Stock market margin requirements and volatility: Implications for regulation of stock index futures

This article reexamines the evidence on the relationship between stock market margin buying and volatility, and discusses the implications for the regulation of futures markets margin requirements. Post-war data provide no evidence of a link between the initial margin requirements set by the Federal Reserve and stock market volatility. Over the entire period in which the Federal Reserve has set margin requirements (1934-present), there is a correlation between margin requirements and margin debt on the one hand and volatility on the other. However, margin debt is not primarily associated with downside volatility and margin requirements are not primarily associated with upside volatility, as would be expected if margin buying were the cause of the volatility. Thus, the experience with stock market margin requirements provides no support for regulating futures markets margins in order to curb volatility. While this evidence does not rule out the possibility that margin buying contributed to the speculative boom of the 1920s and the 1929 crash, margin debt represented a much greater fraction of the 1929 stock market than have stock market futures in the 1980s. Even taking the experience of the 1920s into account, therefore, there is still no justification for regulating futures margins in order to curb volatility.This article was prepared for the Columbia Center for the Study of Futures Markets Conference on Regulatory and Structural Reform of Stock and Futures Markets.     

Race to the center: competition for the Nikkei 225 futures trade

This paper examines the impact of changes in margin requirements on returns, transaction volume, and price volatility of the Nikkei 225 futures traded on the Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE) and the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX). An increase in margin requirement on one exchange reduces its trading volume and shifts trade to the competing exchange. Both conditional price volatility and returns are not systematically affected by changes in margin requirements. The loss of OSE's market share of the Nikkei futures trade from 1990 to 1993 is partly due to the increased transactions costs (relative to SIMEX), including the margin requirement.     

引入国债期货合约能否发挥现货市场稳定效应?——基于中国金融周期的研究视角

我国国债期货市场能否发挥稳定现货市场功能,金融周期风险是否会改变国债期货市场对现货市场波动的影响,是投资者实施风险管理和监管部门构建市场稳定机制的重要依据。本文通过信息传递机制和交易者行为两个维度探析国债期货市场发挥稳定功能的微观机理,分析金融周期风险对衍生工具稳定功能的影响,解析引入国债期货合约能否缓解金融周期波动对国债市场冲击,同时关注我国国债期货交易机制改进与现券波动关系。研究发现:(1)我国国债期货市场已实现抑制现货市场波动的功能,金融周期风险会引发现货价格波动,国债期货市场能够降低金融周期的波动冲击;(2)改善现货市场深度和套保交易是国债期货市场发挥稳定功能的微观路径,国债期货市场增进国债预期交易量流动性、减弱非预期交易量干扰,金融周期低波动区间套保交易稳定作用受到抑制;(3)国债期货投机交易和波动溢出效应助长现货市场波动,正负期现基差对国债波动影响具有非对称特征。     

Share price volatility with the introduction of individual share futures on the Sydney Futures Exchange

This paper examines a recent innovation in financial derivative securities—individual share futures contracts traded on the Sydney Futures Exchange. We investigate changes in the volatility of the underlying shares in the cash market using an asymmetric exponential ARCH model. The overall evidence suggests that the introduction of futures trading has had very little impact on cash market volatility. Trade in the futures market has less of an effect on cash market volatility than cash market trading for most shares.     

INTRADAY MARKET BEHAVIOR AND THE EXTENT OF FEEDBACK BETWEEN S&P 500 FUTURES PRICES AND THE S&P 500 INDEX

In this study we empirically examine the intraday lead/lag relation between S&P 500 futures prices and the S&P 500 index, and whether daily market characteristics are associated with changes in the relation. We estimate daily Geweke measures of feedback and regress time series of these measures on daily price volatility and volume characteristics. Results indicate that the contemporaneous price relation is substantive and that measures of contemporaneous feedback are positively associated with the daily range of the futures price. The primary implication is that the relation between cash and futures prices becomes stronger as futures price volatility increases. As volatility increases, information is being impounded at a faster rate so that futures and equity markets operate more closely as one market. Large futures price moves, by themselves, are not responsible for breakdowns in the stock-futures price relation.     

The role of gold futures in mitigating the impact of economic uncertainty on spot prices: Evidence from China

This paper studies the co-integration relationship and volatility spillover effect between China's gold futures and spot prices through the VECM-BEKK-GARCH model. Then, MSGARCH and DCCE-GARCH are applied to study the relationship among China's gold futures market, spot market price volatility and the stabilization effect in uncertain economic environments. This paper enriches the current research, providing gold market participants with hints to address economic uncertainty. The empirical results show that China's gold futures market has a weak stabilization effect on spot price volatility. In scenarios with uncertain economic information and uncertain macroeconomic changes, the correlation between gold futures and spot price volatility is reduced in China, and the role of gold futures in stabilizing the spot price weakens. Furthermore, with economic uncertainty, the fluctuation range of the gold futures price is greater than that of the spot price, with a tendency of more frequent fluctuations. This also means that the effectiveness of the futures market in regulating the spot price will be reduced, and gold market regulators need to stabilize the market through alternative methods to futures.     

