Black–Scholes 50 Years Later: Has the Outperformance of Passive Option Strategies Finally Faded?

Slightly over fifty years ago, the Black–Scholes option pricing model revolutionized investing by enabling a shift from linear to non-linear payoff structures. Myron Scholes later published two papers documenting the performance of passive option strategies that outperformed the underlying index on a risk–return basis. The options market has evolved considerably over the last fifty years from an open outcry trading structure with options being single-listed to a high-frequency computer-based market. This paper re-evaluates the trilogy of foundational studies to determine whether passive-option-enhanced portfolios still produce superior performance in the current high-frequency options market environment.