IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2212.06888.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fundamentals of Perpetual Futures

Author

Listed:
  • Songrun He
  • Asaf Manela
  • Omri Ross
  • Victor von Wachter

Abstract

Perpetual futures are the most popular cryptocurrency derivatives. Perpetuals offer leveraged exposure to their underlying without rollover or direct ownership. Unlike fixed-maturity futures, perpetuals are not guaranteed to converge to the spot price. To minimize the gap between perpetual and spot prices, long investors periodically pay shorts a funding rate proportional to this difference. We derive no-arbitrage prices for perpetual futures in frictionless markets and bounds in markets with trading costs. Empirically, deviations from these prices in crypto are larger than in traditional currency markets, comove across currencies, and diminish over time. An implied arbitrage strategy yields high Sharpe ratios.

Suggested Citation

  • Songrun He & Asaf Manela & Omri Ross & Victor von Wachter, 2022. "Fundamentals of Perpetual Futures," Papers 2212.06888, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2212.06888
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.06888
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philip H. Dybvig, Chi-fu Huang, 1988. "Nonnegative Wealth, Absence of Arbitrage, and Feasible Consumption Plans," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(4), pages 377-401.
    2. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "The Limits of Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 35-55, March.
    3. David O. Lucca & Emanuel Moench, 2015. "The Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(1), pages 329-371, February.
    4. Carol Alexander & Jaehyuk Choi & Heungju Park & Sungbin Sohn, 2020. "BitMEX bitcoin derivatives: Price discovery, informational efficiency, and hedging effectiveness," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 23-43, January.
    5. Shiller, Robert J, 1993. "Measuring Asset Values for Cash Settlement in Derivative Markets: Hedonic Repeated Measures Indices and Perpetual Futures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(3), pages 911-931, July.
    6. Wenxin Du & Alexander Tepper & Adrien Verdelhan, 2018. "Deviations from Covered Interest Rate Parity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(3), pages 915-957, June.
    7. Yukun Liu & Aleh Tsyvinski & Xi Wu, 2022. "Common Risk Factors in Cryptocurrency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(2), pages 1133-1177, April.
    8. Yukun Liu & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2021. "Risks and Returns of Cryptocurrency," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(6), pages 2689-2727.
    9. Riccardo De Blasis & Alexander Webb, 2022. "Arbitrage, contract design, and market structure in Bitcoin futures markets," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(3), pages 492-524, March.
    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. Erdong Chen & Mengzhong Ma & Zixin Nie, 2024. "Exploring the Impact: How Decentralized Exchange Designs Shape Traders' Behavior on Perpetual Future Contracts," Papers 2402.03953, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    2. Erdong Chen & Mengzhong Ma & Zixin Nie, 2024. "Perpetual future contracts in centralized and decentralized exchanges: Mechanism and traders’ behavior," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 34(1), pages 1-36, December.
    3. Aysan, Ahmet Faruk & Caporin, Massimiliano & Cepni, Oguzhan, 2024. "Not all words are equal: Sentiment and jumps in the cryptocurrency market," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    4. Erkko Etula & Kalle Rinne & Matti Suominen & Lauri Vaittinen, 2020. "Dash for Cash: Monthly Market Impact of Institutional Liquidity Needs," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(1), pages 75-111.
    5. Shimeng Shi, 2022. "Bitcoin futures risk premia," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(12), pages 2190-2217, December.
    6. Borri, Nicola & Shakhnov, Kirill, 2023. "Cryptomarket discounts," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    7. Jun Liu, 2004. "Losing Money on Arbitrage: Optimal Dynamic Portfolio Choice in Markets with Arbitrage Opportunities," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 611-641.
    8. Yeguang Chi & Wenyan Hao & Jiangdong Hu & Zhenkai Ran, 2023. "An empirical investigation on risk factors in cryptocurrency futures," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 1161-1180, August.
    9. Chen, Bin-xia & Sun, Yan-lin, 2024. "Risk characteristics and connectedness in cryptocurrency markets: New evidence from a non-linear framework," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(PA).
    10. Peter Van Tassel, 2020. "The Law of One Price in Equity Volatility Markets," Staff Reports 953, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    11. Sun, Xiaotong & Stasinakis, Charalampos & Sermpinis, Georgios, 2024. "Decentralization illusion in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from tokenized voting in MakerDAO polls," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    12. Andrew Ang & Dimitris Papanikolaou & Mark M. Westerfield, 2014. "Portfolio Choice with Illiquid Assets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(11), pages 2737-2761, November.
    13. Arkorful, Gideon Bruce & Chen, Haiqiang & Gu, Ming & Liu, Xiaoqun, 2023. "What can we learn from the convenience yield of Bitcoin? Evidence from the COVID-19 crisis," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 141-153.
    14. Yang, Jen-Wei & Chiu, Shih-Yung & Yen, Kuang-Chieh, 2023. "Does the realized distribution-based measure dominate particular moments? Evidence from cryptocurrency markets," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    15. Wang, Yijun & Andreeva, Galina & Martin-Barragan, Belen, 2023. "Machine learning approaches to forecasting cryptocurrency volatility: Considering internal and external determinants," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    16. Nina Boyarchenko & Thomas M. Eisenbach & Pooja Gupta & Or Shachar & Peter Van Tassel, 2018. "Bank-Intermediated Arbitrage," Liberty Street Economics 20181018, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    17. Nicole Aregger & Jessica Leutert, 2023. "Countering Appreciation Pressure with Unconventional Monetary Policy: The Role of Financial Frictions," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 19(4), pages 251-337, October.
    18. Zhao, Xiaojuan & Wang, Ye & Liu, Weiyi, 2024. "Someone like you: Lottery-like preference and the cross-section of expected returns in the cryptocurrency market," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    19. Dunbar, Kwamie & Owusu-Amoako, Johnson, 2023. "Predictability of crypto returns: The impact of trading behavior," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    20. Tom Liu & Stefan Zohren, 2023. "Multi-Factor Inception: What to Do with All of These Features?," Papers 2307.13832, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    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:arx:papers:2212.06888. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.