IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/knz/dpteco/1117.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Puzzle of Index Option Returns

Author

Listed:
  • George M. Constantinides

    (Center for Reserach in Security Prices, University of Chicago and NBER, Booth School of Business, USA)

  • Jens Carsten Jackwerth

    (Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany)

  • Alexi Savov

    (Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, USA)

Abstract

We document that the leverage-adjusted returns on S&P 500 index call and put portfolios are decreasing in their strike-to-price ratio over 1986-2009, contrary to the prediction of the Black-Scholes-Merton model. We test a large number of plausible factor models in order to learn what drives the violations of the Black-Scholes-Merton model. Consistent with the picture that crisis-related factors operate across the equities and index options markets, factors which capture jumps in market volatility, jumps in the market index, and changes in liquidity work reasonably well in explaining the cross-section of index option returns, even when we impose the restriction that the premia are estimated from the universe of equities. Furthermore, the factor that captures jumps in market volatility also reduces the pricing errors of the 25 Fama-French portfolios by more than Size and only a bit less than Value.

Suggested Citation

  • George M. Constantinides & Jens Carsten Jackwerth & Alexi Savov, 2011. "The Puzzle of Index Option Returns," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2011-17, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    • Handle: RePEc:knz:dpteco:1117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/wiwi/workingpaperseries/WP_Constantinides-Jackwerth-Savov-17-11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Britten‐Jones & Anthony Neuberger, 2000. "Option Prices, Implied Price Processes, and Stochastic Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(2), pages 839-866, April.
    2. 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.
    3. Bates, David S., 2008. "The market for crash risk," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 2291-2321, July.
    4. Fousseni Chabi-Yo & René Garcia & Eric Renault, 2008. "State Dependence Can Explain the Risk Aversion Puzzle," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(2), pages 973-1011, April.
    5. Pedro Santa-Clara & Shu Yan, 2010. "Crashes, Volatility, and the Equity Premium: Lessons from S&P 500 Options," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(2), pages 435-451, May.
    6. Rietz, Thomas A., 1988. "The equity risk premium a solution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 117-131, July.
    7. Peter Christoffersen & Ruslan Goyenko & Kris Jacobs & Mehdi Karoui, 2018. "Illiquidity Premia in the Equity Options Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(3), pages 811-851.
    8. Andrea Frazzini & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2022. "Embedded Leverage [Asset pricing with liquidity risk]," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(1), pages 1-52.
    9. Buraschi, Andrea & Jackwerth, Jens, 2001. "The Price of a Smile: Hedging and Spanning in Option Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(2), pages 495-527.
    10. Itamar Drechsler & Amir Yaron, 2011. "What's Vol Got to Do with It," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(1), pages 1-45.
    11. George M. Constantinides & Michal Czerwonko & Jens Carsten Jackwerth & Stylianos Perrakis, 2011. "Are Options on Index Futures Profitable for Risk‐Averse Investors? Empirical Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(4), pages 1407-1437, August.
    12. Bates, David S, 1996. "Jumps and Stochastic Volatility: Exchange Rate Processes Implicit in Deutsche Mark Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(1), pages 69-107.
    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. Horatio Cuesdeanu & Jens Carsten Jackwerth, 2018. "The pricing kernel puzzle: survey and outlook," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 289-329, August.
    2. Shaliastovich, Ivan, 2015. "Learning, confidence, and option prices," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 187(1), pages 18-42.
    3. Byun, Suk Joon & Jeon, Byoung Hyun & Min, Byungsun & Yoon, Sun-Joong, 2015. "The role of the variance premium in Jump-GARCH option pricing models," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 38-56.
    4. Tim Bollerslev & Viktor Todorov, 2011. "Tails, Fears, and Risk Premia," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 2165-2211, December.
    5. Christoffersen, Peter & Jacobs, Kris & Chang, Bo Young, 2013. "Forecasting with Option-Implied Information," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 581-656, Elsevier.
    6. David Backus & Mikhail Chernov & Ian Martin, 2011. "Disasters Implied by Equity Index Options," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 1969-2012, December.
    7. Panigirtzoglou, Nikolaos & Skiadopoulos, George, 2004. "A new approach to modeling the dynamics of implied distributions: Theory and evidence from the S&P 500 options," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(7), pages 1499-1520, July.
    8. Benzoni, Luca & Collin-Dufresne, Pierre & Goldstein, Robert S., 2011. "Explaining asset pricing puzzles associated with the 1987 market crash," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 552-573, September.
    9. Kaeck, Andreas & Rodrigues, Paulo & Seeger, Norman J., 2017. "Equity index variance: Evidence from flexible parametric jump–diffusion models," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 85-103.
    10. Sang Byung Seo & Jessica A. Wachter, 2013. "Option Prices in a Model with Stochastic Disaster Risk," NBER Working Papers 19611, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Song, Zhaogang & Xiu, Dacheng, 2016. "A tale of two option markets: Pricing kernels and volatility risk," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 190(1), pages 176-196.
    12. Bai, Jennie & Goldstein, Robert S. & Yang, Fan, 2020. "Is the credit spread puzzle a myth?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(2), pages 297-319.
    13. Barras, Laurent & Malkhozov, Aytek, 2016. "Does variance risk have two prices? Evidence from the equity and option markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 79-92.
    14. Yoon, Sun-Joong, 2017. "Time-varying risk aversion and return predictability," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 327-339.
    15. Park, Yang-Ho, 2015. "Volatility-of-volatility and tail risk hedging returns," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 38-63.
    16. Christoffersen, Peter & Heston, Steven & Jacobs, Kris, 2010. "Option Anomalies and the Pricing Kernel," Working Papers 11-17, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    17. Bollerslev, Tim & Gibson, Michael & Zhou, Hao, 2011. "Dynamic estimation of volatility risk premia and investor risk aversion from option-implied and realized volatilities," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 160(1), pages 235-245, January.
    18. 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.
    19. Bakshi, Gurdip & Madan, Dilip & Panayotov, George, 2010. "Returns of claims on the upside and the viability of U-shaped pricing kernels," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 130-154, July.
    20. Sanjay K. Nawalkha & Xiaoyang Zhuo, 2020. "A Theory of Equivalent Expectation Measures for Contingent Claim Returns," Papers 2006.15312, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    index option returns; option mispricing; volatility jumps; price jumps; liquidity; market efficiency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:knz:dpteco:1117. 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: Office Ursprung (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fwkonde.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.