I am new and struggling to understand how to solve this using Ito lemma.
Can someone please explain it to me:
$$dS_t=-\frac{1}{2}\sigma^2 S_t dW_t$$
what is the solution with explanation please
Quantitative Finance Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for finance professionals and academics. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communityI am new and struggling to understand how to solve this using Ito lemma.
Can someone please explain it to me:
$$dS_t=-\frac{1}{2}\sigma^2 S_t dW_t$$
what is the solution with explanation please
Actually this is just the Black-Scholes SDE with zero drift and $-\frac{1}{2}\sigma^2$ volatility. If you plug that into the well known solution, you get $S_t=S_0e^{\frac{1}{8}\sigma^4t-\frac{1}{2}\sigma^2 W_t}$ but let's calculate it with Ito's formula.
Choose $f(x)=\log(x)$, then we have $f'(x)=\frac{1}{x}$ and $f''(x)=-\frac{1}{x^2}$. Inserting in Ito's formula yields $$ d\log(S_t)=\frac{1}{S_t}dS_t+\frac{1}{2}\left(-\frac{1}{S_t^2}\right)d\langle S\rangle_t \\ =-\frac{1}{S_t}\frac{1}{2}\sigma^2S_tdW_t+\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{S_t^2}\frac{1}{4}\sigma^4S_t^2dt \\ = \frac{1}{8}\sigma^4dt-\frac{1}{2}\sigma^2dW_t $$ or equivalently $$ \log(S_t)=\log(S_0)+\frac{1}{8}\sigma^4 t-\frac{1}{2}\sigma^2W_t \\ \Leftrightarrow S_t=S_0\exp\left(\frac{1}{8}\sigma^4t-\frac{1}{2}\sigma^2W_t\right) $$