Price dynamics in foreign currency futures markets

Nested tests of Samuelson's submartingale and martingale models of price behavior in an efficient futures market find significant autocorrelation at low lags in daily changes of log prices for four of ten currency futures contracts satisfying the assumptions of the statistical tests. Negative serial correlation following large price changes is also found. The analysis controls for bias due to institutional limits on daily price movements. Simulated trading based on out-of-sample forecasts suggests the dependencies probably could be exploited by traders who are members of the futures exchange to earn net profits greatly exceeding buy and hold.     

Price dynamics in refined petroleum spot and futures markets

This article characterizes the spot and futures price dynamics of two important physical commodities, gasoline and heating oil. Using a non-linear error correction model with time-varying volatility, we demonstrate many new results. Specifically, the convergence of spot and futures prices is asymmetric, non-linear, and volatility inducing. Moreover, spreads between spot and futures prices explain virtually all spot return volatility innovations for these two commodities, and spot returns are more volatile when spot prices exceed futures prices than when the reverse is true. Furthermore, there are volatility spillovers from futures to spot markets (but not the reverse), futures volatility shocks are more persistent than spot volatility shocks, and the convergence of spot and futures prices is asymmetric and non-linear. These results have important implications. In particular, since the theory of storage implies that spreasd vary with fundamental supply and demand factors, the strong relation between spreads and volatility suggests that these fundamentals — rather than trading induced noise — are the primary determinants of spot price volatility. The volatility spillovers, differences in volatility persistence, and lead-lag relations are consistent with the view that the futures market is the primary locus of informed trading in refined petroleum product markets. Finally, our finding that error correction processes may be non-linear, asymmetric, and volatility inducing suggests that traditional approaches to the study of time series dynamics of variables that follow a common stochastic trend that ignore these complexities may be mis-specified.     

Price discovery in spot and futures markets: a reconsideration

We reconsider the issue of price discovery in spot and futures markets. We use a threshold error correction model to allow for arbitrage opportunities to have an impact on the return dynamics. We estimate the model using quote midpoints, and we modify the model to account for time-varying transaction costs. We find that (a) the futures market leads in the process of price discovery and (b) the presence of arbitrage opportunities has a strong impact on the dynamics of the price discovery process.     

Contagion in international financial markets: A recursive cointegration approach

This study utilizes the recursive cointegration technique to analyze the dynamic interdependence among ten major equity markets throughout North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Results indicate that the international equity markets are integrated and that the degree of integration among these markets has increased over time. A scrutiny of the various crisis periods reveals that a major financial crisis had an effect of increasing the level of convergence among these markets. Moreover, the recursive cointegration technique is able to pinpoint and capture the approximate timing of a major global crisis. In addition, the study finds that the U.S., Japan, India, China, U.K., and Germany lead the other markets with the U.S. contributing most heavily to the common trend. Overall, the results indicate that profitable opportunities from portfolio diversification are limited across major markets and that these benefits are further reduced during episodes that are marked by a global financial turmoil.     

Relative informational efficiency of cash,futures, and options markets: The case of an emerging market

We study the lead–lag relationships among the spot, futures, and options markets on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (HSI). The young options market experiences thin trading, and the option returns lag the cash index returns. The more mature futures market experiences active trading. Yet its lead over the cash index appears to be less than the counterparts in other countries. A possible reason is the dominance of a few major stocks in the index; and these stocks have symmetric lead–lag relations with the futures. Furthermore, the informativeness of the non-lasting futures and options quotations seems to depend on the market maturity.     

Price discovery and volatility spillovers in index futures markets: Some evidence from Mexico

This paper investigates the hypotheses that the recently established Mexican stock index futures market effectively serves the price discovery function, and that the introduction of futures trading has provoked volatility in the underlying spot market. We test both hypotheses simultaneously with daily data from Mexico in the context of a modified EGARCH model that also incorporates possible cointegration between the futures and spot markets. The evidence supports both hypotheses, suggesting that the futures market in Mexico is a useful price discovery vehicle, although futures trading has also been a source of instability for the spot market. Several managerial implications are derived and discussed.     

