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Option prices and implied volatility in the crude oil market

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  • Soini, Vesa
  • Lorentzen, Sindre

Abstract

This paper studies the determinants of WTI crude oil call option prices with a special emphasis on the relationship between implied volatility and moneyness. Our first-stage regression estimates a quadratic approximation of implied volatility as a function of moneyness, while our second-stage regression investigates correlations between the estimated parameters and a list of explanatory variables. The first-stage regressions show a positive coefficient on the quadratic term, suggesting that the market exhibits ‘Implied Volatility Smile’ and hence violates the Black-Scholes predictions. The main results of our paper concern the determinants of these violations. We find that the curvature of implied volatility as a function of moneyness is: (i) positively and significantly correlated with basis and hedging pressure of the underlying crude oil futures contract (ii) positively and significantly correlated with various measures of transaction costs on the options market. We explore various explanations for these results. The paper also contains a variety of robustness checks, mostly related to the assumed functional forms.

Suggested Citation

  • Soini, Vesa & Lorentzen, Sindre, 2019. "Option prices and implied volatility in the crude oil market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 515-539.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:83:y:2019:i:c:p:515-539
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2019.07.011
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    Cited by:

    1. Bartosz Łamasz & Natalia Iwaszczuk, 2020. "The Impact of Implied Volatility Fluctuations on Vertical Spread Option Strategies: The Case of WTI Crude Oil Market," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-23, October.
    2. Radosław Puka & Bartosz Łamasz & Iwona Skalna & Beata Basiura & Jerzy Duda, 2023. "Knowledge Discovery to Support WTI Crude Oil Price Risk Management," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(8), pages 1-14, April.
    3. Connor J.A. Stuart & Sebastian A. Gehricke & Jin E. Zhang & Xinfeng Ruan, 2021. "Implied volatility smirk in the Australian dollar market," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(3), pages 4573-4599, September.
    4. Wael DAMMAK, 2024. "Assessing Effect of Market Sentiment on Pricing of European Currency Options ‎," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 8(6), pages 1224-1244, June.
    5. Jia, Xiaolan & Ruan, Xinfeng & Zhang, Jin E., 2023. "Carr and Wu’s (2020) framework in the oil ETF option market," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    6. Xiaolan Jia & Xinfeng Ruan & Jin E. Zhang, 2021. "The implied volatility smirk of commodity options," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(1), pages 72-104, January.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Implied volatility; Options; Crude oil; Hedging pressure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy

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