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The VIX Premium

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  • Ing-Haw Cheng

Abstract

Ex ante estimates of the volatility premium embedded in VIX futures, known as the VIX premium, fall or stay flat when ex ante measures of risk rise. This is not an artifact of mismeasurement: (i) ex ante premiums reliably predict ex post returns to VIX futures with a coefficient near one, and (ii) falling ex ante premiums predict increasing ex post market and investment risk, creating profitable trading opportunities. Falling hedging demand helps explain this behavior, as premiums and trader exposures tend to fall together when risk rises. These facts provide a puzzle for theories of why investors hedge volatility. Received January 13, 2017; editorial decision April 26, 2018 by Editor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Suggested Citation

  • Ing-Haw Cheng, 2019. "The VIX Premium," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(1), pages 180-227.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:32:y:2019:i:1:p:180-227.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhy062
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Ruan, Xinfeng & Zhang, Jin E., 2021. "The economics of the financial market for volatility trading," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    2. Christensen, Kim & Christiansen, Charlotte & Posselt, Anders M., 2020. "The economic value of VIX ETPs," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 121-138.
    3. Geert Bekaert & Eric C. Engstrom & Nancy R. Xu, 2022. "The Time Variation in Risk Appetite and Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 3975-4004, June.
    4. Sanjay K. Nawalkha & Xiaoyang Zhuo, 2022. "A Theory of Equivalent Expectation Measures for Contingent Claim Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(5), pages 2853-2906, October.
    5. Ole Linnemann Nielsen & Anders Merrild Posselt, 2022. "Betting on mean reversion in the VIX? Evidence from ETP flows," CREATES Research Papers 2022-06, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    6. Scott Mixon & Esen Onur, 2019. "Derivatives pricing when supply and demand matter: Evidence from the term structure of VIX futures," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(9), pages 1035-1055, September.
    7. Baruník, Jozef & Bevilacqua, Mattia & Faff, Robert, 2024. "Dynamic industry uncertainty networks and the business cycle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    8. Sanjay K. Nawalkha & Xiaoyang Zhuo, 2020. "A Theory of Equivalent Expectation Measures for Contingent Claim Returns," Papers 2006.15312, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    9. Jacobs, Kris & Li, Bingxin, 2023. "Option Returns, Risk Premiums, and Demand Pressure in Energy Markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    10. James S. Doran, 2020. "Volatility as an asset class: Holding VIX in a portfolio," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(6), pages 841-859, June.
    11. Karamfil Todorov, 2021. "Passive funds affect prices: evidence from the most ETF-dominated asset classes," BIS Working Papers 952, Bank for International Settlements.
    12. Philip Stahl, 2022. "Asymptotic extrapolation of model-free implied variance: exploring structural underestimation in the VIX Index," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 315-339, October.
    13. Huang, Hong-Gia & Tsai, Wei-Che & Weng, Pei-Shih & Yang, J. Jimmy, 2023. "Intraday momentum in the VIX futures market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    14. Anders Merrild Posselt, 2022. "Dynamics in the VIX complex," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(9), pages 1665-1687, September.
    15. Nawalkha, Sanjay K & Zhuo, Xiaoyang, 2020. "A Theory of Equivalent Expectation Measures for Expected Prices of Contingent Claims," OSF Preprints hsxtu, Center for Open Science.
    16. Jungah Yoon & Xinfeng Ruan & Jin E. Zhang, 2022. "VIX option‐implied volatility slope and VIX futures returns," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(6), pages 1002-1038, June.
    17. Park, Yang-Ho, 2020. "Variance disparity and market frictions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 214(2), pages 326-348.

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