Information, Trading Demand, and Futures Price Volatility

We examine the relation between futures price volatility and trading demand by type of trader in the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500-stock index futures market. We find that volatility covaries negatively with signed speculative demand shocks but is positively related to signed hedging demand shocks. No significant relation between volatility and demand shocks for small traders is found. Our results suggest that changes in positions of large hedgers destabilize the market, whereas changes in positions of large speculators stabilize volatility. Consistent with models with asymmetrically informed traders, we find that large speculators are likely to possess superior forecasting ability, large hedgers behave like positive feedback traders, and small traders are liquidity traders.     

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.     

On the Role of Futures Trading in Spot Market Fluctuations: Perpetrator of Volatility or Victim of Regret?

We examine the role of index futures trading in spot market volatility. We use the exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) approach to measure volatility, analyze causality and feedback relations between volatilities in the spot and futures markets, and test various hypotheses in the context of a multivariate model that incorporates other macrostate variables. Our empirical results suggest index futures trading may not be blamed for the observed volatility in the spot market. Rather, we find stronger and more consistent support for the alternative posture that volatility in the futures market is an outgrowth of a turbulent cash market. We use the regret (cognitive dissonance) theory to explain our results.     

基于波动效应与价格发现的期指仿真交易研究

沪深300股指期货仿真交易的推出,对我国现货市场的影响如何以及这种影响是否有利于现货效率的改进。首次采用修正的GARCH模型和向量误差修正模型（VEC）将股指期货推出后现货市场波动性的变化和股指期货与现货市场的价格发现功能结合起来进行对比研究。结果表明,期指仿真交易的推出对于现货市场效率的改进确实存在正面的影响。其引入在短期内加大了现货市场的波动,但这一波动正是市场信息流动加速的反映,因而提高了市场信息的传递效率。同时期货价格领先于现货价格,存在由期货市场到现货市场长期的单向因果关系,说明期货价格具有引导现货价格向均衡方向调整的功能,从而在经验上支持了股指期货市场的开放政策。     

Futures volatility forecasting based on big data analytics with incorporating an order imbalance effect

Future markets play vital roles in supporting economic activities in modern society. For example, crude oil and electricity futures markets have heavy effects on a nation’s energy operation management. Thus, volatility forecasting of the futures market is an emerging but increasingly influential field of financial research. In this paper, we adopt big data analytics, called Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) from computer science, in an attempt to improve the forecasting accuracy of futures volatility and to demonstrate the application of big data analytics in the financial spectrum in terms of volatility forecasting. We further unveil that order imbalance estimation might incorporate abundant information to reflect price jumps and other trading information in the futures market. Including order imbalance information helps our model capture underpinned market rules such as supply and demand, which lightens the information loss during the model formation. Our empirical results suggest that the volatility forecasting accuracy of the XGBoost method considerably beats the GARCH-jump and HAR-jump models in both crude oil futures market and electricity futures market. Our results could also produce plentiful research implications for both policy makers and energy futures market participants.     

Forecasting volatility of the U.S. oil market

We examine the information content of the CBOE Crude Oil Volatility Index (OVX) when forecasting realized volatility in the WTI futures market. Additionally, we study whether other market variables, such as volume, open interest, daily returns, bid-ask spread and the slope of the futures curve, contain predictive power beyond what is embedded in the implied volatility. In out-of-sample forecasting we find that econometric models based on realized volatility can be improved by including implied volatility and other variables. Our results show that including implied volatility significantly improves daily and weekly volatility forecasts; however, including other market variables significantly improves daily, weekly and monthly volatility forecasts.     

