Distilling private information from plain-vanilla options to predict future underlying stock price volatility: Evidence from the H-shares of Chinese banks

Deviations from put-call parity may arise in response to private information that a select group of investors possess. From a practical perspective, if one possesses private information, using options to speculate or hedge amplifies potential gains given the leverage embedded in options with respect to price changes in the underlying asset. In light of this, and if we assume that the average investor does not possess private information, it is perhaps possible though to infer such information through implied variance spreads and use it to predict future volatility in the underlying asset. In this piece I examine the extent to which such information is economically informative in predicting the intraday return variability of H-shares issued by China's state and joint-stock banks, respectively. Generally speaking, I uncover the following; firstly, call-put implied variance spreads are mean-reverting across time. Secondly, at any given point in time, the magnitude of the deviation from put-call parity is informative in predicting rises in future spot price volatility. Thirdly, straddle/strangle trades predict, at times one week in advance, rises in future spot price volatility. These findings hold after controlling for market-wide implied volatility, the flow and shock in information disseminating to the market, and implicit transactions costs.     

FURTHER ANALYSIS OF THE PUT-CALL PARITY IMPLIED RISK-FREE INTEREST RATE

In this paper the put-call parity implied riskless rate of borrowing and lending is re-examined. Using a rigorous model, it is shown that, given the level of an observable proxy of the risk-free rate of lending (T-bill rates, for example), the put-call parity provides an opportunity to borrow at rates substantially below the market rate of lending. This is especially true when high interest rates prevail. The major conclusion is either that American option prices may invalidate the parity, or that option markets are not as frictionless as one might wish.     

Is there price discovery in equity options?

We use tick-by-tick quote data for 39 liquid US stocks and options on them, and we focus on events when the two markets disagree about the stock price in the sense that the option-implied stock price obtained from the put-call parity relation is inconsistent with the actual stock price. Option market quotes adjust to eliminate the disagreement, while the stock market quotes behave normally, as if there were no disagreement. The disagreement events are typically precipitated by stock price movements and display signed option volume in the direction that tends to eliminate the disagreements. These results show that option price quotes do not contain economically significant information about future stock prices beyond what is already reflected in current stock prices, i.e., no economically significant price discovery occurs in the option market. We also find no option market price discovery using a much larger sample of disagreement events based on a weaker definition of a disagreement, which verifies that the findings for the primary sample are not due to unusual or unrepresentative market behavior during the put-call parity violations.     

IS THE BOOK‐TO‐MARKET RATIO A MEASURE OF RISK?

We develop a leverage‐based alternative to traditional asset pricing models to investigate whether the book‐to‐market ratio acts as a proxy for risk. We argue that the book‐to‐market ratio should act as a proxy because of the expected relations between (1) financial risk and measures of capital structure based on the market value of equity and (2) asset risk and measures of capital structure based on the book value of equity. We find no relation between average stock returns and the book‐to‐market ratio in all‐equity firms after controlling for firm size, and an inverse relation between average stock returns and the book‐to‐market ratio in firms with a negative book value of equity.     

Efficiency Tests of the Foreign Currency Options Market

Based on a new options transactions data base from the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Foreign Currency Options Market, this paper examines the importance of the effect of nonsynchronous prices and transaction costs on the usual option market efficiency tests. The tests conducted are based on the transaction cost adjusted early exercise and put-call parity pricing boundaries applicable to the American foreign currency options market. The test results show that the put-call parity boundary tests are sensitive to both nonsynchronous prices and transaction costs. The early exercise boundary tests are sensitive to transaction costs but are not very sensitive to simultaneity of the option price and the underlying spot price. Under the no-transaction costs scenario, a large number of early exercise boundary violations is found even when simultaneous spot and option prices are used. These violations disappear when actual transaction costs are taken into account.     

Market risks in asset management companies

This paper shows that revenues from a sample of publicly traded US asset management companies carry substantial market risks. Not only does this challenge the academic risk management literature about the predominance of operative risks in asset management, it is also at odds with current practice in asset management firms. Asset managers do not hedge market risks even though these risks are systematically built into the revenue generation process. This is surprising as shareholders would not optimally choose asset management companies as their source of market beta. They rather prefer to participate in alpha generation and fund gathering expertise of investment managers as financial intermediaries. At the very minimum, asset managers need to monitor their ‘fees at risk’ to understand what impact product design, benchmark choice and fee contract design have on revenue volatility. This calls for a much wider interpretation of the risk management function that too narrowly focuses on client risks.     

