineering. One direction is the application of machine learning techniques to pricing financial products, which is certainly one of the most complex issues in finance. In the literature, when the interest rate,the mean rate of return and the volatility of the underlying asset follow general stochastic processes, the exact solution is usually not available. In this paper, we shall illustrate how genetic algorithms (GAs), as a numerical approach, can be potentially helpful in dealing with pricing. In particular, we test the performance of basic genetic algorithms by using it to the determination of prices of Asian options, whose exact solutions is known from Black-Scholesoption pricing theory. The solutions found by basic genetic algorithms are compared with the exact solution, and the performance of GAs is ewluated accordingly. Based on these ewluations, some limitations of GAs in option pricing are examined and possible extensions to future works are also proposed.
