IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/war/wpaper/2014-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Simple heuristics for pricing VIX options

Author

Listed:
  • Juliusz Jabłecki

    (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw; National Bank of Poland)

  • Ryszard Kokoszczyński

    (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw; National Bank of Poland)

  • Paweł Sakowski

    (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw)

  • Robert Ślepaczuk

    (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw)

  • Piotr Wójcik

    (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw)

Abstract

The article presents a simple parameterization of the volatility surface for options on the S&P 500 volatility index, VIX. Specifically, we document the following features of VIX implied volatility: (i) VIX at-the-money (ATM) implied volatility correlates strongly with the volatility skew in S&P 500 options; (ii) VIX ATM implied volatility declines exponentially with options' time to expiry; (iii) a SABR-type model can be used to model the smile observed in VIX options. These observations lead to simple heuristics for quoting prices (in terms of implied volatility) of VIX options with almost arbitrary strike and expiry, obtaining values that are reasonably close to market levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Juliusz Jabłecki & Ryszard Kokoszczyński & Paweł Sakowski & Robert Ślepaczuk & Piotr Wójcik, 2014. "Simple heuristics for pricing VIX options," Working Papers 2014-25, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    • Handle: RePEc:war:wpaper:2014-25
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.wne.uw.edu.pl/inf/wyd/WP/WNE_WP142.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John C. Cox & Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Stephen A. Ross, 2005. "A Theory Of The Term Structure Of Interest Rates," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 5, pages 129-164, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Robert C. Merton, 2005. "Theory of rational option pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 8, pages 229-288, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Grunbichler, Andreas & Longstaff, Francis A., 1996. "Valuing futures and options on volatility," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 985-1001, July.
    4. Emanuel Derman & Iraj Kani, 1998. "Stochastic Implied Trees: Arbitrage Pricing with Stochastic Term and Strike Structure of Volatility," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(01), pages 61-110.
    5. Lin, Yueh-Neng & Chang, Chien-Hung, 2010. "Consistent modeling of S&P 500 and VIX derivatives," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 2302-2319, November.
    6. Heston, Steven L, 1993. "A Closed-Form Solution for Options with Stochastic Volatility with Applications to Bond and Currency Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 327-343.
    7. 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.
    8. Black, Fischer, 1976. "The pricing of commodity contracts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 167-179.
    9. Hull, John C & White, Alan D, 1987. "The Pricing of Options on Assets with Stochastic Volatilities," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(2), pages 281-300, June.
    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. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    2. Zura Kakushadze, 2016. "Volatility Smile as Relativistic Effect," Papers 1610.02456, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2017.
    3. Kozarski, R., 2013. "Pricing and hedging in the VIX derivative market," Other publications TiSEM 221fefe0-241e-4914-b6bd-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    5. Stephane Crepey, 2004. "Delta-hedging vega risk?," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(5), pages 559-579.
    6. Feng Zhao & Robert Jarrow & Haitao Li, 2004. "Interest Rate Caps Smile Too! But Can the LIBOR Market Models Capture It?," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 431, Econometric Society.
    7. Carey, Alexander, 2008. "Natural volatility and option pricing," MPRA Paper 6709, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Mondher Bellalah, 2009. "Derivatives, Risk Management & Value," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 7175, December.
    9. Carl Chiarella & Xue-Zhong He & Christina Sklibosios Nikitopoulos, 2015. "Derivative Security Pricing," Dynamic Modeling and Econometrics in Economics and Finance, Springer, edition 127, number 978-3-662-45906-5, May.
    10. Grunbichler, Andreas & Longstaff, Francis A., 1996. "Valuing futures and options on volatility," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 985-1001, July.
    11. Mark Broadie & Jerome B. Detemple, 2004. "ANNIVERSARY ARTICLE: Option Pricing: Valuation Models and Applications," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(9), pages 1145-1177, September.
    12. Alexander, Carol & Nogueira, Leonardo M., 2007. "Model-free hedge ratios and scale-invariant models," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1839-1861, June.
    13. Anatoliy Swishchuk, 2013. "Modeling and Pricing of Swaps for Financial and Energy Markets with Stochastic Volatilities," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 8660, December.
    14. Thomas Kokholm & Martin Stisen, 2015. "Joint pricing of VIX and SPX options with stochastic volatility and jump models," Journal of Risk Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 16(1), pages 27-48, January.
    15. Chenxu Li, 2014. "Closed-Form Expansion, Conditional Expectation, and Option Valuation," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 39(2), pages 487-516, May.
    16. Bjork, Tomas, 2009. "Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780199574742.
    17. Boris Ter-Avanesov & Homayoon Beigi, 2024. "MLP, XGBoost, KAN, TDNN, and LSTM-GRU Hybrid RNN with Attention for SPX and NDX European Call Option Pricing," Papers 2409.06724, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    18. Virmani, Vineet, 2014. "Model Risk in Pricing Path-dependent Derivatives: An Illustration," IIMA Working Papers WP2014-03-22, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    19. F. Fornari & A. Mele, 1998. "ARCH Models and Option Pricing : The Continuous Time Connection," THEMA Working Papers 98-30, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    20. Carey, Alexander, 2006. "Path-conditional forward volatility," MPRA Paper 4964, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    VIX; VIX options; implied volatility surface;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing

    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:war:wpaper:2014-25. 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: Marcin Bąba (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fesuwpl.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.