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.     

Time-varying information share and autoregressive loading factors: evidence from S&P 500 cash and E-mini futures markets

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - The error correction coefficients, known as the loading factors, are a key component for information share. To date, only constant loading factors...     

Risk-adjusted implied volatility and its performance in forecasting realized volatility in corn futures prices

We propose a methodology for constructing a risk-adjusted implied volatility measure that removes the forecast bias of model-free implied volatility that is typically believed to be related to risk premiums. The risk adjustment is based on a generalized, closed-form relationship between the expectation of future volatility and the model-free implied volatility assuming a jump-diffusion model. We also develop a GMM framework to estimate key model parameters. An empirical application using corn futures and option prices is used to illustrate the methodology and demonstrate differences between our approach and the standard model-free implied volatility. We compare the risk-adjusted forecast with the unadjusted forecast as well as other alternatives. Results suggest that the risk-adjusted volatility is unbiased, informationally efficient, and has superior predictive power over the alternatives considered.     

Interdependence and dynamics in currency futures markets: A multivariate analysis of intraday data

This paper investigates long-term interdependencies and short-term dynamics in currency futures utilizing intraday data for six major foreign currencies: the British Pound, Deutsche Mark, Swiss Franc, Australian Dollar, Canadian Dollar, and Japanese Yen. Lack of cointegration (CI) among the foreign exchange futures is found to be the prevailing mode of behavior, but some temporary deviations from the no-CI condition are detected. There is a notable overlap between detected CI relationships and the timing of policy changes, world events, and regime shifts, indicating that the observed CIs are event-driven. The robustness of the CI results is checked with respect to variations in the model, lag structure, data period, sample horizon, and currency basket grouping. Impulse–response functions (IRFs) reveal that currency markets are in general efficient and absorb new information within the day. The interdependence among currencies is found to be asymmetric.     

Spill over effects of futures contracts initiation on the cash market: a regime shift approach

This paper investigates possible spillover effects on the spot market due to the initiation of derivatives markets. Although speculation, which is apparent because of the low transaction cost of derivatives markets, produces noise in the financial system, the speculative forces and the rational hedging strategies jointly contribute to the price discovery process. Furthermore, the demand and supply forces are responsible for the financial system equilibrium and high volatility regimes imply high rates for the accumulation of new information. According to many analysts, there still exists a puzzle regarding the stabilization or destabilization effect of Futures contracts’ onset, which is both country and model specific. For that reason, this paper examines empirically the case of three European countries by the application not only of conventional structural break analysis, but also of regime shift analysis in order to account for the timing of possible spillover effects, and hence, to overcome the conflicting results of the extant literature. Furthermore, the proposed econometric methodology considers some stylized financial facts such as the leverage effect, the time varying risk premium, the decomposition of the day of the week effect, the leptokurtosis and the skewness of the returns’ distributions. For the purposes of our analysis we use data from the UK, Spain and Greek capital markets and according to the empirical findings, there exists a significant stabilization effect, which is negatively associated with the level of efficiency and completeness of the capital markets examined. However, in some cases there exists a short run destabilization effect for 1 or 2 months.     

Price discovery and price leadership of various investor types: evidence from Taiwan futures markets

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Using a unique dataset composed of comprehensive transaction data from Taiwan futures markets, we are able to unambiguously classify all investors...     

Taxing transactions in futures markets: Objectives and effects

In the last few years various legislative proposals have been made to impose a transaction or excise tax on securities and derivative market transactions. Although there have been considerable discussion and analysis of the wisdom of imposing such a tax on securities markets, there has been no analysis of the pros and cons of extending the tax to futures markets. This article attempts to fill this gap, first, by examining the various rationales advanced to support a tax on securities markets to determine their applicability to futures markets and, second, by analyzing the likely effects of the tax on the competitiveness and efficiency of futures markets. In addition, the revenue-raising potential of a tax on futures transactions is evaluated. I conclude that a tax on futures markets will not achieve any important social objective and will not generate much revenue.     

