Title: Pricing options and computing implied volatilities using neural networks,
Abstract: This paper proposes a data-driven approach, by means of an Artificial Neural
Network (ANN), to value financial options and to calculate implied volatilities
with the aim of accelerating the corresponding numerical methods. With ANNs
being universal function approximators, this method trains an optimized ANN on
a data set generated by a sophisticated financial model, and runs the trained
ANN as an agent of the original solver in a fast and efficient way. We test
this approach on three different types of solvers, including the analytic
solution for the Black-Scholes equation, the COS method for the Heston
stochastic volatility model and Brent's iterative root-finding method for the
calculation of implied volatilities. The numerical results show that the ANN
solver can reduce the computing time significantly.