Introduction to Financial Options (NOPT064), Fall 2026
In this course, students will learn what financial options are, how they are priced, and how the risks of an options portfolio are managed. The techniques developed in the course also provide a foundation for understanding other financial derivatives.
Slides, videos, and the complete online course are available at Options 101.
Lectures
| Lecture | Topic | Slides |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What Is an Option? | Open slides |
| 2 | The Value of Optionality | Open slides |
| 3 | Put-Call Parity and Synthetic Equivalence | Open slides |
| 4 | Pricing by Replication | Open slides |
| 5 | Black-Scholes | Open slides |
| 6 | Implied Volatility | Open slides |
Tutorials
| Number | Topic | Exercises | Solutions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Revisiting calculus | Exercises | Solutions |
| 2 | Put-call parity arbitrage | Open game | — |
| 3 | Pricing by replication | Exercises | Solutions |
| 4 | Differential equations and Black–Scholes | Exercises | Solutions |
| 5 | Newton's method | Exercises | Solutions |
Assignments
Assignment 1
— deadline:
Assignment 2 — Binomial Options Pricer on ReCodEx — deadline:
Please hand in the assignment in person at a lecture or tutorial, or send it by email to sychrovsky@kam.mff.cuni.cz (in-person submission preferred).
Prerequisites
Students should be comfortable with single-variable calculus and basic programming in Python. No prior experience with financial markets or trading is required.