The Information in Option Volume for Future Stock Prices

We present strong evidence that option trading volume containsinformation about future stock prices. Taking advantage of aunique data set, we construct put-call ratios from option volumeinitiated by buyers to open new positions. Stocks with low put-callratios outperform stocks with high put-call ratios by more than40 basis points on the next day and more than 1% over the nextweek. Partitioning our option signals into components that arepublicly and nonpublicly observable, we find that the economicsource of this predictability is nonpublic information possessedby option traders rather than market inefficiency. We also findgreater predictability for stocks with higher concentrationsof informed traders and from option contracts with greater leverage.     

Estimating discrete dividends by no-arbitrage

We develop and showcase a simple no-arbitrage methodology for the valuation of discrete dividend payments, based exclusively on market prices of options via the put-call parity. Our approach integrates all available option market data and simultaneously calibrates the market-implied discount curve, thus ensuring consistency across spot and derivative markets. We illustrate our method using stocks of European blue-chip companies.     

Consumption, Aggregate Wealth, and Expected Stock Returns

This paper studies the role of fluctuations in the aggregate consumption–wealth ratio for predicting stock returns. Using U.S. quarterly stock market data, we find that these fluctuations in the consumption–wealth ratio are strong predictors of both real stock returns and excess returns over a Treasury bill rate. We also find that this variable is a better forecaster of future returns at short and intermediate horizons than is the dividend yield, the dividend payout ratio, and several other popular forecasting variables. Why should the consumption–wealth ratio forecast asset returns? We show that a wide class of optimal models of consumer behavior imply that the log consumption–aggregate wealth (human capital plus asset holdings) ratio summarizes expected returns on aggregate wealth, or the market portfolio. Although this ratio is not observable, we provide assumptions under which its important predictive components for future asset returns may be expressed in terms of observable variables, namely in terms of consumption, asset holdings and labor income. The framework implies that these variables are cointegrated, and that deviations from this shared trend summarize agents' expectations of future returns on the market portfolio.     

Value-at-risk capital requirement regulation,risk taking and asset allocation: a mean–variance analysis

In this study, the mean–variance framework is employed to analyze the impact of the Basel value-at-risk (VaR) market risk regulation on the institution's optimal investment policy, the stockholders’ welfare, as well as the tendency of the institution to change the risk profile of the held portfolio. It is shown that with the VaR regulation, the institution faces a new regulated capital market line, which induces resource allocation distortion in the economy. Surprisingly, only when a riskless asset is available does VaR regulation induce the institution to reduce risk. Otherwise, the regulation may induce higher risk, accompanied by asset allocation distortion. On the positive side, the regulation implies an upper bound on the risk the institution takes and it never induces the firm to select an inefficient portfolio. Moreover, when the riskless asset is available, tightening the regulation always increases the amount of maintained eligible capital and decreases risk.     

资产注入：支付手段与市场反应

本文以股改后我国上市公司控股股东对上市公司资产注入事件为样本，运用市场模型检验不同支付手段资产注入的市场反应。研究发现，在控制注入资产的规模、注入前上市公司流通市值的大小、注入前机构投资者持有公司股票的比例等因素影响的情况下，市场对采用股权作为支付手段的资产注入反应强烈；投资者对资产注入方案已经具备较强的辨别能力。本文据此提出了有关政策建议。     

Investor Attention and Time‐varying Comovements

This paper analyses the effect of an increase in market‐wide uncertainty on information flow and asset price comovements. We use the daily realised volatility of the 30‐year treasury bond futures to assess macroeconomic shocks that affect market‐wide uncertainty. We use the ratio of a stock's idiosyncratic realised volatility with respect to the S&P500 futures relative to its total realised volatility to capture the asset price comovement with the market. We find that market volatility and the comovement of individual stocks with the market increase contemporaneously with the arrival of market‐wide macroeconomic shocks, but decrease significantly in the following five trading days. This pattern supports the hypothesis that investors shift their (limited) attention to processing market‐level information following an increase in market‐wide uncertainty and then subsequently divert their attention back to asset‐specific information.     

Informed trading in the options market surrounding data breaches

This study investigated whether there is informed trading that takes advantage of data breach events. By analyzing the transactions in the options market, we conjectured that there are two distinct informed trading patterns: one that begins approximately 4 months prior and another that begins 8–12 months before the corporate data breach announcements. This is supported by evidence of higher trading volume and open interest for put options, a higher put-to-call volume ratio, a higher put-to-call open interest ratio, and lower spreads prior to such announcements. We also examined the stock reactions following data breach announcements and found significantly negative cumulative abnormal returns of −0.35% within one day. Moreover, a cross-sectional analysis showed that put-call ratios have predictive power for stock returns. Finally, additional evidence, such as trading strategies in the stock and options markets, is provided.     

Arbitrage tests of the efficiency of the foreign currency options market

In this paper the lower boundary, excercise price, and put-call parity conditions for foreign currency options are subjected to empirical testing. The tests are directed towards the examination of the hypothesis that the foreign currency option market is efficient. The evidence in the ex-post tests is inconsistent with this hypothesis since a large number of violations of theoretical conditions are found in the data.     

