Market overreaction and investment strategies

We investigated the overreaction of the Korean market in response to shocks in the US stock market, and analysed the dynamic relationship between these two markets since 1996. We found that the KOSPI 200 index futures overreacted to the S&P 500 index returns during the period from 2000 to 2009 when the Korean market was in its growth stage. As the Korean market matured and the KOSPI 200 overnight futures were introduced in 2009, the overreaction disappeared. When investors employed the Kelly model or Value-at-Risk to exploit the overreaction, their trading strategies produced significant profits during the growth stage even after considering transaction costs and risk, but the profits attenuated once the overnight futures market was launched in 2009.     

Trading with Tigers: A Technical Analysis of Southeast Asian Stock Index Futures

ABSTRACT

Our paper examines the profitability of technical trading rules in Southeast Asian (SEA) ‘tiger cub’ stock index futures markets during and after the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007/2008. Using daily closing price data from 2007 to 2012, we explore technical trading rules such as exponential moving averages (EMA (20), EMA (100), EMA (20,100)) and moving average convergence divergence (MACD) in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. The findings reveal that after applying trading rules that account for transaction costs and risk, abnormal profits cannot be achieved above a naı¨ve ‘buy-and-hold’ strategy (with the exception of EMA (100) and EMA (20,100) in Indonesia, and EMA (20,100) in both the Philippines and Thailand). There appears to be some degree of success with the application of longer-term trading rules; however, unless transaction costs can be reduced, investors are best advised to pursue passive investment approaches. Despite the economic uncertainty associated with the GFC and ongoing market volatility, it appears that SEA tiger cub stock index futures markets are weak-form efficient.     

股指期货对现货市场的信息传递效应分析

本文研究了股票指数合约的交易对现货市场的影响以及股指期货是否有助于现货市场在信息传递速度与效率方面的提升.利用了GARCH模型,修正GARCH模型,TGARCH模型及极端值模型,通过对香港恒生H股指期货合约引入前后样本的实证分析发现,在期货合约未上市前,波动性干扰反应在时间上的持续性效果较持久.反之,在股价指数期货合约推出后,可以观察到波动性干扰因子的影响会更快速的反应到经济体系中,显示此时的波动过程更趋稳定.由此推论出期货交易的进行加速了信息传递的效率.亦即开放期货合约的交易,对于其标的现货市场的信息传递以及市场波动性,皆具有正面的贡献.     

Momentum and reversals in Taiwan index futures returns during periods of extreme trading imbalance

The study analyzes the relation between a trading imbalance metric that captures data observable by investors, and future momentum and reversals in Taiwan index futures returns. Standard regression analyses do not show any significant dynamic relations between daily index futures returns and the trading imbalance, regardless of whether the trading imbalance metric is lagged, contemporaneous, or leads the index futures return. However, when the analyses are focused on periods with extreme trading imbalances I find that the daily index futures returns exhibit significant reversals following periods of extreme (low) trading imbalances and low returns. I also find some evidence of residual momentum in consecutive daily index futures returns following periods of extreme (high) trading imbalances and high returns. Trading simulation, directional accuracy, and market timing tests show these effects to be economically significant, even after accounting for transaction costs.     

Construction and Evaluation of Trading Systems: Warsaw Index Futures

This paper presents and compares 15 trading systems constructed for the Warsaw Stock Exchange futures contracts. These trading systems are constructed applying technical analysis and artificial neural networks (ANN). The efficiency of constructed trading systems is measured by the profit, which could be gained on the analyzed market when an investor uses various methods of buy and sell signals generating. Investigation is conducted for daily observations of stock index WIG20 futures from December 1, 1999 to November 28, 2003. The conclusion is that the combination of the technical analysis and artificial intelligence in order to gain profit from trading on the Polish futures market can bring much better investment results than trade in the traditional way (JEL G10, C45).     

The relation between the informational content of implied volatility and arbitrage costs: Evidence from the Oslo Stock Exchange

This study investigates the proposition that volatility of stock returns can be predicted from the volatility implied by options on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE), conditional on the ability to perform arbitrage. Insights into the relation between the informational content of implied volatility and arbitrage cost can be distilled from Oslo Stock Exchange data. For Norwegian firms, options and their underlying stock trade on the Oslo Stock Exchange and have an overlapping set of market makers thereby lowering the cost of arbitrage. Other components of arbitrage trading costs, liquidity and dispersion of stock return volatility, vary widely across Norwegian firms. Moreover, restriction on the short selling of stock in Oslo allows further insight into the role of arbitrage costs in determining the informational content of implied volatility. The results yield support for the arbitrage cost hypothesis: the lower the arbitrage cost between the stock and the option, the greater the informational content of implied volatility.     

