A Model of Returns and Trading in Futures Markets

This paper develops an equilibrium model of a competitive futures market in which investors trade to hedge positions and to speculate on their private information. Equilibrium return and trading patterns are examined. (1) In markets where the information asymmetry among investors is small, the return volatility of a futures contract decreases with time-to-maturity (i.e., the Samuelson effect holds). (2) However, in markets where the information asymmetry among investors is large, the Samuelson effect need not hold. (3) Additionally, the model generates rich time-to-maturity patterns in open interest and spot price volatility that are consistent with empirical findings.     

Futures Trading Activity and Commodity Cash Price Volatility

Abstract:   This paper examines the lead‐lag relationship between futures trading activity (volume and open interest) and cash price volatility for major agricultural commodities. Granger causality tests and generalized forecast error variance decompositions show that an unexpected increase in futures trading volume unidirectionally causes an increase in cash price volatility for most commodities. Likewise, there is a weak causal feedback between open interest and cash price volatility. These findings are generally consistent with the destabilizing effect of futures trading on agricultural commodity markets.     

The Samuelson hypothesis in futures markets: An analysis using intraday data

This paper considers the Samuelson hypothesis, which argues that the futures price volatility increases as the futures contract approaches its expiration. Utilizing intraday data from 20 futures markets in six futures exchanges, we find strong support for the Samuelson hypothesis in agricultural futures. However, the Samuelson hypothesis does not hold for other futures contracts. We also provide supporting evidence that the ‘negative covariance’ hypothesis is the key factor for the empirical support of the Samuelson hypothesis. In addition, our findings remain largely unaltered even after we control for seasonality and liquidity effects.     

LIQUIDITY AND PRICE VARIABILITY IN FUTURES MARKETS

This paper tests the hypothesis that market liquidity affects the price variability of futures contracts. The analyses used take into account the maturity effect and various sources of nonstationarity. Empirical testing involved eleven commodities in various markets. The evidence strongly suggests that futures contracts in distant and thinly traded months exhibit different price variability than contracts in near to maturity and liquid traded months, and that the behavior is commodity dependent. These findings could help investors better evaluate risks and provide a better basis for hedging strategies. Also, monthly averages of open interest can be used interchangeably with volume to measure liquidity in determining which pattern applies to a given commodity.     

Does futures exhibit maturity effect? New evidence from an extensive set of US and foreign futures contracts

In a seminal article, Samuelson (1965) [Samuelson, P. A. (1965), “Proof that properly anticipated prices fluctuate randomly,” Industrial Management Review 6, 41-49.] proposes the maturity effect that the volatility of futures prices should increase as futures contract approaches maturity. This study provides new evidence on the maturity effect by examining a more extensive set of futures contracts than previous studies and analyzing each contract separately. Using 6805 futures contracts drawn from 61 commodities, including some data from non-US markets, we find that the maturity effect is absent in the majority of contracts. In addition, the maturity effect tends to be stronger in agricultural and energy commodities than in financial futures. We also examine the hypothesis in Bessembinder et al. (1996) [Bessembinder, H., J. F. Coughenour, P. J. Seguin, & M. M. Smoller (1996), “Is there a term structure of futures volatilities? Reevaluating the Samuelson hypothesis,” Journal of Derivatives 4, 45-58.], which states that negative covariance between the spot price and net carry cost causes the maturity effect in futures. Our results provide very weak evidence in favor of this hypothesis.     

Trading volume and exchange rate volatility: Evidence for the sequential arrival of information hypothesis

The relationship between trading volume and volatility in foreign exchange markets continues to be of much interest, especially given the higher than expected volatility of returns. Allowing for nonlinearities, this paper tests competing hypotheses on the possible relationship between volatility and trading volume using data for three major currency futures contracts denominated in US dollars, namely the British pound, the Canadian dollar and the Japanese yen. We find that trading volumes and return volatility are negatively correlated, implying a lack of support for the mixture of distributions hypothesis (MDH). Using linear and nonlinear Granger causality tests, we document significant lead-lag relations between trading volumes and return volatility consistent with the sequential arrival of information (SAI) hypothesis. These findings are robust and not sample-dependent or due to heterogeneity of beliefs as proxied by open interest. Furthermore, our results are insensitive to the modeling approach used to recover volatility measures. Overall, our findings support the contention that short- to medium-term currency relationships may be dominated by trading dynamics and not by fundamentals.     

Volatility and trading activity following changes in the size of futures contracts

This paper has two purposes. First, we examine the relationship between daily price volatility and trading activity one year before and after a change in contract size by examining the results of contract splits in the Australian share price index futures and the U.K. FTSE-100 futures contracts and a reverse contract split in the Australian Bank Bill Acceptance futures contract. Second, we evaluate the effect of the change in contract size on the use of the particular futures market. We find that after a contract size change, the change in total trading frequency has the power to explain the change in daily price volatility. Specifically, after a contract split, trading frequency increased, resulting in increased daily price volatility, and vice versa after a reverse contract split. Most of the average trade size variable has an immaterial impact on price volatility. However, decomposing the total trading frequency into four trade size classes, we find that the trading frequency for small and large trade size categories are highly significant in explaining changes in daily price volatility after the contract splits. Finally, we find the change in contract size for each futures market was successful because within three years following the change, the adjusted trading volume and open interest surpassed the levels prior to the change and have continued to increase thereafter.     

