Option Strategies: Good Deals and Margin Calls
We investigate the risk and return of a wide variety of trading strategies involving options on the S&P 500. We consider naked and covered positions, straddles, strangles, and calendar spreads, with different maturities and levels of moneyness. Overall, we ï¬nd that strategies involving short positions in options generally compensate the investor with very high Sharpe ratios, which are statistically signiï¬cant even after taking into account the non-normal distribution of returns. Furthermore, we ï¬nd that the strategies’ returns are substantially higher than warranted by asset pricing models. We also ï¬nd that the returns of the strategies could only be justiï¬ed by jump risk if the probability of market crashes were implausibly higher than it has been historically. We conclude that the returns of option strategies constitute a very good deal. However, exploiting this good deal is extremely diffcult. We ï¬nd that trading costs and margin requirements severely condition the implementation of option strategies. Margin calls force investors out of a trade precisely when it is losing money. Taking margin calls into account turns the Sharpe ratio of some of the best strategies negative.
Year of publication: |
2004-11-08
|
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Authors: | Santa-Clara, Pedro ; Saretto, Alessio |
Institutions: | Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) |
Saved in:
freely available
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