An empirical investigation of the factors that determine the pricing of Dutch index warrants

This paper investigates the pricing of Dutch index warrants. It is found that when using the historical standard deviation as an estimate for the volatility, the Black and Scholes model underprices all put warrants and call warrants on the FT-SE 100 and the CAC 40, while it overprices the call warrants on the DAX. When the implied volatility of the previous day is used the model prices the index warrants fairly well. When the historical standard deviation is used the mispricing of the call and the put warrants depends in a strong way on the mispricing of the previous trading day, and on the moneyness (in a non-linear way), the volatility, and the dividend yield. When the implied standard deviation of the previous trading day is used the mispricing of the call warrants is only related to the moneyness and to the estimated volatility, while the mispricing of put index warrants depends in a strong way on the moneyness, the volatility, the dividend yield and the remaining time to maturity.     

Minimum option prices under decreasing absolute risk aversion

We establish bounds on option prices in an economy where the representative investor has an unknown utility function that is constrained to belong to the family of nonincreasing absolute risk averse functions. For any distribution of terminal consumption, we identify a procedure that establishes the lower bound of option prices. We prove that the lower bound derives from a particular negative exponential utility function. We also identify lower bounds of option prices in a decreasing relative risk averse economy. For this case, we find that the lower bound is determined by a power utility function. Similar to other recent findings, for the latter case, we confirm that under lognormality of consumption, the Black Scholes price is a lower bound. The main advantage of our bounding methodology is that it can be applied to any arbitrary marginal distribution for consumption. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Determination of Optimal Hedging Strategy for Index Futures: Evidence from Turkey

This paper aims to determine optimal hedge strategy for the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE)-30 stock index futures in Turkey by comparing hedging performance of constant and time-varying hedge ratios under mean-variance utility criteria. We employ standard regression and bivariate GARCH frameworks to estimate constant and time-varying hedge ratios respectively. The Turkish case is particularly challenging since Turkey has one of the most volatile stock markets among emerging economies and the turnover ratio as a measure of liquidity is very high for the market. These facts can be considered to highlight the great risk and, therefore, the extra need for hedging in the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE). The empirical results from the study reveal that the dynamic hedge strategy outperforms the static and the traditional strategies.     

Pricing and hedging power options

In this paper we study the pricing and hedging of options whose payoff is a polynomial function of the underlying price at expiration; so-called ‘power options’. Working in the well-known Black and Scholes (1973) framework we derive closed-form formulas for the prices of general power calls and puts. Parabola options are studied as a special case. Power options can be hedged by statically combining ordinary options in such a way that their payoffs form a piecewise linear function which approximates the power option's payoff. Traditional delta hedging may subsequently be used to reduce any residual risk.     

亚式期权定价的模拟方法研究

由于算术平均价格亚式期权的定价没有解析公式，所以文章用Monte Carlo模拟方法通过Matlab软件编写程序对亚式期权进行了定价。发现在某些情况下，亚式期权的价值并不是国内外一些研究者所认为的低于相应的欧式期权的价值。     

重推原油期货对我国的影响及完善建议

摘要：中国重新推出原油期货,是经济发展的必然结果。目前原油期货上市意义重大,上市时机已经成熟。重推原油期货,需要：打破石油市场的垄断,吸引广泛的市场参与主体;建立更具开放性、操作性的交易机制;建立并完善石油战略储备体系;大力发展资本市场,构建多层次金融市场体系,推进石油金融一体化;多视角择机推动“石油人民币”体系的建立,促进人民币的崛起。     

中国应尽快发展农产品期权市场

相对于期货来说,期权有自身的特点和优势,其操作灵活,成本低,收益和风险之间为非线性关系等.对于农业生产者来说,用期权来规避农产品价格波动的风险比期货更加方便和灵活.在市场经济条件下,农民直接面对市场,农产品价格的波动对农民收入影响很大,需要一种工具来规避这种风险.     

Modelling gold futures: should the level of speculation inform our choice of variables?