Seasonality and the valuation of commodity options

Price movements in many commodity markets exhibit significant seasonal patterns. However, given an observed futures price, a deterministic seasonal component at the price level is not relevant for the pricing of commodity options. In contrast, this is not true for the seasonal pattern observed in the volatility of the commodity price. Analyzing an extensive sample of soybean, corn, heating oil and natural gas options, we find that seasonality in volatility is an important aspect to consider when valuing these contracts. The inclusion of an appropriate seasonality adjustment significantly reduces pricing errors in these markets and yields more improvement in valuation accuracy than increasing the number of stochastic factors.     

期货市场的交易量与价格波动

本文检验了美国期货市场WTI原油、S＆P500指数和10年期国债品种的日内、日间价格波动与日内交易量、隔日交易量之间的关系,发现预期的日内和隔日交易量都有平抑期货市场价格波动的作用,非预期的隔日交易量与期货价格波动之间有正相关关系,非预期的目内交易量对价格波动的影响不显著。从信息对称性的角度分析,预期的交易量中含有更多信息,能抑制期货价格的偏离;非预期的交易量主要由信息反馈者提供,他们往往对期货价格的变动做出过度反应,从而加剧价格波动。     

The Influence of Information Arrival on Market Microstructure: Evidence from Three Related Markets

This study examines the influence of information arrival on market microstructure for the MMI, NYSE, and S&P 500 stock index futures markets, with special emphasis on the effects of opening and closing of trading and expiration of contracts on price movements and trading activities. The results of the examination show that although the opening of the (MMI) futures market is associated with higher volatility, it is when the spot market opens that volatility reaches its highest level. Similarly, the closing of the futures markets, though more volatile, is not as volatile as the closing of the spot markets. Trading patterns, on the other hand, are distinct from volatility. For MMI, trading declines consistently after the close of the spot market. In contrast, the NYSE and S&P 500 continue to trade and reach a peak at the close of the futures markets. Expiration effects are evidenced by the increase in volatility and trading near the closing of the MMI and the spillover to the NYSE and S&P 500. In sharp contrast, the expirations of the NYSE and S&P 500 are only assooiated with decrease in trading, suggesting that efforts to dampen volatility by changing expiration days from Friday to Thursday and shifting settlement price from Friday close to Friday open, have been successful.     

Exchange traded currency derivatives markets in India: the road ahead

Indian exchanges have recently been permitted to offer currency futures on their platforms to the market participants. The paper outlines the contract, and charts the development and growth of currency futures in India since their inception in 2008. It emphasizes the existing close connectivity between commodity and currency markets. It highlights the increased exchange rate volatility of Indian exchange rate against US dollar (INRUSD) during conventional and non conventional trading hours and argues for the ability of the market to quickly adapt to extended trading hours. The paper recommends some new products and an alternative mechanism to settle the contracts.     

Economic linkages across commodity futures: Hedging and trading implications

We investigate cross-market trading dynamics in futures contracts written on seemingly unrelated commodities that are consumed by a common industry. On the Tokyo Commodity Exchange, we find such evidence in natural rubber (NR), palladium (PA) and gasoline (GA) futures markets. The automobile industry is responsible for more than 50% of global demand for each of these commodities. VAR estimation reveals short-run cross-market interaction between NR and GA, and from NR to PA. Cross-market influence exerted by PA is felt in longer dynamics, with PA volatility (volume) affecting NR (GA) volume (volatility). Our findings are robust to lag-specification, volatility measure, and consistent with full BEKK-GARCH estimation results. Further analysis, which benchmarks against silver futures market, TOCOM index and TOPIX transportation index, confirms that our results are driven by a common industry exposure, and not a commodity market factor. A simple trading rule that incorporates short-run GA and long-run PA dynamics to predict NR return yields positive economic profit. Our study offers new insights into how commodity and equity markets relate at an industry level, and implications for multi-commodity hedging.     

Trading activity and price reversals in futures markets

We use the standard contrarian portfolio approach to examine short-horizon return predictability in 24 US futures markets. We find strong evidence of weekly return reversals, similar to the findings from equity market studies. When interacting between past returns and lagged changes in trading activity (volume and/or open interest), we find that the profits to contrarian portfolio strategies are, on average, positively associated with lagged changes in trading volume, but negatively related to lagged changes in open interest. We also show that futures return predictability is more pronounced if interacting between past returns and lagged changes in both volume and open interest. Our results suggest that futures market overreaction exists, and both past prices and trading activity contain useful information about future market movements. These findings have implications for futures market efficiency and are useful for futures market participants, particularly commodity pool operators.     

