FX volatility smile construction

The foreign exchange options market is one of the largest and most liquid OTC derivative markets in the world. Surprisingly, very little is known in the academic literature about the construction of the most important object in this market: The implied volatility smile. The smile construction procedure and the volatility quoting mechanisms are FX specific and differ significantly from other markets. We give a detailed overview of these quoting mechanisms and introduce the resulting smile construction problem. Furthermore, we provide a new formula which can be used for an efficient and robust FX smile construction. --FX Quotations,FX Smile Construction,Risk Reversal,Butterfly,Strangle,Delta Conventions,Malz Formula

A New Framework for Analyzing and Managing Macrofinancial Risks of an Economy

The high cost of international economic and financial crises highlights the need for a comprehensive framework to assess the robustness of national economic and financial systems. This paper proposes a new comprehensive approach to measure, analyze, and manage macroeconomic risk based on the theory and practice of modern contingent claims analysis (CCA). We illustrate how to use the CCA approach to model and measure sectoral and national risk exposures, and analyze policies to offset their potentially harmful effects. This new framework provides economic balance sheets for inter-linked sectors and a risk accounting framework for an economy. CCA provides a natural framework for analysis of mismatches between an entity's assets and liabilities, such as currency and maturity mismatches on balance sheets. Policies or actions that reduce these mismatches will help reduce risk and vulnerability. It also provides a new framework for sovereign capital structure analysis. It is useful for assessing vulnerability, policy analysis, risk management, investment analysis, and design of risk control strategies. Both public and private sector participants can benefit from pursuing ways to facilitate more efficient macro risk accounting, improve price and volatility discovery, and expand international risk intermediation activities.

OPTION VALUES FOR PROVISIONS IN EXPORT CREDIT GUARANTEES

All major exporting countries of agricultural commodities have some form of credit guarantee program. As the importance of credit programs escalates, it is incumbent on policy makers to examine the value of their program relative to those of competitors. In this study, a model based on option pricing theory was developed to estimate the value of credit guarantees extended to importers and applied to U.S. and competing countries' programs. The Canadian guarantee has the lowest implicit value, followed by the U.S., Australian, and French guarantees. French guarantees had the highest implicit value due to higher coverage for interest and freight and insurance.International Relations/Trade,

Are Option-Implied Forecasts of Exchange Rate Volatility Excessively Variable?

Market participants' forecasts of future exchange rate volatility can be recovered from option contracts on foreign currencies. Such implicit volatility forecasts for four currencies are used to test rational expectations jointly with the applicability of the standard Black-Scholes formula. First, we examine the null hypothesis that the market-anticipated one-month-ahead standard deviation is an unbiased estimator of the subsequent realized standard deviation. The parametric regression method rejects this hypothesis overwhelmingly: the implicit forecasts are themselves excessively variable. Simulations indicate that the rejection is not caused by non-normality of the error term. Second, we use a nonparametric method to test a weaker version of market rationality: the market can correctly forecast the direction of the change in exchange rate volatility. This time, the weaker version of rationality is confirmed- Third, we investigate how market forecasts are formed. We find some evidence that market participants put heavy weight on lagged volatility when forecasting future volatility. Finally, results from the Alternating Conditional Expectations algorithm provide further support for the central finding that when the market predicts a large deviation of volatility from its mean, it could do better by moderating its forecast.

Valuing Option Provisions for Export Credit Guarantees

International Relations/Trade,

Restricted Export Flexibility and Risk Management with Options and Futures

This paper examines the production, export and risk management decisions of a risk-averse competitive firm under exchange rate risk. The firm is export flexible in allocating its output to either the domestic market or a foreign market after observing the exchange rate. Export flexibility is restricted by certain minimum sales requirements that are due to long-term considerations. Currency options are sufficient to derive a separation result under restricted export flexibility. Under fairly priced currency futures and options, full hedging with both instruments is optimal. Introducing fairly-priced currency options stimulates production provided that the currency futures market is unbiased.restricted export flexibility, risk management, currency futures, currency options

Identifying Volatility Risk Premium from Fixed Income Asian Options

We provide approximation formulas for at-the-money asian option prices to extract volatility risk premium from a joint dataset of bonds and option prices. The dynamic model generates stochastic volatility and a time-varying volatility risk premium, which explicitly depends on the average cross section of bond yields and on the time series behavior of option prices. When estimated using a joint dataset of Brazilian local bonds and asian options, the model generates bond risk premium strongly correlated (89%) with a widely accepted emerging markets benchmark index, and a negative volatility risk premium implying that investors might be using options as insurance in this market. Volatility premium explains a significant portion (32.5%) of bond premium, confirming that options are indeed important to identify risk premium in dynamic term structure models.

Did Option Traders Predict the Korean Financial Crisis of 1997?

This paper examines KOSPI200 options prices in order to investigate whether implied volatility implicit in options prices foreshadowed the 1997 financial crisis in Korea. A set of call and put implied volatilities are examined for evidence of expectations prior to October 23, 1997 of an impending financial crisis. It is shown that implied volatilities from out-of-the-money calls were relatively higher than those from otherwise identical puts during the period preceding October 23, 1997. Thereafter, however, put implied volatilities became extremely high relative to call implied volatilities. These results indicate no strong fears about the financial crisis during the three months immediately preceding the financial crisis, so KOSPI200 options prices indicate that options traders failed to detect the financial crisis prior to October 23, 1997.Korean financial crisis, options traders

Sovereign risk in a structural approach: Evaluating sovereign ability-to-pay and probability of default

We quantify the probability that a sovereign defaults on repayment obligations in foreign currency. Adopting the structural approach as first introduced by Merton, we consider the sovereigns ability-to-pay, characterised by the sum of discounted future payment surpluses, as the underlying process. Its implicit volatility is inferred from market spreads. We demonstrate for the case of Latin America and Russia that our approach indicates default events well in advance of agencies and markets. --Sovereign Risk,Probability of Default