Price discovery on the S&P 500 index markets: An analysis of spot index,index futures,and SPDRs

This paper investigates the price discovery function in three S&P 500 index markets: the spot index, index futures, and S&P Depositary Receipts markets. Four hypotheses regarding market structure and security design are proposed to differentiate the price discovery function performed by the three index instruments. Using matched synchronous intraday trading data, Johansen's maximum likelihood estimator is employed to disclose the cointegration relationships among the three markets. Results indicate that the three price series are a cointegrated system with one long-run stochastic trend. Estimated coefficients of the vector error correction model suggest that price adjustment takes place in the spot index market and for SPDRs, but not in the futures market. When the common stochastic trend is decomposed, it is found that the futures market serves the dominant price discovery function. The leverage hypothesis and the uptick rule hypothesis explain its superior price discovery function.     

On the realized volatility of the ECX CO2 emissions 2008 futures contract: distribution, dynamics and forecasting

This article documents the conditional and unconditional distributions of the realized volatility for the 2008 futures contract in the European climate exchange (ECX), which is valid under the EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS). Realized volatility measures from naive, kernel-based and subsampling estimators are used to obtain inferences about the distributional and dynamic properties of the ECX emissions futures volatility. The distribution of the daily realized volatility in logarithmic form is shown to be close to normal. The mixture-of-normals hypothesis is strongly rejected, as the returns standardized using daily measures of volatility clearly departs from normality. A simplified HAR-RV model (Corsi in J Financ Econ 7:174–196, 2009) with only a weekly component, which reproduces long memory properties of the series, is then used to model the volatility dynamics. Finally, the predictive accuracy of the HAR-RV model is tested against GARCH specifications using one-step-ahead forecasts, which confirms the HAR-RV superior ability.     

Systematic risk, hedging pressure, and risk premiums in futures markets

I examine the uniformity of risk pricing in futures and assetmarkets. Tests against a general alternative do not reflectcomplete integration of futures and asset markets. As predicted,estimates of the 'zero-beta' rate for futures are close to zero,and premiums for systematic risk do not differ significantlyacross assets and futures. There is, however, evidence consistentwith a specific alternative model presented by Hirshleifer (1988).Returns in foreign currency and agricultural futures vary withthe net holdings of hedgers, after controlling for systematicrisk. These results imply a degree of market segmentation andsupport hedging pressure as a determinant of futures premiums.     

Market structure and microstructure, in international interest rate futures markets

We examine the role of market structure in identifying microstructure features of the NYSE.Euronext-LIFFE STIR futures market by comparing the ability of two bid-ask spread component models to explain bid-ask spreads. These two models differ only in their assumptions about whether or not market makers are present. The period we analyze includes data from pit-based trading alongside electronic market data. We explore how market structure affects the way private information influences bid-ask spreads and return volatility. A second part of our study employs intraday correlation to investigate these links in greater depth, while a third part looks at how private information and trading noise contribute to price evolution.     

Form,change, and information: Qualitative dynamics in futures research

Certain concepts of qualitative dynamics can be useful aids in the comparison, evaluation, and understanding of long-range forecasts; primarily the implications of these forecasts (as opposed to their means of construction, assumptions, or validity). This usefulness is demonstrated by the application of qualitative dynamics (the topology of catastrophe theory) to the forecasts of the Kahn group and the Meadows group.     

Information transmission in informationally linked markets: Evidence from US and Chinese commodity futures markets

This paper investigates information transmission and price discovery in informationally linked markets within the multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity and information share frameworks. Based on both synchronous and non-synchronous trading information from Chinese futures/spot markets, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), and CME Globex futures markets for copper and soybeans, we show that there is a bidirectional relationship in terms of price and volatility spillovers between US and Chinese markets, with a stronger effect from US to Chinese markets than the other way around. Additionally, the NYMEX and CBOT play a more important role than the CME Globex in the flow of information from US to Chinese markets. Moreover, we find that Chinese copper market adjusts more quickly than the NYMEX copper market to correct the disparity between both markets. However, the converse is true in the case of soybeans. Finally, our results highlight the remarkable role of Chinese futures markets in the price formation process, though NYMEX and CBOT futures markets are the main driving force in price discovery.