Basis variations and regime shifts in the oil futures market

The conditional volatility of crude oil futures returns is modelled as a regime switching process. The model features transition probabilities that are functions of the basis. Consistent with the theory of storage, in volatile periods, an increase in backwardation is associated with an increase in the likellihood of switching to or remaining in the high-volatility state. Conditional on regimes, GARCH persistence is significantly reduced. Out-of-sample tests show that incorporating regime shifts improves the accuracy of short-term volatility forecasts.     

Stock index futures hedging in the emerging Malaysian market

The paper investigates hedging effectiveness of dynamic and constant models in the emerging market of Malaysia where trading information is not readily available and market liquidity is lower compared to the developed equity markets. Using daily data from December 1995 to April 2001 and bivariate GARCH(1,1) and TGARCH models, the paper uses differing variance–covariance structures to obtain hedging ratios. Performance of models is compared in terms of variance reduction and expected utility levels for the full sample period as well as the three sub-periods which encompass the Asian financial crisis and introduction of new capital control measures in Malaysia. Findings show that rankings of the hedging models change for the in-sample period depending on evaluation criteria used. TGARCH based models provide better hedging performance but only in the period of higher information asymmetry following the imposition of capital controls in Malaysia. Overall, despite the structural breaks caused by the Asian financial crisis and new capital control regulations, out of sample hedging performance of dynamic GARCH models in the Malaysian emerging market is as good as the one reported for the highly developed markets in the previous literature. The findings suggest that changes in the composition of market agents caused by large scale retreat of foreign investors following the imposition of capital control regulations do not seem to have any material impact on the volatility characteristics of the Malaysian emerging market.     

我国股指期货与现货市场信息传递与波动溢出关系研究

股指期货与现货市场关系是监管者关注的重点问题。本文采用我国股指期货上市以来1分钟级高频数据,应用向量误差修正模型、方差分解、多元T-GARCH等,考察期现两市信息传递、波动溢出效应的影响。实证结果表明,尽管股指期货和股票市场之间短期内存在相互引导关系,但股票市场价格变动更多来自于自身影响,起主导作用,而且两市长期均衡收敛也是以股票市场占主导地位;两市存在显著的双向波动溢出,期货市场的波动溢出效应强于股票市场的波动溢出效应;两市场存在明显的非对称效应,期货市场对坏消息更为敏感,而现货市场对好消息更为敏感。     

中国股指期货合约乘数水平的研究

中国沪深500股指期货已经推出,其合约设计的合理与适用性则需要通过市场的实践来验证,在这其中,对合约乘数水平的检验至关重要,因为它与标的指数点住共同构成了合约的价值,进而直接影响到股指期货市场的稳定性。本文采用中国股指期贷合约推出后的真实交易数据、根据期货交易的一种风险控制理论“2N止损法”来测算投资者账户资产净值与头寸规模的绝对值,以此推导出现行合约乘数水平对投资者价格风险的影响程度,得出当前500元的合约乘数水平偏高的结论;并在此基础上,通过对中国股指期货市场的数据统计分析来检验以上结论,论证当前合约乘数水平的适用性,最后建议适当调整中国沪深500股指期货合约乘数的水平或尽快推出相应的小型合约。     

Investor sentiment‐styled index in index futures market

In this paper, we define and analyze the sentiment‐styled index for the CSI 300 index futures in the Chinese futures market. Our sentiment‐styled index for the CSI 300 index futures from April 16, 2010 to April 30, 2019 is constructed by the first and second principal component analyses, rather than only by the first principal component analysis used in the Baker and Wurgler (Journal of Finance 61(4): 1645–1680, 2006) method. The sentiment‐styled index explains 78.38% of the sample variance. The vector error correction model is adapted to study the dynamics of cointegration of the sentiment‐styled index and the logarithmic futures price. We use the GARCH‐DCC model to illustrate the spillover effect between the sentiment‐styled index and the Chinese futures market. We show that this investor sentiment‐styled index does have the price discovery from the Granger causality and common factor weights and the hedging function from the Baba–Engle–Kraft–Kroner model empirically; furthermore, we use the curvature term of the sentiment‐styled index to determine the multiple unit roots. More empirical results for the sentiment‐styled index of the Chinese stock market, the sentiment‐styled index of the CSI 300 index futures, and the return of the CSI 300 index futures market are studied in this paper.     

