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Interpreting the volatility smile: an examination of the information content of option prices

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Author Info
Steven A. Weinberg
Abstract

This paper evaluates how useful the information contained in options prices is for predicting future price movements of the underlying assets. We develop an improved semiparametric methodology for estimating risk-neutral probability density functions (PDFs), which allows for skewness and intertemporal variation in higher moments. We use this technique to estimate a daily time series of risk-neutral PDFs spanning the late 1980's through 1999, for S&P 500 futures, U.S. dollar/Japanese yen futures and U.S. dollar/deutsche mark futures, using options on these futures. For the foreign exchange futures, we find little discernable additional information contained in the estimated PDFs beyond the information derived from the Black-Scholes model, a fully parametric specification. For S&P 500 futures, we find that the risk-neutral distribution implied by the volatility smile better fits the realized returns than the Black-Scholes model, although this better overall fit is not exhibited in the second and third moments.

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Paper provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) in its series International Finance Discussion Papers with number 706.

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Date of creation: 2001
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Keywords: Risk management ; Asset-liability management;

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Newey, Whitney K & West, Kenneth D, 1987. "A Simple, Positive Semi-definite, Heteroskedasticity and Autocorrelation Consistent Covariance Matrix," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 703-08, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Melick, William R. & Thomas, Charles P., 1997. "Recovering an Asset's Implied PDF from Option Prices: An Application to Crude Oil during the Gulf Crisis," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(01), pages 91-115, March. [Downloadable!]
  3. Mc Manus, Des, 1999. "The Information Content of Interest Rate Futures Options," Working Papers 99-15, Bank of Canada. [Downloadable!]
  4. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Lo, Andrew W., 2000. "Nonparametric risk management and implied risk aversion," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 9-51. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Bates, David S, 1991. " The Crash of '87: Was It Expected? The Evidence from Options Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(3), pages 1009-44, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. 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. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Jose M. Campa & P.H. Kevin Chang & Robert L. Reider, 1997. "Implied Exchange Rate Distributions: Evidence from OTC Option Markets," NBER Working Papers 6179, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Christensen, B. J. & Prabhala, N. R., 1998. "The relation between implied and realized volatility1," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 125-150, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Canina, Linda & Figlewski, Stephen, 1993. "The Informational Content of Implied Volatility," Review of Financial Studies, Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(3), pages 659-81. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Jens Carsten Jackwerth., 1996. "Recovering Risk Aversion from Option Prices and Realized Returns," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-265, University of California at Berkeley. [Downloadable!]
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  11. Dilip B. Madan & Frank Milne, 1992. "Contingent Claims Valued and Hedged by Pricing and Investing in a Basis," Working Papers 868, Queen's University, Department of Economics.
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  12. JosÈ B. Campa & P.H. Kevin Chang & Robert L. Reider, 1997. "ERM bandwidths for EMU and after: evidence from foreign exchange options," Economic Policy, CEPR, CES, MSH, vol. 12(24), pages 53-89, 04. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Jorion, Philippe, 1995. " Predicting Volatility in the Foreign Exchange Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(2), pages 507-28, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
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  1. Francisco Alonso & Roberto Blanco & Gonzalo Rubio, 2005. "Testing the forecasting performace of IBEX 35 option implied risk neutral densities," Banco de España Working Papers 0504, Banco de España. [Downloadable!]
  2. Marian Micu, 2005. "Extracting expectations from currency option prices: a comparison of methods," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 226, Society for Computational Economics. [Downloadable!]
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