Option Valuation in the Presence of Market Sentiment: Application to Listed Companies in the CAC40 Index

Asset pricing theory based on rationality was widely criticized in literature. Indeed, the non-inclusion of investor behavior and assuming market efficiency led to the weaknesses of option valuation through the traditional Black and Scholes model (1973). In this paper we examine the effect of the inclusion of investor behavior in the option pricing model. We test whether the Black and Scholes model in presence of sentiment behavior can lead to an improvement of the calculation of call price. Using daily data of 30 listed companies of France in the CAC40 index for the period June 18, 2009 to May 09, 2018, results showed that the introduction of sentiment effect in the Black and Scholes model provides better estimates of the call price than that obtained by the standard Black-Scholes model. In fact, we obtain an average gain of about 44% in terms of relative change in mean square error between both methods.