Multi-market trading in the Eurodollar futures market

On March 18, 2004, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange launched trading in Eurodollar futures contracts in an attempt to compete with a U.S. rival, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange responded to the challenge by introducing several policy changes that aided the transfer of its trading volume in Eurodollar futures from open outcry to the electronic trading platform, Globex, thereby retaining its market share. We compare trading volume, effective spread, and price discovery in Eurodollar futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange before and after the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange began trading the same contract. We find a general increase in trading volume on Globex beginning October 2003, way before the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange launched its contract. Globex provides greater price discovery than open outcry during the entire time period under study. Our research thus supports the global trend of conversion of traditional open outcry systems into electronic exchanges.     

Computing the market price of volatility risk in the energy commodity markets

In this paper, we demonstrate the need for a negative market price of volatility risk to recover the difference between Black–Scholes [Black, F., Scholes, M., 1973. The pricing of options and corporate liabilities. Journal of Political Economy 81, 637–654]/Black [Black, F., 1976. Studies of stock price volatility changes. In: Proceedings of the 1976 Meetings of the Business and Economics Statistics Section, American Statistical Association, pp. 177–181] implied volatility and realized-term volatility. Initially, using quasi-Monte Carlo simulation, we demonstrate numerically that a negative market price of volatility risk is the key risk premium in explaining the disparity between risk-neutral and statistical volatility in both equity and commodity-energy markets. This is robust to multiple specifications that also incorporate jumps. Next, using futures and options data from natural gas, heating oil and crude oil contracts over a 10 year period, we estimate the volatility risk premium and demonstrate that the premium is negative and significant for all three commodities. Additionally, there appear distinct seasonality patterns for natural gas and heating oil, where winter/withdrawal months have higher volatility risk premiums. Computing such a negative market price of volatility risk highlights the importance of volatility risk in understanding priced volatility in these financial markets.     

日本商品期货市场近年衰落的原因和思考

进入21世纪以来,曾引领亚洲期货市场发展的日本商品期货市场明显衰落。在最初的要素条件、需求状况等外生比较优势逐步削弱的同时,规模经济、技术进步、产品差别等内生比较优势发展的滞后及市场分割、产业需求不足等固有矛盾的暴露,决定了日本商品期货市场发展的下行态势,日本监管当局规范和发展期货市场脱离实际的改革措施尤其加速了市场衰落的进程。本文从日本商品期货市场的现状入手,通过比较优势理论分析衰落的原因,并从大国商品期货市场的竞争和发展中探寻教训与经验,为我国商品期货市场发展提供借鉴。     

Optimal hedge ratio and hedging effectiveness of stock index futures: evidence from India

In a free capital mobile world with increased volatility, the need for an optimal hedge ratio and its effectiveness is warranted to design a better hedging strategy with future contracts. This study analyses four competing time series econometric models with daily data on NSE Stock Index Futures and S&P CNX Nifty Index. The effectiveness of the optimal hedge ratios is examined through the mean returns and the average variance reduction between the hedged and the unhedged positions for 1-, 5-, 10- and 20-day horizons. The results clearly show that the time-varying hedge ratio derived from the multivariate GARCH model has higher mean return and higher average variance reduction across hedged and unhedged positions. Even though not outperforming the GARCH model, the simple OLS-based strategy performs well at shorter time horizons. The potential use of this multivariate GARCH model cannot be sublined because of its estimation complexities. However, from a cost of computation point of view, one can equally consider the simple OLS strategy that performs well at the shorter time horizons.     

