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Implied Volatility for Dividend-Paying American Options

Article Quant Q&A · Author: Homunculus Reticulli

Summary

The document asks how to adapt a bisection-style implied-volatility calculation for an American option on a dividend-paying stock. The key principle in the accepted answer is to keep the root-finding procedure and replace the Black–Scholes pricing function with a suitable American-option pricer. The search then finds the volatility input whose model price matches the observed market price.

The discussion does not specify a particular American pricing model or give implementation details for discrete dividends or a continuous dividend yield. It also provides no numerical example, convergence analysis, or treatment of edge cases such as a missing bracket or a non-monotone price function. In practice, the root finder depends on the chosen pricer, valid volatility bounds, and a stopping criterion appropriate to the price precision. The answer offers a general modification, rather than a complete recipe for pricing or calibrating dividend-paying American options.

Key ideas

  • Implied volatility can be found by applying a root-finding method to the difference between model price and market price.
  • For American options, the pricing function in the iterative search must be an appropriate American-option pricer.
  • The document does not specify how to model discrete dividends or dividend yield.
  • Volatility bounds and convergence criteria remain implementation choices.

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Full text
# Modified bisection formula for deriving implied volatility for a dividend paying american option


# Modified bisection formula for deriving implied volatility for a dividend paying american option












I am trying to work out the formula for calculating the implied volatility of an american option on a stock paying dividends (discrete payments or annualized yield).

On page 171 of Haug

The following code is provided for the Bisection algorithm, along with the comment: "With small modifications, the function can also be used to find the implied volatility for American and exotic options". However, I am unable to find further information in the book (or online), which provides instructions on the required modification(s).

I include the function code below, hopefully, someone may be able to suggest the required modifications:

```
function BisectionAlgorithm(CallPutFlag As String, S As Double, X as Double, T As Double,
                            r As Double, b as Double, cm As Double) As Double
   Dim vLow as Double, vHigh As Double, vi as Double
   Dim cLow As Double, cHigh As Double, epsilon as Double, tempval As Double

   vLow=0.01
   vHigh=1
   epsilon=0.000001
   cLow = GBlackScholes(CallPutFlag,S,X,T,r,b,vLow)
   cHigh = GBlackScholes(CallPutFlag,S,X,T,r,b,vHigh)
   vi=vLow+(cm-cLow)*(vHigh-vLow)/(cHigh-cLow)
   tempval=GBlackScholes(CallPutFlag,S,X,T,r,b,vi)

   While Abs(cm-tempval) > epsilon
       if tempval < cm Then
           vLow=vi
       Else
           vHigh=vi
       End If

       cLow = GBlackScholes(CallPutFlag,S,X,T,r,b,vLow)
       cHigh = GBlackScholes(CallPutFlag,S,X,T,r,b,vHigh)
       vi=vLow+(cm-cLow)*(vHigh-vLow)/(cHigh-cLow)
       tempval=GBlackScholes(CallPutFlag,S,X,T,r,b,vi)
   Wend

   BisectionAlgorithm=vi
End Function
```

## Answer by onlyvix.blogspot.com (score 4, accepted)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/3028

The algorithm is the same, you just need to use appropriate (American/Exotic) pricer instead of black-scholes.

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.