Static Hedging: Set It and Forget It Risk Management
Delta hedging is wonderful in theory. You adjust your position continuously, and risk vanishes. In practice, it is messy. You have to trade at discrete times. Transaction costs eat your lunch. And for some contracts, like barrier options or anything with a discontinuous payoff, the required hedge ratios become absurd. You end up buying and selling enormous quantities of the underlying at exactly the wrong moments. Chapter 60 of Wilmott’s book introduces static hedging as the cure for many of these headaches.