Tobin tax and trading volume tightening: a reassessment

This article extends the previous literature on the Tobin tax. We find that very roughly, a doubling in transaction costs would reduce trading volume by 25% to 40% in the Forex. Most importantly, this article is the first contribution to specify the trading volume of the Forex through different (low and high volatility) regimes. Our results show evidence of nonlinear patterns for trading volumes and transaction costs on the Forex. Thus, the Tobin tax would not have a monotonic impact on trading activity across market conditions. The change in elasticity between low and high volatility regimes would be slight but significantly different. We may suggest that the high-variance regime might be the fundamentalist regime and the low-variance regime might be the chartist regime. It is a first step towards understanding which categories of agents would react to the introduction of a tax. Our results seem consistent with Tobin’s underlying thinking; since a tax would penalize chartists more than fundamentalists, it could reduce exchange rate volatility.     

The determinants of exchange settlement practices and the implication of volatility smile: Evidence from the Taiwan Futures Exchange

This paper proposes that the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) adopts a linear extrapolation method to set the settlement price for the Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index (TAIEX) options with less liquidity and thin trading. The empirical results indicate that the settlement-price-determined implied volatility is a smile function, consistent with the pattern of the market-price-determined implied volatility. Moreover, we examine the influence of economic factors on the TAIFEX's decision regarding the parameters of implied volatility function. Compared with the economic determinants of market-force-driven volatility parameters, the TAIFEX inappropriately values the impacts of the parameters of prior days, current stock returns, distribution of stock returns, long-term measurement of the stock market trend, market transaction cost, and time to maturity.     

Impacts of derivative markets on spot market volatility and their persistence

In this article, we investigate the impacts of futures and options markets on the volatility of the underlying market. Unlike earlier studies, the focus is on their persistence over time. Tests on the Hang Seng index yield several interesting results that often contrast with previous findings. Empirical results suggest that the quality of new information generated by derivative trading determines the impacts on the spot market volatility. The futures market provides new, material information reducing spot market volatility. The Options market, on the other hand, generates noisy information and distorts price, which is followed by an increase in volatility and a decrease in its sensitivity to price change. While the impact of futures persists, that of options mostly disappears as the market matures. Our conjecture is that the futures market is mainly driven by informed, experienced participants, while the options market attracts new, inexperienced investors.     

Rolling settlement and market liquidity

This paper investigates the impact on UK stock and option markets of the change from an account based settlement system to a rolling settlement procedure. Such a change increases the transaction costs of short-term margin traders, and is likely to impact on the liquidity of the underlying market, as well as trading in the options market. Evidence is presented that the settlement procedure does impact on the liquidity of the market. Further, we find that rolling settlement increased market liquidity, consistent with the exit of margin traders as a result of the increase in short selling costs. Associated with this increase in liquidity is a significant reduction in nonoptionable stock trading volume, implying that margin trading may have been more prevalent in stocks without options. Finally, it is shown that while trading in stock options increased, the volatilities implied from call and put option prices indicate that put options have become relatively more expensive. This reflects the change in demand induced by the new settlement procedure, especially in terms of the increase in short selling costs.     

Derivative securities and cash market stability

This study investigates the effect of introducing interest-rate futures and options on the price variances in related financial cash markets. Standard research approaches to this issue relate cash-price stability before the introduction of futures and options trading to cash-price stability after trading in the derivative security begins. However, controlling for the additional factors that may also effect cash markets is difficult. The approach employed here to deal with this obstacle is motivated by recent theoretical research relating cash and futures markets, but hitherto not operationalized to empirically test for a relationship between the markets. Varying-parameter models of (1) the demand for short-term Treasury securities, (2) the demand for large time-deposits, and (3) the supply of large time-deposits are specified such that changes in the parameters imply changes in the volatility of the cash price. These parameters are modelled as functions of the trading volume of interest-rate futures and options, thereby enabling a direct test of the hypothesis that trading volume in these derivative securities influences the behaviour of cash-market participants, and therefore, cash-price volatility. We find no convincing evidence that the level of activity in interest-rate futures and options has a significant effect on these cash markets.     

Market Architecture and Nonlinear Dynamics of Australian Stock and Futures Indices

This paper studies the All Ordinaries Index in Australia, and its futures contract known as the Share Price Index. We use a new form of smooth transition model to account for a variety of nonlinearities caused by transaction costs and other market/data imperfections, and given the recent interest in the effects of market automation on price discovery, we focus on how the nonlinear properties of the basis and returns have changed, now that floor trading in the futures contract has been replaced by electronic trading.     

碳排放权交易市场的信息流动关系——基于EUA市场和CER市场的实证研究

基于Granger因果关系检验方法和MGARCH-BEKK模型,从报酬溢出和波动溢出的角度,研究国际碳排放权交易市场中的主要商品———EUAs和sCERs各自的期货价格与现货价格之间以及两者的期货价格之间的信息流动关系。结果表明:两个市场的现货市场始终都处于价格信息中心,期货市场的价格发现功能较弱甚至未体现;信息波动溢出方面,EUA市场中期货市场处于波动信息中心,而CER市场中现货市场处于波动信息中心;EUA的期货市场与CER的期货市场之间存在相互的价格溢出效应与波动溢出效应,但EUA市场的期货价格对CER市场具有更大的波动溢出效应。     

Options-based forecasts of futures prices in the presence of limit moves

The reported analysis examines a simultaneous estimation option-based approach to forecast futures prices in the presence of daily price limit moves. The procedure explicitly allows for changing implied volatilities by estimating the implied futures price and the implied volatility simultaneously. Using futures and futures options data for three agricultural commodities, it is found that the simultaneous estimation approach accounts for the abrupt changes in implied volatility associated with limit moves and generates more accurate price forecasts than conventional methods that rely on only one implied variable.     

