💗Inspirations

A silver Triton emerged from the center of the lake and sounded trumpet to begin the battle. Before it started, the combatants cried, “Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!” .... the emperor replied, “Or not.”

SPQR, an abbreviation for Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (....English: "The Roman Senate and People"), is an emblematic abbreviated phrase referring to the government of the ancient Roman Republic....Even in contemporary usage, SPQR is still used in the municipal coat of arms of Rome and as abbreviation for the comune of Rome in official documents. The Italians have long used a different and humorous expansion of this abbreviation, "Sono Pazzi Questi Romani" (literally: "They're crazy, these Romans")

A volatility smile is a geographical pattern of implied volatility for a series of options that has the same expiration date. When plotted against strike prices, these implied volatilities can create a line that slopes upward on either end; hence the term "smile." Volatility smiles should never occur based on standard Black-Scholes option theory, which normally requires a completely flat volatility curve. The first notable volatility smile was seen following the 1987 stock market crash.

The volatility surface is a three-dimensional plot where the x-axis is the time to maturity, the z-axis is the strike price, and the y-axis is the implied volatility. If the Black-Scholes model were completely correct, then the implied volatility surface across strike prices and time to maturity should be flat. In practice, this is not the case.