Cross hedging single stock with American Depositary Receipt and stock index futures

This paper investigates the cross hedging effectiveness of individual stock in a market that does not have single stock futures traded using American Depositary Receipt (ADR) and stock index futures. We apply Caporin and Billio’s Multivariate regime switching GARCH to capture the state-dependent covariance structure of underlying stock, ADR and stock index futures. Empirical results indicate that in general simultaneous hedging with both ADR and index futures creates hedging gains and incorporating regime switching effects further increases the hedging performances.     

The Traditional Hedging Model Revisited with a Nonobservable Convenience Yield

This article examines the hedging of constrained commodity positions with futures contracts. We extend the study of Adler and Detemple (1988a, 1988b) to include a partial information framework where the convenience yield is not observable. As a consequence, futures prices depend on investor's beliefs regarding the value of the convenience yield, and every component of the hedge is impacted by these beliefs. We achieve a decomposition of the demand that clarifies the impact on the optimal hedge of the beliefs, the spot price and the risk‐free rate as well as the hedging horizon.     

Price informativeness and stock return synchronicity: Evidence from the pricing of seasoned equity offerings

We investigate what stock return synchronicity reflects in terms of price informativeness by examining its effect on the pricing of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). Based on 5,087 SEOs from 1984 to 2007, we find a significantly negative relation between stock return synchronicity (estimated as the logit transformation of the R-squared statistic from a two-factor regression) and SEO discounts (the percentage differences between pre-offer day closing prices and offer prices). The negative relation is strongest when there is no analyst coverage, and it declines as analyst coverage increases. This shows that stock price is more informative when stock return synchronicity is higher and also that information asymmetry can be mitigated by analyst coverage. We further decompose stock return synchronicity into the market comovement and industry comovement components and find that both components are equally important in affecting SEO discounts.     

Limits to arbitrage and hedging: Evidence from commodity markets

We build an equilibrium model of commodity markets in which speculators are capital constrained, and commodity producers have hedging demands for commodity futures. Increases in producers' hedging demand or speculators' capital constraints increase hedging costs via price-pressure on futures. These in turn affect producers' equilibrium hedging and supply decision inducing a link between a financial friction in the futures market and the commodity spot prices. Consistent with the model, measures of producers' propensity to hedge forecasts futures returns and spot prices in oil and gas market data from 1979 to 2010. The component of the commodity futures risk premium associated with producer hedging demand rises when speculative activity reduces. We conclude that limits to financial arbitrage generate limits to hedging by producers, and affect equilibrium commodity supply and prices.     

Modeling stock pinning

This paper investigates the effect of hedging strategies on the so-called pinning effect, i.e. the tendency of stock's prices to close near the strike price of heavily traded options as the expiration date nears. In the paper we extend the analysis of Avellaneda and Lipkin, who propose an explanation of stock pinning in terms of delta hedging strategies for long option positions. We adopt a model introduced by Frey and Stremme and show that, under the original assumptions of the model, pinning is driven by two effects: a hedging-dependent drift term that pushes the stock price toward the strike price and a hedging-dependent volatility term that constrains the stock price near the strike as it approaches it. Finally, we show that pinning can be generated by simulating trading in a double auction market. Pinning in the microstructure model is consistent with the Frey and Stremme model when both discrete hedging and stochastic impact are taken into account.     

Index arbitrage and the pricing relationship between Australian stock index futures and their underlying shares

This paper examines the mispricing of Australian stock index futures. Exogenous and endogenous price volatility is confirmed to have a positive impact on the mispricing spread, after filtering out predictable time series components. More accurate pricing associated with surprise trading volume in the underlying stocks is consistent with arbitrageurs acting to narrow price disparities relative to the futures market. Ex‐ante interest rate volatility is the primary source of risk faced by arbitrageurs and fluctuations in the transaction cost of opening index arbitrage positions influence the extent to which they drive prices towards theoretical fair values.     

