IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocawp/24-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is This Normal? The Cost of Assuming that Derivatives Have Normal Returns

Author

Listed:
  • Radoslav Raykov

Abstract

Derivatives exchanges often determine collateral requirements, which are fundamental to market safety, with dated risk models assuming normal returns. However, derivatives returns are heavy-tailed, which leads to the systematic under-collection of collateral (margin). This paper uses extreme value theory (EVT) to evaluate the cost of this margin inadequacy to market participants in the event of default. I find that the Canadian futures market was under-margined by about $1.6 billion during the Great Financial Crisis, and that the default of the highest-impact participant generates a cost of up to $302 million to be absorbed by surviving participants. I show that this cost can consume the market’s entire default fund and result in costly risk mutualization. I advocate for the adoption of EVT as a benchmarking tool and argue that the regulation of exchanges should be revised for financial products with heavy tails.

Suggested Citation

  • Radoslav Raykov, 2024. "Is This Normal? The Cost of Assuming that Derivatives Have Normal Returns," Staff Working Papers 24-46, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:24-46
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2024/11/staff-working-paper-2024-46/
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/swp2024-46.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2009. "Market Liquidity and Funding Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2201-2238, June.
    2. Albert J Menkveld, 2017. "Crowded Positions: An Overlooked Systemic Risk for Central Clearing Parties," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 7(2), pages 209-242.
    3. Cotter, John, 2001. "Margin exceedences for European stock index futures using extreme value theory," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(8), pages 1475-1502, August.
    4. van Oordt, Maarten R. C. & Zhou, Chen, 2016. "Systematic Tail Risk," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(2), pages 685-705, April.
    5. Mark Paddrik & Sriram Rajan & H. Peyton Young, 2020. "Contagion in Derivatives Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(8), pages 3603-3616, August.
    6. Hall, Peter, 1990. "Using the bootstrap to estimate mean squared error and select smoothing parameter in nonparametric problems," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 177-203, February.
    7. Jansen, Dennis W & de Vries, Casper G, 1991. "On the Frequency of Large Stock Returns: Putting Booms and Busts into Perspective," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 73(1), pages 18-24, February.
    8. Huisman, Ronald, et al, 2001. "Tail-Index Estimates in Small Samples," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(2), pages 208-216, April.
    9. François M. Longin, 1999. "Optimal margin level in futures markets: Extreme price movements," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 127-152, April.
    10. Raykov, Radoslav, 2022. "Systemic Risk and Collateral Adequacy: Evidence from the Futures Market," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 57(3), pages 1142-1173, May.
    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. Marco Rocco, 2011. "Extreme value theory for finance: a survey," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 99, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    2. Chen, Zhimin & Ibragimov, Rustam, 2019. "One country, two systems? The heavy-tailedness of Chinese A- and H- share markets," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 115-141.
    3. Alexander, Carol & Kaeck, Andreas & Sumawong, Anannit, 2019. "A parsimonious parametric model for generating margin requirements for futures," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 273(1), pages 31-43.
    4. Jansen, Dennis W. & Koedijk, Kees G. & de Vries, Casper G., 2000. "Portfolio selection with limited downside risk," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 7(3-4), pages 247-269, November.
    5. Ergun, Lerby M., 2023. "Extreme downside risk in the cross-section of asset returns," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    6. Echaust Krzysztof, 2014. "A Comparison of Tail Behaviour of Stock Market Returns," Folia Oeconomica Stetinensia, Sciendo, vol. 14(1), pages 22-34, June.
    7. Ron Berndsen, 2021. "Fundamental questions on central counterparties: A review of the literature," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(12), pages 2009-2022, December.
    8. Radoslav Raykov, 2024. "Decomposing Large Banks’ Systemic Trading Losses," Staff Working Papers 24-6, Bank of Canada.
    9. Cotter, John & Longin, Francois, 2004. "Margin setting with high-frequency data," MPRA Paper 3528, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2006.
    10. Berndsen, Ron, 2020. "Five Fundamental Questions on Central Counterparties," Other publications TiSEM 1f3bd844-92ab-4104-8f57-9, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    11. Danielsson, J. & de Haan, L. & Peng, L. & de Vries, C. G., 2001. "Using a Bootstrap Method to Choose the Sample Fraction in Tail Index Estimation," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 226-248, February.
    12. Yun Feng & Weijie Hou & Yuping Song, 2024. "Tail risk forecasting and its application to margin requirements in the commodity futures market," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(5), pages 1513-1529, August.
    13. Moore, Kyle & Zhou, Chen, 2014. "The determinants of systemic importance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 59289, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Shi, Wei & Irwin, Scott H., 2006. "What Happens when Peter can't Pay Paul: Risk Management at Futures Exchange Clearinghouses," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21087, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    15. Cotter, John, 2007. "Varying the VaR for unconditional and conditional environments," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(8), pages 1338-1354, December.
    16. Josep Lluís Carrion-i-Silvestre & Andreu Sansó, 2023. ""Generalized Extreme Value Approximation to the CUMSUMQ Test for Constant Unconditional Variance in Heavy-Tailed Time Series"," IREA Working Papers 202309, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Jul 2023.
    17. Capponi, Agostino & Cheng, Wan-Schwin Allen & Giglio, Stefano & Haynes, Richard, 2022. "The collateral rule: Evidence from the credit default swap market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 58-86.
    18. González-Sánchez, Mariano & Nave Pineda, Juan M., 2023. "Where is the distribution tail threshold? A tale on tail and copulas in financial risk measurement," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    19. Hamed Tabasi & Vahidreza Yousefi & Jolanta Tamošaitienė & Foroogh Ghasemi, 2019. "Estimating Conditional Value at Risk in the Tehran Stock Exchange Based on the Extreme Value Theory Using GARCH Models," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-17, May.
    20. Raymond Knott & Marco Polenghi, 2006. "Assessing central counterparty margin coverage on futures contracts using GARCH models," Bank of England working papers 287, Bank of England.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial institutions; Financial stability;

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General

    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:bca:bocawp:24-46. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bocgvca.html .

    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.