An ex ante analysis of put-call parity

The authors previously had extended the theoretical put-call parity models developed by Stoll (1969) and Merton (1973) to include a dividend term. Ex post tests of the models were generally consistent with market efficiency, but a sufficient number of hedges had high enough returns to warrant analysis of ex ante results. The purpose of this study was to construct hedges 5 and 15 minutes after they were initially identified as having an ex post return in excess of $20 per hedge. The results indicate that mispriced options adjust and that economic profit is sensitive to the level of transaction costs and unlikely even for member firms.     

Rehabilitating the role of active management for pension funds

Pension fund returns can be decomposed into different sources, including market movements, asset allocation policy, and active portfolio management. We use a unique database covering the asset allocations of US defined-benefit pension funds for the period 1990–2008, and we test the role of each factor in explaining their returns. Our results shed new light on pension funds’ sources of performance. While the previous literature emphasized that policy allocation accounts for the bulk of returns, leaving little room for active management, we show that taking explicit account of market movement can change the results significantly. Although active management plays a minor role in global asset allocation, its role is predominant in explaining returns to individual asset classes, whether traditional or alternative. This paper rehabilitates the contribution of active management as a source of performance for pension funds, at least at the asset class level.     

On the hedging of options on exploding exchange rates

We study a novel pricing operator for complete, local martingale models. The new pricing operator guarantees put-call parity to hold for model prices and the value of a forward contract to match the buy-and-hold strategy, even if the underlying follows strict local martingale dynamics. More precisely, we discuss a change of numéraire (change of currency) technique when the underlying is only a local martingale, modelling for example an exchange rate. The new pricing operator assigns prices to contingent claims according to the minimal cost for superreplication strategies that succeed with probability one for both currencies as numéraire. Within this context, we interpret the lack of the martingale property of an exchange rate as a reflection of the possibility that the numéraire currency may devalue completely against the asset currency (hyperinflation).     

Asset pricing in China's domestic stock markets: Is there a logic?

China's stock markets have grown rapidly since their inception and have become an increasingly important emerging market for international investors. However, there are few systematic studies on how asset prices are formed in Chinese domestic equity markets; popular financial media even depict the market as irrational. In this paper, we study the asset pricing mechanism in the nascent Chinese stock markets, with the objective of identifying variables that capture the cross-sectional variation in average stock returns. We focus on the effects of various market imperfections in China. We find that while the market risk (beta) is not priced, there is a significantly negative relationship between firm-specific risk and expected returns. Chinese investors are willing to pay a significant premium for more liquid stocks or for dividend-paying stocks. Furthermore, investors value local A-shares more if there are offshore counterparts (e.g., B- and H-shares) for foreigners, implying that a Chinese firm with a foreign shareholder base has a lower cost of capital, ceteris paribus. Lastly, as with U.S. and other mature markets, firm size and the book-to-market ratio are systematically related to stock returns. Given market imperfections, stocks are priced rather rationally in China, despite the widespread perception to the contrary.     

The Effect of House Price on Stock Market Participation in China: Evidence from the CHFS Microdata

This is an empirical study on the effect of house price on stock market participation and its depths based on unique China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data in 2011 and 2013 including 36,213 sample households. We mainly found that, with an increase of one thousand RMB per square meter in macrohouse price, the probability to participate in the stock market will increase by 5.4% before controlling for wealth effect and 2.84% afterwards, indicating the existence of wealth effect. The participation depths of the stock-total asset ratio are expected to decrease by 0.23%, and absolute stock asset is observed to decrease by 5.8 thousand RMB in response to one thousand RMB increase of per square meter house price. The effect of house price on participation decision is also related to housing area, and the negative effect of house price on stock market participation depths gets more intense with the increase of the stock-total asset ratio.     

Do ADRs enhance portfolio performance for a domestic portfolio? Evidence from the 1990s

American depository receipts (ADRs) represent an increasingly popular and convenient mechanism for international investing. We analyze ADRs traded throughout the 1990s and find that these securities offer a diversification and portfolio performance benefit when combined with a domestic portfolio (proxied by the S&P 500). While we find that emerging market ADRs are effective instruments for reducing portfolio risk, they do not improve portfolio performance as measured by the Sharpe ratio. Developed market ADRs do improve portfolio performance as measured by the Sharpe ratio. The asset allocation which maximizes the Sharpe ratio is 84 percent domestic stocks, 16 percent developed ADRs, and 0 percent emerging ADRs. Further, due to problems in defining an appropriate market index for ADRs, the Sharpe ratio is viewed to be the preferred performance measure. Other measures such as Jensen’s alpha and the Treynor measure are susceptible to being “gamed” to distort portfolio performance.