融资融券和股指期货对中国股市的影响：国别经验和初步评估

通过比较部分国家和地区推出融资融券和股指期货对股票市场的影响,并就中国融资融券和股指期货相关政策法规设计对股票市场的影响以及股票市场可能出现的问题和风险进行初步评估,结果表明融资融券和股指期货能够在一定程度上提高市场流动性,且在推出初期可能会加大市场波动;但长期而言必将有利于市场的稳定;也会带来市场结构调整的进一步深化以及交易策略、产品等的创新;同时还将对风险监管、指数权重股的交易监管带来新的挑战,     

换月效应、窗饰与股指期货合约到期日设计

本文以上证指数为研究对象．对股票市场换月效应与月末效应进行研究后发现，指数在月末最后一个交易日收益率波动率显著大于月平均收益率波动率，上证指数收益率存在显著的换月效应。这种现象可能与基金的窗饰效应有关。为了防止期货到期日效应与现货月效应及假日效应等重叠，增大现货市场的波动性，本文建议将股指期货合约最后交易日设在月中。     

Price discovery and volatility spillovers in the European Union emissions trading scheme: A high-frequency analysis

This paper models the relationship of European Union Allowance spot- and futures-prices within the second commitment period of the European Union emissions trading scheme. Based on high-frequency data, we analyze the transmission of information in first and second conditional moments. To reveal long-run price discovery, we compute common factor weights of Schwarz and Szakmary (1994) and information shares of Hasbrouck (1995) based on estimated coefficients of a VECM. To analyze the short-run dynamics, we perform Granger-causality tests. We identify the futures market to be the leader of the long-run price discovery process, whereas the informational role of the futures market increases over time. In addition, we employ a version of the UECCC-GARCH model as introduced by Conrad and Karanasos (2010) to analyze the volatility transmission structure. The volatility analysis indicates a close relationship between the volatility dynamics of both markets, whereas in particular we observe spillovers from the futures to the spot market. As a whole the investigation reveals that the futures market incorporates information first and then transfers the information to the spot market.     

Macroeconomic news and treasury futures return volatility: Do treasury auctions matter?

Various macroeconomic announcements are known to influence asset price volatility. In addition to non-farm payrolls, we highlight the importance of Treasury auctions – a news event that has grown in importance due to ongoing Federal deficits. The occurrence of an auction, which increases supply in the underlying cash market, pushes futures prices lower and volatility higher. Conversely, a higher bid-to-cover ratio, indicates greater demand for Treasury securities, increases Treasury futures prices and lowers volatility. The response is consistent with market participants using futures to manage inventory risk. The results are consistent across a set of volatility estimates, and in an alternate conditional volatility framework.     

股指期货推出对中国股票市场波动性的影响研究——基于沪深300股指期货高频数据的实证分析

本文利用沪深300股指期货的高频数据,研究了股指期货推出对中国股票市场波动性的影响。结果表明:在股指期货合约交割日,总体上不存在到期日效应;在中长期,股指期货推出则确实增加了现货市场的波动,但随着时间的推移,这种影响在减小。另外,股指期货对现货市场波动起到引导作用,其冲击持续的时间更长、强度更大。本文政策含义在于,随着时间的推移,股指期货开始平稳有效运行,对现货市场起到重要引导和价格发现的作用,但由于股指期货的高投机性,加强对其监管仍然十分必要。     

Does futures trading increase stock market volatility? The case of the Nikkei stock index futures markets

We propose new tests to examine whether stock index futures affect stock market volatility. These tests decompose spot portfolio volatility into the cross-sectional dispersion and the average volatility of returns on the portfolio's constituent securities. Our tests show that for Nikkei stocks spot portfolio volatility increased and cross-sectional dispersion decreased compared with average volatility when Nikkei futures began trading on the Osaka Securities Exchange, but not on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange. For non-Nikkei stocks, no shift occurred when futures trading began on either exchange. These findings are consistent with the hypotheses that futures trading increases spot portfolio volatility but that there is no volatility “spillover” to stocks against which futures are not traded. However, the increase in volatility attributable to futures trading is small compared with volatility shifts induced by changes in broad economic factors.     

Margin Regulation and Stock Market Volatility

Using daily and monthly stock returns we find no convincing evidence that Federal Reserve margin requirements have served to dampen stock market volatility. The contrary conclusion, expressed in recent papers by Hardouvelis (1988a , b ), is traced to flaws in his test design. We do detect the expected negative relation between margin requirements and the amount of margin credit outstanding. We also confirm the recent finding by Schwert (1988) that changes in margin requirements by the Fed have tended to follow rather than lead changes in market volatility.     

RBA monetary policy communication: The response of Australian interest rate futures to changes in RBA monetary policy

This paper examines the Australian interest rate futures market reaction to changes in Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) monetary policy. Having determined market expectations from 30-day Interbank futures, the study finds evidence that interest rate futures react strongly to target rate announcements across the maturity spectrum, with a stronger reaction evident in short maturity futures. Further, there is evidence of an asymmetric news effect whereby volatility reacts more strongly to bad news. Disaggregation of the market reaction into target- and path-surprise factors demonstrates that the change in market expectations of future target rates plays a significant role in explaining changes in yield, particularly for bond futures. There is strong evidence that monetary policy statements drive the path-factor, while the December 2007 modification in policy communication has improved the ability of the RBA to influence market expectations.