Forecasting volatility of crude oil futures using a GARCH–RNN hybrid approach

Volatility is an important element for various financial instruments owing to its ability to measure the risk and reward value of a given financial asset. Owing to its importance, forecasting volatility has become a critical task in financial forecasting. In this paper, we propose a suite of hybrid models for forecasting volatility of crude oil under different forecasting horizons. Specifically, we combine the parameters of generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) and Glosten–Jagannathan–Runkle (GJR)-GARCH with long short-term memory (LSTM) to create three new forecasting models named GARCH–LSTM, GJR-LSTM, and GARCH-GJRGARCH LSTM in order to forecast crude oil volatility of West Texas Intermediate on different forecasting horizons and compare their performance with the classical volatility forecasting models. Specifically, we compare the performances against existing methodologies of forecasting volatility such as GARCH and found that the proposed hybrid models improve upon the forecasting accuracy of Crude Oil: West Texas Intermediate under various forecasting horizons and perform better than GARCH and GJR-GARCH, with GG–LSTM performing the best of the three proposed models at 7-, 14-, and 21-day-ahead forecasts in terms of heteroscedasticity-adjusted mean square error and heteroscedasticity-adjusted mean absolute error, with significance testing conducted through the model confidence set showing that GG–LSTM is a strong contender for forecasting crude oil volatility under different forecasting regimes and rolling-window schemes. The contribution of the paper is that it enhances the forecasting ability of crude oil futures volatility, which is essential for trading, hedging, and purposes of arbitrage, and that the proposed model dwells upon existing literature and enhances the forecasting accuracy of crude oil volatility by fusing a neural network model with multiple econometric models.     

Commodity futures hedging,risk aversion and the hedging horizon

This paper examines the impact of management preferences on optimal futures hedging strategy and associated performance. Applying an expected utility hedging objective, the optimal futures hedge ratio is determined for a range of preferences on risk aversion, hedging horizon and expected returns. Empirical results reveal substantial hedge ratio variation across distinct management preferences and are supportive of the hedging policies of real firms. Hedging performance is further shown to be strongly dependent on underlying preferences. In particular, hedgers with high risk aversion and short horizon reduce hedge portfolio risk but achieve inferior utility in comparison to those with low aversion.     

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.     

Emerging risk of autoignition and fire in underground coal storage

The risk and prevention of autoignition in underground coal storage facilities are reviewed in the light of the recent incidents of smouldering fires. Also, the opportunities are considered on the efficiency of the alternatives to prevent and extinguish closed-space fires. The complexities in avoiding and extinguishing underground fires are highlighted in the case example, describing the observations and outcome of a smouldering coal fire in the storage. The principles of self-heating and most critical factors in spontaneous combustion such as the condition and quality of coal are fairly well known, but usually only provide partial help in fire prevention. The documented cases and the case example suggest that nitrogen injection can be useful for extinguishing controllable fires. Three-phase foams and oxygen-displacing exhaust gases appear preferable against uncontrolled fires, particularly if access to the fire area is limited or impossible. Otherwise, efficient fire extinction during power plant operation can be challenging, as any air ingress tends to feed the fire and results in losses of the extinguishing agent and the heating value of coal. Methods and indicators for detecting and predicting the ignition are discussed, and improvements are suggested to enhance the storage and plant availability.     

Bid-ask bounce and speads in the foreign exchange futures market

This paper examines the intraday bid-ask bounce in Deutschemark and Japanese yen futures prices. The intraday Markovian bid-ask bounce process, which leads to a desirable equilibrium condition of reaching a bid or an ask transaction type with equal chances, is identified. A second-order Markov chain transition matrix model is used to derive a generalized estimator of bid-ask spreads in the foreign exchange futures market. It incorporates the conditional probabilities of a subsequent transaction being the same type as the current transaction's () and that of the next transaction being the same as the current type but different from the previous type (). The specification is {-Cov(P _t ,P _t+1 )/[(1–)(–)]}^1/2. The empirical results show that the average implied bid-ask spread is about $10, which is less than one tick's value of $12.50. It is also found that spreads are higher at the beginning and end of the trading day than the rest of the day, reflecting the uncertainty due to information flows and overnight inventory carrying costs, respectively.     

