Risk Management and Financial Derivatives: An Overview

Risk management is crucial for optimal portfolio management. One of the fastest growing areas in empirical finance is the expansion of financial derivatives. The purpose of this special issue on “Risk Management and Financial Derivatives” is to highlight some areas in which novel econometric, financial econometric and empirical finance methods have contributed significantly to the analysis of risk management, with an emphasis on financial derivatives, specifically conditional correlations and volatility spillovers between crude oil and stock index returns, pricing exotic options using the Wang transform, the rise and fall of S&P500 variance futures, predicting volatility using Markov switching multifractal model: evidence from S&P100 index and equity options, the performance of commodity trading advisors: a mean-variance-ratio test approach, forecasting volatility via stock return, range, trading volume and spillover effects: the case of Brazil, estimating and simulating Weibull models of risk or price durations: an application to ACD models, valuation of double trigger catastrophe options with counterparty risk, day of the week effect on the VIX - a parsimonious representation, equity and CDS sector indices: dynamic models and risk hedging, the probability of default in collateralized credit operations, risk premia in multi-national enterprises, solving replication problems in a complete market by orthogonal series expansion, downside risk management and VaR-based optimal portfolios for precious metals, oil and stocks, and implied Sharpe ratios of portfolios with options: application to Nikkei futures and listed options

Shock and volatility spillovers among equity sectors of the Gulf Arab stock markets

Upon examining own volatility dependency for the three major sectors, namely Service, Industrial and Banking, in four GCC economies (Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE), the empirical findings suggest that Banking seems to be the least sensitive among the sectors to past own volatility, while Industrial is the most volatile to the onset of past shocks or news. Sector volatility spillovers show that Saudi Arabia has the least inter-sector spillovers, while tiny Qatar has the most. Saudi Arabia seems to be the most sensitive to geopolitics, while Kuwait is the least affected. The constant conditional correlations between the three sectors for all four GCC markets echo different economic advantages and varying roles in the economy. We also provide two examples using the estimates of the GCC equity sector markets for portfolio designs and hedging strategies

Risk Spillovers in Oil-Related CDS, Stock and Credit Markets

This paper examines risk transmission and migration among six US measures of credit and market risk during the full period 2004-2011 period and the 2009-2011 recovery subperiod, with a focus on four sectors related to the highly volatile oil price. There are more long-run equilibrium risk relationships and short-run causal relationships among the four oil-related Credit Default Swaps (CDS) indexes, the (expected equity volatility) VIX index and the (swaption expected volatility) SMOVE index for the full period than for the recovery subperiod. The auto sector CDS spread is the most error-correcting in the long run and also leads in the risk discovery process in the short run. On the other hand, the CDS spread of the highly regulated, natural monopoly utility sector does not error correct. The four oil-related CDS spread indexes are responsive to VIX in the short- and long-run, while no index is sensitive to SMOVE which, in turn, unilaterally assembles risk migration from VIX. The 2007-2008 Great Recession seems to have led to “localization” and less migration of credit and market risk in the oil-related sectors

The Dynamics of Energy-Grain Prices with Open Interest

This paper examines the short- and long-run daily relationships for a grain-energy nexus that includes the prices of corn, crude oil, ethanol, gasoline, soybeans, and sugar, and their open interest. The empirical results demonstrate the presence of these relationships in this nexus, and underscore the importance of ethanol and soybeans in all these relationships. In particular, ethanol and be considered as a catalyst in this nexus because of its significance as a loading factor, a long-run error corrector and a short-run adjuster. Ethanol leads all commodities in the price discovery process in the long run. The negative cross-price open interest effects suggest that there is a money outflow from all commodities in response to increases in open interest positions in the corn futures markets, indicating that active arbitrage activity takes place in those markets. On the other hand, an increase in the soybean open interest contributes to fund inflows in the corn futures market and the other futures markets, leading to more speculative activities in these markets. In connection with open interest, the ethanol market fails because of its thin market. Finally, it is interesting to note that the long-run equilibrium (cointegrating relationship), speeds of adjustment and open interest across markets have strengthened significantly during the 2009-2011 economic recovery period, compared with the full and 2007-2009 Great Recession periods

Asymmetric Adjustment in the Ethanol and Grains Markets

This paper examines the long- and short-run asymmetric adjustments for nine pairs of spot and futures prices, itemized as three own pairs for three different bio-fuel ethanol types, three own pairs for three related agricultural products, namely corn, soybeans and sugar, and three cross pairs that included hybrids of the spot price of each of the agricultural products and an ethanol futures price. Most of the spreads’ asymmetric adjustments generally happen during narrowing. The three ethanol pairs that contain the eCBOT futures with each of Chicago spot, New York Harbor spot and Western European (Rotterdam) spot show different long-run adjustments, arbitrage profitable opportunities and price risk hedging capabilities. The asymmetric spread adjustments for the three grains are also different, with corn spread showing the strongest long-run widening adjustment, and sugar showing the weakest narrowing adjustment. Among others, the empirical analysis indicates the importance of potentially hedging the spot prices of agricultural commodities with ethanol futures contracts, which sends an important message that the ethanol futures market is capable of hedging price risk in agricultural commodity markets. The short-run asymmetric adjustments for individual prices in the nine pairs (with exception of the corn own pair underscore the importance of futures prices in the price discovery and hedging potential, particularly for ethanol futures