Futures-Trading Activity and Stock Price Volatility

We examine whether greater futures-trading activity (volume and open interest) is associated with greater equity volatility. We partition each trading activity series into expected and unexpected components, and document that while equity volatility covaries positively with unexpected futures-trading volume, it is negatively related to forecastable futures-trading activity. Further, though futures-trading activity is systematically related to the futures contract life cycle, we find no evidence of a relation between the futures life cycle and spot equity volatility. These findings are consistent with theories predicting that active futures markets enhance the liquidity and depth of the equity markets.     

Expiration day effects and market manipulation: evidence from Taiwan

In this study, we analyze the expiration day effects of index futures on the cash market in Taiwan, and find that both volatility and trading volume are higher on the final settlement days than on other trading days. We also calculate the volume of open interest for the final settlement of index futures contracts relating to different classes of traders, as well as the profits they earn from their open interest positions. We find that proprietary traders exhibit superior performance whereas foreign investors achieve the worst returns. Our empirical results support the view that the expiration day effects in the Taiwan futures market are at least partially attributable to attempts at ‘marking the close’.     

The price discovery of day trading activities in futures market

Access to information is necessary for market transparency. However, contrary to trading volume and open interest, information related to day trading activities is rarely available. By incorporating unexplored day trading volume in the literature, this paper demonstrates that both the expected open interest and expected day trading volume are consistently and positively correlated with returns, but that one-lagged day trading volume is negatively correlated with futures returns. Meanwhile, both expected and unexpected day trading volume are negatively correlated with volatility, suggesting that arbitrage activities related to unexpected day trading volume may accelerate the movement of futures prices to a new equilibrium. Moreover, open interest provides liquidity but increases volatility. Finally, we strongly suggest that day trading transaction information be released by futures exchanges to achieve greater transparency.     

Price limits in futures markets: effects on the price discovery process and volatility

Price limits are actively employed by many futures exchanges as a regulatory mechanism directed at reducing volatility and improving price discovery process. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether price limits achieve these goals without affecting market liquidity for a number of agricultural futures contracts. We employ models of changing volatility in order to show that price limits do not appear to significantly reduce market volatility. In addition, we find evidence confirming the hypothesis that price limits delay price discovery instead of facilitating it. Our results also suggest that the impact of price limits on volatility and price reversals, found in previous studies, are mainly due to the properties inherent to the futures returns, such as volatility clustering. Finally, although trading decreases significantly due to the price limits, traders do not seem to switch from the contracts affected by price limits to other maturities in order to minimize the impact of circuit breakers.     

Dynamic spillover effects in futures markets: UK and US evidence

Previous studies on spillover effects in futures markets have so far confined themselves to static analyses. In this study, we use a newly introduced spillover index to examine dynamic spillovers between spot and futures markets volatilities, volume of futures trading and open interest in the UK and the US. Based on a dataset over the period February 25, 2008 to March 14, 2013, that encompasses both the global financial crisis and the Eurozone debt crisis, we find that spot and futures volatilities in the UK (US) are net receivers (net transmitters) of shocks to volume of futures trading and open interest. The analysis also sheds light on the dynamic interdependence of spot and futures markets volatilities between the US and the UK. Specifically, the spot and futures volatility spillovers between the UK and US markets are of bidirectional nature, however, they are affected by major economic events such as the global financial and Eurozone debt crises. Several robustness checks endorse our main findings. Overall, these results have important implications for various market participants and financial sector regulators.     

Trading costs and price discovery

The price discovery roles of a set of related markets or securities have been investigated in many different settings where trading costs effect is often commingled with other trading arrangement factors. In Hong Kong, regular futures and mini futures contracts as well as their underlying spot asset are all traded on a same electronic trading platform. The trading arrangements thus provide us with a unique setting where we can isolate the impacts of transaction costs on price discovery. Using Hasbrouck’s (J Finance 50:1175–1199, 1995) information share approach, it is found that in Hong Kong, the regular futures contracts market plays a dominant role in price discovery while the mini futures and cash index markets play minor roles. The results in this paper provide an unequivocal support to the trading costs hypothesis.     

Futures trading volume as a determinant of prices in different momentum phases

Recent studies contend that trading volume has predictive power for ex ante stock prices, particularly small stocks that do not react quickly to macroeconomic information. This study postulates that a significant amount of macro-information that flows on to stock markets is derived from derivative markets. We examine the impact of short-term futures trading volume and prices on cash stock prices using a case study of 15-min data from the Australian stock index futures market which reports actual trading volume. After applying vector error correction modelling (VECM), variance decomposition and impulse functions, we conclude that futures prices provide a short-term information lead to stock prices that dominates trading volume effects. We also observe asymmetric changes in the impact of trading volume between bull and bear price momentum phases and after large trading volume shocks. These results suggest that, in future, studies on trading volume should control for the cross-correlation impact from derivative prices and the differential impact of trading phases.