Few papers provide research about options returns, and the few available are focused in the analysis from the perspective of the long side of the option contract, i.e. the buyer that pays the price and her expected and realized option return. The main point of our research work is to provide a...

Numerous studies have documented abnormal returns available to investors around index changes. S&P 500 index fund managers face competitive pressures to replicate the index as close as possible or risk the loss of investors to competing funds. As a result, these fund managers have incentive to...

We examine the option-implied volatility of the three most liquid ETFs (Diamonds, Spiders, and Cubes) and their respective tracking indices (Dow 30, S&P 500, and NASDAQ 100). We find that volatility smiles for ETF options are more pronounced than for index options, primarily because...

The controversy whether mutual fund shareholders should invest primarily in actively managed funds index funds continues. But, while there may be a small number of portfolio managers who provide evidence of persistency in high performance (assuming they meet the daunting statistical burden of...

Imagine, if you can, an index that requires dynamic reweighting of the portfolio, based on the continuously changing capitalization weights of the index's securities. You would need a computer generated trading system, obviously, and a patent to protect it. The authors now have both, having had...

For a considerable time, long-only index funds have been suspected of being responsible for price increases on agricultural futures markets, particularly those for grain. Utilizing partial equilibrium concepts, we analyze the market impacts of long-only index funds. Our analysis reveals that...