Prior literature provides conflicting evidence about the impact of speculation on gold futures returns, volatility, and the relationship between market fundamentals and prices. In this paper, we exploit trade volume information to determine the most appropriate family of factors to adopt when modelling gold futures. Using the Disaggregated Commitment of Traders report, we find that extreme levels of speculation are informative in that they signify a shift in the relative modelling accuracy of macroeconomic and latent factors. A simple composite prediction framework, incorporating the changing level of speculation, empirically demonstrates the uncovered phenomenon and offers improved predictive accuracy for gold futures prices. Furthermore, our findings are shown to be robust to alternative latent and macroeconomic model specifications.     

人民币利率互换期权及其定价模型探析

自2005年推出债券远期以来,我国银行间利率衍生品市场在交易产品创新、参与主体培育和制度建设等方面取得了较大的发展。在利率市场化改革深人推进、市场利率波动性加大的背景下,进一步推进利率衍生品创新,有利于完善产品系列,更好满足市场主体管理利率风险的需求。文章介绍了利率互换期权的作用及定价模型,以期为同业开展该产品运用及定价方式研究提供参考。     

现货市场波动与商品期货合约定价

通过构建商品期货合约定价模型,证明商品期货合约价格由资本市场系统风险溢价和标的现货市场特有(非市场)风险溢价两个部分构成.商品期货市场价格影响标的商品期货价格的前提条件是存在足够多的参与商品期货市场的交易者.当标的商品现货市场需求增加.在预期商品期货合约价格为正值的情况下,都将会使商品期货合约的价格上升,扩大交易风险并增加多头收益.相反,在预期商品期货合约价格为负值的情况下,需求增长引起初级产品价格上升将使商品期货合约价格的绝对值下降,减少交易风险和引起多头损失.如果标的商品现货市场需求减少,在预期商品期货合约价格为正值的情况下,将引起商品期货合约的价格下降,减少交易风险并降低空头损失.相反,在预期商品期货合约价格为负值的情况下,商品期货合约价格的绝对值增加,扩大交易风险和增加空头收益.     

Option pricing: A general equilibrium approach

This article examines option valuation in a general equilibrium framework. We focus on the general equilibrium implications of price dynamics for option valuation. The general equilibrium considerations allow us to derive an alternative option valuation formula that is as simple as the Black and Scholes formula, and that exhibits different behavior with respect to the exercise price and time to expiration. They also help us clarify comparative-statics properties of option valuation formulas in general and of the Black and Scholes model in particular.     

An option pricing approach to the valuation of real estate contaminated with hazardous materials

This paper uses option pricing to examine how the presence of hazardous materials affects real estate value. The property owner has two options. The first option is to remove the hazardous materials at the best time. The second option, embedded in the first one, is to redevelop the property at the best opportunity. The owner has three possible timing strategies with respect to the exercise of these two options: remove the hazardous materials first and retain the option to redevelop the property later, remove and redevelop at the same time, or do nothing. Conditions under which the presence of the hazardous materials may either expedite or postpone the decision to redevelop are also derived. If the regulatory environment does not allow the property owner to make optimal timing decisions with respect to the exercise of these options, then our results provide an indication of the cost of regulation as measured by the additional loss in property value.     

Dividend Forecast Biases in Index Option Valuation

Since the early days of option pricing theory,the assumption that the dividends on the underlying stock or index over the life of the contract are known has not been challenged. We examine the sensitivity of index option prices to the assumption of dividend uncertainty. We consider a number of issues related to the forecasting of dividends and build a dividend forecasting model that passes several rigorous tests for unbiasedness. We then generate option prices using contemporary market levels and interest rates. We find that prices generated with the actual dividends are unbiased with respect to those generated using the forecasted dividends. The magnitudes of the forecast errors, however, are sufficiently large to suggest a concern, but the percentage errors are consistently small, typically amounting to less than two percent of the option price. We conclude that the convenient assumption that the stream of future dividendsis known is probably innocuous. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.