English

An uncertainty-aware physics-informed neural network solution for the Black-Scholes equation: a novel framework for option pricing

Computational Finance 2025-11-11 v1 Applied Physics

Abstract

We present an uncertainty-aware, physics-informed neural network (PINN) for option pricing that solves the Black--Scholes (BS) partial differential equation (PDE) as a mesh-free, global surrogate over (S,t)(S,t). The model embeds the BS operator and boundary/terminal conditions in a residual-based objective and requires no labeled prices. For American options, early exercise is handled via an obstacle-style relaxation while retaining the BS residual in the continuation region. To quantify \emph{epistemic} uncertainty, we introduce an anchored-ensemble fine-tuning stage (AT--PINN) that regularizes each model toward a sampled anchor and yields prediction bands alongside point estimates. On European calls/puts, the approach attains low errors (e.g., MAE 5×102\sim 5\times10^{-2}, RMSE 7×102\sim 7\times10^{-2}, explained variance 0.999\approx 0.999 in representative settings) and tracks ground truth closely across strikes and maturities. For American puts, the method remains accurate (MAE/RMSE on the order of 10110^{-1} with EV 0.999\approx 0.999) and does not exhibit the error accumulation associated with time-marching schemes. Against data-driven baselines (ANN, RNN) and a Kolmogorov--Arnold FINN variant (KAN), our PINN matches or outperforms on accuracy while training more stably; anchored ensembles provide uncertainty bands that align with observed error scales. We discuss design choices (loss balancing, sampling near the payoff kink), limitations, and extensions to higher-dimensional BS settings and alternative dynamics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.05519,
  title  = {An uncertainty-aware physics-informed neural network solution for the Black-Scholes equation: a novel framework for option pricing},
  author = {Sina Kazemian and Ghazal Farhani and Amirhessam Yazdi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.05519},
  year   = {2025}
}