IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jfutmk/v38y2018i7p822-838.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

VIX futures calendar spreads

Author

Listed:
  • Ai Jun Hou
  • Lars L. Nordén

Abstract

A VIX futures calendar spread involves buying a futures contract maturing in 1 month and selling another one maturing in a different month. VIX futures calendar spreads represent a daily turnover above 500 million dollars, or roughly 20% of the total VIX futures trading volume. Speculation, rather than information about changes in the slope of the volatility term structure, is the main driving force behind calendar spread trades. On average, a calendar spread costs a little less than $100 (about 15 basis points). If settled at the end of the trading day, 43% of the calendar spreads are profitable.

Suggested Citation

  • Ai Jun Hou & Lars L. Nordén, 2018. "VIX futures calendar spreads," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(7), pages 822-838, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jfutmk:v:38:y:2018:i:7:p:822-838
    DOI: 10.1002/fut.21886
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/fut.21886
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/fut.21886?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hasbrouck, Joel, 1991. "Measuring the Information Content of Stock Trades," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 179-207, March.
    2. Whitney K. Newey & Kenneth D. West, 1994. "Automatic Lag Selection in Covariance Matrix Estimation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(4), pages 631-653.
    3. Kalok Chan & Y. Peter Chung & Wai-Ming Fong, 2002. "The Informational Role of Stock and Option Volume," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(4), pages 1049-1075.
    4. Liu, Jun & Pan, Jun, 2003. "Dynamic derivative strategies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 401-430, September.
    5. Cox, John C. & Ross, Stephen A., 1976. "The valuation of options for alternative stochastic processes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 145-166.
    6. Bujar Huskaj & Lars L. Nordén, 2015. "Two Order Books are Better than One? Trading at Settlement (TAS) in VIX Futures," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(6), pages 506-521, June.
    7. Stephen A. Ross, 1976. "Options and Efficiency," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(1), pages 75-89.
    8. Lee, Charles M C & Ready, Mark J, 1991. "Inferring Trade Direction from Intraday Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(2), pages 733-746, June.
    9. J. Scott Chaput & Louis H. Ederington, 2005. "Volatility trade design," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(3), pages 243-279, March.
    10. Alex Frino & Michael D. McKenzie, 2002. "The pricing of stock index futures spreads at contract expiration," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(5), pages 451-469, May.
    11. Alex Frino & Teddy Oetomo, 2005. "Slippage in futures markets: Evidence from the Sydney Futures Exchange," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(12), pages 1129-1146, December.
    12. Egloff, Daniel & Leippold, Markus & Wu, Liuren, 2010. "The Term Structure of Variance Swap Rates and Optimal Variance Swap Investments," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(5), pages 1279-1310, October.
    13. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    14. Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger & Sandås, Patrik, 2010. "Does information drive trading in option strategies?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2370-2385, October.
    15. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    16. Alex Frino & Jennifer Kruk & Andrew Lepone, 2007. "Transactions in futures markets: Informed or uninformed?," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(12), pages 1159-1174, December.
    17. Granger, C W J, 1969. "Investigating Causal Relations by Econometric Models and Cross-Spectral Methods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(3), pages 424-438, July.
    18. Wei‐Che Tsai & Ying‐Tzu Chiu & Yaw‐Huei Wang, 2015. "The Information Content of Trading Activity and Quote Changes: Evidence from VIX Options," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(8), pages 715-737, August.
    19. Zhongjin Lu & Yingzi Zhu, 2010. "Volatility components: The term structure dynamics of VIX futures," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 230-256, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Doojin Ryu & Jinyoung Yu, 2021. "Informed options trading around holidays," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(5), pages 658-685, May.
    2. Roll, Richard & Schwartz, Eduardo & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2009. "Options trading activity and firm valuation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 345-360, December.
    3. Jun Pan & Allen M. Poteshman, 2006. "The Information in Option Volume for Future Stock Prices," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(3), pages 871-908.
    4. Roll, Richard & Schwartz, Eduardo & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2014. "Trading activity in the equity market and its contingent claims: An empirical investigation," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 13-35.
    5. Nusret Cakici & Gautam Goswami & Sinan Tan, 2018. "Equity Options During the Shorting Ban of 2008," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-31, March.
    6. Gunther Capelle-Blancard & Séverine Vandelanoite, 2000. "Intraday relations between CAC 40 cash index and CAC 40 index options [Relations intrajournalières entre l'indice CAC 40 et les options sur indice. Quel est le marché préféré des investisseurs info," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-03727911, HAL.
    7. Mengyu Zhang & Thanos Verousis & Iordanis Kalaitzoglou, 2022. "Information and the arrival rate of option trading volume," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(4), pages 605-644, April.
    8. Cenesizoglu, Tolga & Dionne, Georges & Zhou, Xiaozhou, 2022. "Asymmetric effects of the limit order book on price dynamics," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 77-98.
    9. Murphy Jun Jie Lee, 2013. "The Microstructure of Trading Processes on the Singapore Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 2-2013, January-A.
    10. Hu, Jianfeng, 2014. "Does option trading convey stock price information?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(3), pages 625-645.
    11. Ledenyov, Dimitri O. & Ledenyov, Viktor O., 2015. "Wave function method to forecast foreign currencies exchange rates at ultra high frequency electronic trading in foreign currencies exchange markets," MPRA Paper 67470, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Dian‐Xuan Kao & Wei‐Che Tsai & Yaw‐Huei Wang & Kuang‐Chieh Yen, 2018. "An analysis on the intraday trading activity of VIX derivatives," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(2), pages 158-174, February.
    13. Michael J. O'Neill & Zhangxin Liu & Tom Smith, 2017. "Fund Volatility Index using equity market state prices," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(3), pages 837-853, September.
    14. Alex Frino & Luca Galati & Dionigi Gerace, 2022. "Reporting delays and the information content of off‐market trades," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(11), pages 2053-2067, November.
    15. Murphy Jun Jie Lee, 2013. "The Microstructure of Trading Processes on the Singapore Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 4, July-Dece.
    16. Chang‐Mo Kang & Donghyun Kim & Junyong Kim & Geul Lee, 2022. "Informed trading of out‐of‐the‐money options and market efficiency," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 45(2), pages 247-279, June.
    17. Aron Gereben, 2002. "Extracting market expectations from option prices: an application to over-the-counter New Zealand dollar options," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2002/04, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    18. Roll, Richard & Schwartz, Eduardo & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2010. "O/S: The relative trading activity in options and stock," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 1-17, April.
    19. Peter Carr & Liuren Wu, 2014. "Static Hedging of Standard Options," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 3-46.
    20. René Garcia & Richard Luger & Eric Renault, 2000. "Asymmetric Smiles, Leverage Effects and Structural Parameters," Working Papers 2000-57, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jfutmk:v:38:y:2018:i:7:p:822-838. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0270-7314/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.