中国金融市场信用风险模型研究与应用

文章运用中国金融市场和原银行信贷登记系统数据及人民银行组织的信用评级等数据资源,在金融工程理论和技术方法创新的基础上,借鉴国际信用风险模型中违约模式代表——KMV模型原理,实证建立由判别函数和违约强度共同构成的中国金融市场违约预警模型;借鉴国际信用风险模型中盯市模式代表——CreditMetrics模型原理,使用蒙特卡罗模拟方法实证建立中国金融市场信用组合计量模型;探索这两类模型在中国信贷市场、外汇市场、货币市场和债券市场风险管理实务中的应用;并在此基础上提出了政策性建议。     

Currency futures market in India: an empirical analysis of market efficiency and volatility

As the Indian currency futures market has been in existence for over 7 years, this paper analyses the effectiveness of the 1-month USD/INR currency futures rates in predicting the expected spot rate. The volatility of the USD/INR spot returns was also analysed. Modelling volatility of the USD/INR spot rate using a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) and exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) model indicated the presence of volatility clustering. Using multivariate GARCH models such as the constant conditional correlation and dynamic conditional correlation, signs of a volatility spillover between the USD/INR spot and currency futures market were also observed.     

Financial Markets Trends and Studies of Singapore Futures Markets

In this paper we explore some recent trends in the financial market and also report some studies of the Singapore futures markets. A characterization of trends shows that national securities markets are much closer than before. This means the linkages between securities and their derivatives and amongst themselves have be come much stronger. Secondly, the advent of sophisticated risk products and instruments and the knowledge to use them effectively would become a common theme together with the idea of value enhancements. Thirdly, computerizations and the internet will play an increasingly important role. So will empirical financial research become increasingly microscopic. The discussion will be supported by the experiences of the Singapore futures markets and various empirical research evidences. The paper also provides a detailed study of causality-in-variance test of information transmission between SIMEX and Osaka Stock Exchange on the Nikkei 225 stock index futures trading prior to, during, and immediately after the announcement of the collapse of Barings. The results are indicative of very strong international market linkages and a portent of things to come.     

Market closure effects on return, volatility, and turnover patterns in the Hong Kong index futures market

This paper examines the market closure effect of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK) on the intraday behaviour of the index futures contract which continues to trade for 5–15 min after the close of the SEHK. The behaviour of the index futures market in Hong Kong is consistent with the contagion model of King and Wadhwani (1990) in that the close of the SEHK leads to an immediate downturn in the return, volatility, and turnover in the index futures market. The long period of nontrading before the morning also leads to a higher morning volatility and turnover.     

Liquidity,liquidity risk,and information flow: Lessons from an emerging market

This paper examines the role of public and private information flows in intraday liquidity and intraday liquidity risk in the Tunisian stock market. Our empirical results are based on ARMA and GARCH-type models and show that, for major Tunisian stocks, gradually elapsed public information together with gradually elapsed private information in the market is the dominant factor in liquidity improvements in the Tunisian stock market. Liquidity improvements are generated by a decrease in the bid-ask spread accompanied by an increase in the depth at best limit. Our results clearly indicate that the arrival of public information in a sequential manner is the dominant factor generating increases in liquidity risk related to the bid-ask spread, while the advent of private information in a contemporaneous manner is the dominant factor generating increases in liquidity risk related to the depth at best limit. Additionally, our results show that liquidity risk persistence disappears when trading volume and order imbalance are included as explanatory variables in the conditional variance equation.     

Return and volatility co-movement in commodity futures markets: the effects of liquidity risk

Commodity markets are a widely researched topic in the field of finance. In this paper, we investigate the co-movement of return and volatility measures in different commodity futures markets and how these measures are affected by liquidity risk. First, we find that commodity returns display co-movement and that liquidity risk plays a key role in shaping asset return patterns. Moreover, we show that the volatilities of commodity returns co-move, and we demonstrate the role of liquidity risk in this joint pattern. We also find that the commodity markets we investigated share a common volatility factor that determines their joint volatility co-movement. Because liquidity risk affects both commodity returns and volatility shocks, it might be interpreted as the common causal factor driving both measures simultaneously. Therefore, we affirm the view that liquidity shocks are firmly related to two residual risks originating from both market return and market volatility. Finally, we also show that liquidity spillovers can significantly drive cross-sectional correlation dynamics.