IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jfutmk/v42y2022i9p1721-1737.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The information content of the volatility index options trading volume

Author

Listed:
  • Chen Gu
  • Xu Guo
  • Alexander Kurov
  • Raluca Stan

Abstract

This paper investigates the predictive content of the Volatility Index (VIX) options trading volume for the future dynamics of the underlying VIX index. Using a novel data set from the Chicago Board Options Exchange, we calculate the put–call ratio based on the VIX option volume initiated by buyers to open new positions. We show that the put–call ratio negatively predicts the subsequent changes in the VIX index. The predictability is stronger during periods of elevated VIX levels and for short‐dated contracts. These results support the hypothesis that informed traders use the VIX option market as a venue for their trading.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen Gu & Xu Guo & Alexander Kurov & Raluca Stan, 2022. "The information content of the volatility index options trading volume," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(9), pages 1721-1737, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jfutmk:v:42:y:2022:i:9:p:1721-1737
    DOI: 10.1002/fut.22297
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/fut.22297
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/fut.22297?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. Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, 2008. "A Comprehensive Look at The Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1455-1508, July.
    2. Johnson, Travis L. & So, Eric C., 2012. "The option to stock volume ratio and future returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 262-286.
    3. Beetsma, Roel & Giuliodori, Massimo, 2012. "The changing macroeconomic response to stock market volatility shocks," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 281-293.
    4. Mevlud Islami & Jeong‐Ryeol Kurz‐Kim, 2014. "A Single Composite Financial Stress Indicator And Its Real Impact In The Euro Area," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 204-211, July.
    5. Chan, Konan & Ge, Li & Lin, Tse-Chun, 2015. "Informational Content of Options Trading on Acquirer Announcement Return," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(5), pages 1057-1082, October.
    6. Gu, Chen & Kurov, Alexander & Wolfe, Marketa Halova, 2018. "Relief Rallies after FOMC Announcements as a Resolution of Uncertainty," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-18.
    7. Clark, Todd E. & West, Kenneth D., 2007. "Approximately normal tests for equal predictive accuracy in nested models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 291-311, May.
    8. Manaster, Steven & Rendleman, Richard J, Jr, 1982. "Option Prices as Predictors of Equilibrium Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1043-1057, September.
    9. 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.
    10. Kumar, Raman & Sarin, Atulya & Shastri, Kuldeep, 1992. "The Behavior of Option Price around Large Block Transactions in the Underlying Security," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(3), pages 879-889, July.
    11. 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.
    12. Diltz, J David & Kim, Suhkyong, 1996. "The Relationship between Stock and Option Prices Changes," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 31(3), pages 499-519, August.
    13. Craig S. Hakkio & William R. Keeton, 2009. "Financial stress: what is it, how can it be measured, and why does it matter?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 94(Q II), pages 5-50.
    14. David E. Rapach & Jack K. Strauss & Guofu Zhou, 2010. "Out-of-Sample Equity Premium Prediction: Combination Forecasts and Links to the Real Economy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(2), pages 821-862, February.
    15. Cardarelli, Roberto & Elekdag, Selim & Lall, Subir, 2011. "Financial stress and economic contractions," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 78-97, June.
    16. Jeff Fleming & Barbara Ostdiek & Robert E. Whaley, 1996. "Trading costs and the relative rates of price discovery in stock, futures, and option markets," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(4), pages 353-387, June.
    17. Kam F. Chan & Philip Gray, 2018. "Volatility jumps and macroeconomic news announcements," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(8), pages 881-897, August.
    18. Hee‐Joon Ahn & Jangkoo Kang & Doojin Ryu, 2008. "Informed trading in the index option market: The case of KOSPI 200 options," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(12), pages 1118-1146, December.
    19. Diego García, 2013. "Sentiment during Recessions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(3), pages 1267-1300, June.
    20. Muravyev, Dmitriy & Pearson, Neil D. & Paul Broussard, John, 2013. "Is there price discovery in equity options?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 259-283.