Volatility–volume co-movements: evidence from China metal markets

This article investigates the interactional relationship between price volatility and futures trading activity for three heavily traded metal products on the Shanghai Metal Exchange and the Shanghai Futures Exchange. Using models based on vector autoregression and generalized method of moments, we show, in particular, that futures trading activity has a strong impact on both spot and futures price volatility in copper and aluminium markets. Futures trading activity leads spot market volatility in copper and aluminium markets which suggests that futures markets have a destabilizing effect. In order to disentangle the effect of different traders’ types on asset price movements, we decompose futures trading into speculators’ and hedgers’ trading and investigate their contributions to volatility. As a robustness check, we investigate the impact of endogenous structural breaks on the interactional relationship between price volatility and futures trading.     

Forecasting volatility of futures market: the S&P 500 and FTSE 100 futures using high frequency returns and implied volatility

We show that historical volatility from high frequency returns outperforms implied volatility when standardized returns by historical volatility tends to be normally distributed. For the FTSE 100 futures, we find that historical volatility using high frequency returns outperforms implied volatility in forecasting future volatility. However, we find that implied volatility outperforms historical volatility in forecasting future volatility for the S&P 500 futures. The results also indicate that historical volatility using high frequency returns could be an unbiased forecast for the FTSE 100 futures.     

Limit orders,asymmetric information,and the formation of asset prices with a computerized specialist

We analyze the existence of equilibrium in an asset market under asymmetric information. Price formation is modeled as a bilateral sealed bid auction where uninformed and informed traders submit limit orders to a computerized specialist. The computerized specialist is programmed to sell to the highest bidder and buy from the seller asking the lowest price. We show that this mechanism — which is designed to model the Globex and RAES trading institutions used in Chicago, London, New York, Paris, and Germany — yields an equilibrium in which the bid-ask spread is endogenously random and the passive specialist earns nonnegative profits.     

Offset Credits in the EU ETS: A Quantile Estimation of Firm-Level Transaction Costs

International carbon offset certificates were cheaper than European Union Allowances, although they were substitutes within the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Thus, firms had a strong incentive to use offset certificates. However, a considerable number of firms did not exhaust their offset quota and, by doing so, seemingly forwent profits. While most literature on emissions trading evaluates the efficiency of regulation in a frictionless world, in practice firms incur costs when complying with regulation. In order to assess the relevance of trade-related fixed transaction costs, this study examines the use of international offset credits in the EU ETS. It establishes a model of firm decision under fixed (quantity-invariant) entry costs and estimates the size of such costs rationalizing firm behavior using semi-parametric binary quantile regressions. Comparing binary quantile results with probit estimates shows that high average transaction costs result from a strongly skewed underlying distribution. For most firms, the bulk of transaction costs stems from certificate trading in general, rather than additional participation in offset trading.     

Strategic interaction between futures and spot markets

We study an oligopolistic industry where firms are able to sell in a futures market at infinitely many moments prior to the spot market. A kind of Folk-theorem is established: any outcome between perfect competition and Cournot can be sustained in equilibrium. We then find that the Cournot outcome can be sustained by a renegotiation-proof equilibrium. However, this is not true for the competitive outcome. Furthermore, only the monopolistic outcome is renegotiation-proof if firms can buy and sell in the futures market. These results suggest, contrary to existing literature, that the introduction of futures markets may have an anti-competitive effect.     

Simultaneity,Forecasting and Profits in London Copper Futures

Previous research on price determination for non‐ferrous metals at the London Metal Exchange (LME) suffers from three limitations: first it has employed single equation methods only, which cannot explain the simultaneous determination of spot and futures prices; second, by focusing on current and lagged prices, previous research does not analyse the effect on price determination of critical variables such as expectations, consumption and inventories; third, the outcome of prior research regarding market efficiency is ambiguous. This paper, which addresses these issues, develops a simultaneous model of the copper market at the LME, with representation of the activities of hedgers, speculators and consumers. This model produces post‐sample forecasts of the spot price which outperform conventional benchmarks, thus providing evidence against the efficient market hypothesis. Model‐derived forecasts are employed as the foundation of a trading program which produces risk‐adjusted profits (net of commission costs) for holding periods of one week and one month, thus fulfilling the ‘sufficient condition’ for market inefficiency. This study, therefore, provides new insights into price determination on the LME copper market, and resolves the ambiguity of previous research regarding the efficiency of that market. This is the first application of the model forecasting approach to the question of performance of the market for copper.