We propose a method to extract the risk-neutral distribution of firm-specific stock returns using both options and credit default swaps (CDS). Options and CDS provide information about the central part and the left tail of the distribution, respectively. Together but not in isolation, options...

Informed traders may prefer the options market to the stock market for reasons including the leverage effect, transaction costs, restrictions on short sale. Many studies try to predict future returns of stocks using informed traders' behavior in the options market. In this study, we examine...

This paper improves continuous-time variance swap approximation formulas to derive exact returns on benchmark VIX option portfolios. The new methodology preserves the variance swap interpretation that decomposes returns into realized variance and option implied-variance.We apply this new...

An option market maker incurs funding costs when carrying and hedging inventory. To hedge a net long delta inventory, for example, she pays a fee to borrow stock from the security lending market. Because of haircuts, she posts additional cash margin to the lender which needs to be financed at...

The study proposes an arbitrage-free methodology of VIX term structure modeling that is tailored to handle the most actively traded VIX options. Under the model, the evolution of future VIX is completely determined by the volatility function of forward VIX squared normalized by VIX futures...

The implied volatilities provided by OptionMetrics in the IvyDB database suggest substantial deviations from put-call parity that do not really exist. In S&P 500 options, artificial deviations occur because OptionMetrics uses non-synchronous index and option prices and an average implied...

The price of a European option can be computed as the expected value of the payoff function under the risk-neutral measure. For American options and path-dependent options in general, this principle cannot be applied. In this paper, we derive a model-free analytical formula for the implied...

We provide evidence of a strong effect of the underlying stock's illiquidity on option prices by showing that the average absolute difference between historical and implied volatility increases with stock illiquidity. This pattern translates into significant excess returns of option trading...

We study the real-time characteristics and drivers of jumps in option prices. To this end, we employ high frequency data from the 24-hour E-mini S&P 500 options market. We find that option prices do not jump simultaneously across strikes and maturities and are uncorrelated with jumps in the...

We investigate the effect of including variance derivatives as calibration and hedging instruments for pricing and hedging exotic structures. This is studied empirically using market data for SPX and VIX derivatives applied in a stochastic volatility jump diffusion model