Black-Scholes-Merton Option Pricing Model

The Black-Scholes-Merton model, published by Fischer Black and Myron Scholes in 1973 with the theoretical framework extended by Robert Merton, gives a closed-form no-arbitrage price for European options. By assuming the underlying asset follows geometric Brownian motion with constant volatility, it derives a partial differential equation whose solution expresses the option price in terms of the stock price, strike, time to maturity, risk-free rate, and volatility — transforming option pricing from intuition into a rigorous, tractable formula.