Jump Process

A jump process is a type of stochastic process that has discrete movements, called jumps, rather than small continuous movements.

In physics, jump processes result in diffusion. On a microscopic level, they are described by jump diffusion models.

In finance, various stochastic models are used to model the price movements of financial instruments; for example the Black Scholes model for pricing options assumes that the underlying instrument follows a traditional diffusion process, with small, continuous, random movements. John Carrington Cox, Stephen Ross and Nassim Nicholas Taleb proposed that prices actually follow a 'jump process'. The Cox-Ross-Rubinstein binomial options pricing model formalizes this approach. This is a more intuitive view of financial markets, with allowance for larger moves in asset prices caused by sudden world events.

Robert C. Merton extended this approach to a hybrid model known as jump diffusion, which states that the prices have large jumps followed by small continuous movements.