The macroeconomic determinants of technology stock price volatility

Stock prices reflect the value of anticipated future profits of companies. Since business cycle conditions impact the future profitability of firms, expectations about the business cycle will affect the current value of firms. This paper uses daily and monthly data from July 1986 to December 2000 to investigate the macroeconomic determinants of US technology stock price conditional volatility. Technology share prices are measured using the Pacific Stock Exchange Technology 100 Index. One of the novel features of this paper is to incorporate a link between technology stock price movements and oil price movements. The empirical results indicate that the conditional volatilities of oil prices, the term premium, and the consumer price index each have a significant impact on the conditional volatility of technology stock prices. Conditional volatilities calculated using daily stock return data display more persistence than conditional volatilities calculated using monthly data. These results further our understanding of the interaction between oil prices and technology share prices and should be of use to investors, hedgers, managers, and policymakers.     

The pricing of leverage products: An empirical investigation of the German market for ‘long’ and ‘short’ stock index certificates

This paper describes the first thorough empirical analysis of the pricing of leverage products in the German retail market. These mainly exchange-traded products with an impressive trading volume are frequently advertised as long and short futures contracts, although they are theoretically equivalent to one-sided barrier options. Issuers’ daily quotes for stock index products are compared to (i) theoretical values derived from the prices of Eurex options and to (ii) boundaries obtained from semi-static superhedging strategies. For the vast majority of products, bid and ask quotes significantly exceed both theoretical values and upper hedging boundaries, thus providing almost risk-free profits for the issuers.     

Using high, low, open, and closing prices to estimate the effects of cash settlement on futures prices

Due to dwindling commercial interest in the feeder cattle futures contract, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) decided to replace the contract's physical delivery provision with a cash settlement provision, arguing that cash settlement would help reduce price volatility and attracts more commercial interests. In this article, we apply stochastic volatility models to investigate the CME conjecture, using four different estimators based on opening, high, low, and closing prices, respectively. With each estimator, we find that the volatility of the feeder cattle futures price decreases after the implementation of cash settlement. We conclude that the change in the contract specification enhances price discovery and the contract's hedging performance.     

价格异常与不对称相关结构下套期保值策略——来自亚洲股指期货市场的实证

在不对称相关结构下,尾部区域期货和现货价格联动模式异常复杂,传统套期保值策略在极端价格行为下将不可避免地出现系统性偏差。为此,恰当的连接函数被引入描述尾部区域的价格联动模式,依据MV框架构建局部套期保值策略,以解决极端价格行为下的套期保值问题。对亚洲市场日经指数和恒生指数期货套期保值的实证研究表明:(1)采用Rotated Gumbel连接函数,在传统MV策略(全局策略)下,虽然在降低套保组合方差方面没有明显优势,但日经指数和恒生指数期货的套期保值成本将显著下降,套保组合收益/组合方差的比率显著上升;(2)如果套期保值者能够对未来形成可靠预期,套期保值的成本将进一步下降,并且现货价格风险也得到有效控制。     

Trading Behavior on Expiration Days and Quarter-End Days: The Effect of a New Closing Method

On July 1, 2002, the Taiwan Stock Exchange changed its closing price procedure to a five-minute call auction. This paper examines different types of trader behavior at the close before and after institution of the new mechanism. The results show that, since the new mechanism was introduced, individuals have shifted their trades away from the closing interval to the preclosing interval, which worsens market liquidity at the close. This paper also finds that institutional investors try to influence closing prices for window dressing at quarter ends, whereas foreign institutions attempt to influence closing prices on the expiration days of index futures. After the new mechanism's introduction, neither the expiration-day effect nor the quarter-end-day effect disappeared. Despite this finding, the new mechanism does make it more difficult and costly for traders to attempt to influence the stock price.     

The wandering weekday effect in major stock markets

This paper reports a wandering weekday effect: the pattern of day seasonality in stock market returns is not fixed, as assumed in the Monday or weekend effects, but changes over time. Analysing daily closing prices in eleven major stock markets during 1993–2007, our results show that the wandering weekday is not conditional on average returns in the previous week (the “twist” in the Monday effect). Nor does it diminish through the period of analysis. The results have important implications for market efficiency, and help to reconcile mixed findings in previous studies, including the reported disappearance of the weekday effect in recent years.     