    21. Bhattacharya, Mihir, 1987. "Price Changes of Related Securities: The Case of Call Options and Stocks," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 1-15, March.
    22. Yigit Atilgan & Turan G. Bali & K. Ozgur Demirtas, 2015. "Implied Volatility Spreads and Expected Market Returns," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(1), pages 87-101, January.
    23. Rapach, David E. & Ringgenberg, Matthew C. & Zhou, Guofu, 2016. "Short interest and aggregate stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 46-65.
    24. Stephan, Jens A & Whaley, Robert E, 1990. "Intraday Price Change and Trading Volume Relations in the Stock and Stock Option Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 191-220, March.
    25. 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.
    26. Phillip J. Monin, 2019. "The OFR Financial Stress Index," Risks, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-21, February.
    27. 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.
    28. Ederington, Louis H. & Lee, Jae Ha, 1996. "The Creation and Resolution of Market Uncertainty: The Impact of Information Releases on Implied Volatility," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 513-539, December.
    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. Bing Han & Gang Li, 2021. "Information Content of Aggregate Implied Volatility Spread," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(2), pages 1249-1269, February.
    2. Alejandro Bernales & Thanos Verousis & Nikolaos Voukelatos & Mengyu Zhang, 2020. "What do we know about individual equity options?," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 67-91, January.
    3. Chen, Zhuo & Lu, Andrea, 2017. "Slow diffusion of information and price momentum in stocks: Evidence from options markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 98-108.
    4. Vinay Patel, 2015. "Price Discovery in US and Australian Stock and Options Markets," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 27, July-Dece.
    5. Vinay Patel, 2015. "Price Discovery in US and Australian Stock and Options Markets," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 6-2015, January-A.
    6. Liu, Dehong & Qiu, Qi & Hughen, J. Christopher & Lung, Peter, 2019. "Price discovery in the price disagreement between equity and option markets: Evidence from SSE ETF50 options of China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 557-571.
    7. Hu, Jianfeng, 2014. "Does option trading convey stock price information?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(3), pages 625-645.
    8. Kelley Bergsma & Vivien Csapi & Dean Diavatopoulos & Andy Fodor, 2020. "Show me the money: Option moneyness concentration and future stock returns," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(5), pages 761-775, May.
    9. Doojin Ryu & Heejin Yang, 2018. "The directional information content of options volumes," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(12), pages 1533-1548, December.
    10. Bevilacqua, Mattia & Tunaru, Radu & Vioto, Davide, 2020. "Options-based systemic risk, financial distress, and macroeconomic downturns," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118850, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Lee, Yen-Hsien & Wang, David K., 2016. "Information content of investor trading behavior: Evidence from Taiwan index options market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 149-160.
    12. Jian Chen & Yangshu Liu, 2020. "Bid and ask prices of index put options: Which predicts the underlying stock returns?," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(9), pages 1337-1353, September.
    13. 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.
    14. Robert Jarrow & Scott Fung & Shih-Chuan Tsai, 2018. "An empirical investigation of large trader market manipulation in derivatives markets," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 331-374, October.
    15. Hsieh, Wen-liang G. & He, Huei-Ru, 2014. "Informed trading, trading strategies and the information content of trading volume: Evidence from the Taiwan index options market," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 187-215.
    16. R. Jared DeLisle & Bong Soo Lee & Nathan Mauck, 2016. "The dynamic relation between options trading, short selling, and aggregate stock returns," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 645-671, October.
    17. Delisle, R. Jared & Lee, Bong Soo & Mauck, Nathan, 2012. "The dynamic relation between short sellers, option traders, and aggregate returns," MPRA Paper 42566, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Chin‐Ho Chen, 2021. "Investor sentiment, misreaction, and the skewness‐return relationship," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(9), pages 1427-1455, September.
    19. Lee, Jaeram & Ryu, Doojin & Yang, Heejin, 2021. "Does vega-neutral options trading contain information?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 294-314.
    20. 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.

    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:42:y:2022:i:9:p:1721-1737. 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.