Price Discovery Between Informationally Linked Markets During Different Trading Phases

The dynamic nature of the price information transfer when stock and futures markets switch between different price trading phases is examined. This is undertaken by decomposing Australian stock indexes and share price index futures contract data into bear- and bull-market phases and analyzing the change in the power of the bidirectional information feedback between the futures market and small, medium, and large stocks. Results support the hypothesis that the nature of the price-discovery process varies with the trading phase. In particular, during the bull phase small stocks show a marked increase in price exogeneity and futures prices contain relatively less price-sensitive fundamental information. We argue that in bull phases, futures trading becomes increasingly associated with noninformation trading such as realizing paper profits, portfolio rebalancing, and increased noise trading.     

The Lead‐Lag Relationship Between Cash and Stock Index Futures in a New Market

This paper investigates the lead‐lag relationship in daily returns and volatilities between price movements of the FTSE/ATHEX‐20 and FTSE/ATHEX Mid‐40 stock index futures and the underlying cash indices in the relatively new futures market of Greece. Empirical results show that there is a bi‐directional relationship between cash and futures prices. However, futures lead the cash index returns, by responding more rapidly to economic events than stock prices. This speed is much higher in the more liquid FTSE/ATHEX‐20 market. Moreover, results indicate that futures volatilities spill information over to the corresponding cash market volatilities in both investigated futures markets, but volatilities in the cash markets have no effect on the volatilities of futures markets. Overall, it seems that new market information is disseminated faster in the futures market compared to the stock market. This implies that the futures markets can be used as price discovery vehicles, providing further evidence that derivatives markets contribute to completing and stabilising capital markets in Greece. A further finding of this study is that futures volume and disequilibrium effects between cash and futures prices are important variables in the explanation of volatilities in cash and futures markets.     

The information content of implied skewness and kurtosis changes prior to earnings announcements for stock and option returns

We use option prices to examine whether changes in stock return skewness and kurtosis preceding earnings announcements provide information about subsequent stock and option returns. We demonstrate that changes in jump risk premiums can lead to changes in implied skewness and kurtosis and are also associated with the mean and variability of the stock price response to the earnings announcement. We find that changes in both moments have strong predictive power for future stock returns, even after controlling for implied volatility. Additionally, changes in both moments predict call returns, while put return predictability is primarily linked to changes in skewness.     

The impact of derivatives hedging on the stock market: Evidence from Taiwan’s covered warrants market

We examine the impact of derivatives hedging on the spot market using accurate hedge ratios of covered warrants traded in the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE). Results present significant positive abnormal returns and trading volumes before the announcement of a warrant’s issuance, and the effect is stronger when the hedging demand is larger. Moreover, a significantly positive relationship exists between stock return volatility and the price elasticity of hedging demand. Finally, we observe a significantly negative price effect upon the underlying stock after a call warrant has expired in-the-money due to the liquidation of hedging portfolios.     

Index-futures arbitrage and the behavior of stock index futures prices

This article examines intraday transaction data for S&P500 stock index futures prices and the intraday quotes for theunderlying index. The data indicate that the futures price changesare uncorrelated and that the variability of these price changesexceeds the variability of price changes in the S&P 500index. This excess variability of the futures over the indexremains even after controlling for the nonsynchronous pricesin the index quotes, which induces auto-correlation in the indexchanges. We advance and examine empirically two hypotheses regardingthe difference between the futures price and its theoreticalvalue: that this 'mispricing' increases on average with maturity,and that it is path-dependent. Evidence supporting these hypothesesis presented.     

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.     

恒生指数和沪深300股指期货套期保值效果对比研究

本文利用OLS、ECM、ECM-GARCH模型对沪深300股指期货和恒生指数期货的最优套期保值率进行了估算,并在风险最小化框架下对它们的套期保值效果进行了对比研究。结果发现:无论是哪种股指期货,不考虑期现货间存在的协整关系会使估算的最优套期保值率偏高,影响套期保值效果;其次是虽然在样本内外,沪深300股指期货的套期保值效果比恒生指数期货的好,但是沪深300股指期货套期保值效果的稳定性比恒生指数差。此时,ECM-GARCH和OLS模型分别为样本内外投资者利用沪深300指数期货进行套期保值时的最佳选择;对于恒生指数股指期货,最优模型是ECM。