The Profitability of Volatility Trading on Exchange-traded Dollar-rupee Options: Evidence of a Volatility Risk Premium?

This article examines the profitability of short volatility strategies in the exchange-traded USDINR options market. Returns from delta-hedged short positions in straddles, strangles and individual call and put options are examined across different trading horizons and volatility regimes. The study finds that short volatility strategies yield significant mean and median returns regardless of the trading horizon and option moneyness before considering transaction costs. This is suggestive of a volatility risk premium priced in USDINR options. However, the returns are found to be insignificant and even negative after accounting for trading costs such as bid-ask spreads and brokerage. The study concludes that although USDINR options appear to be overpriced because of the volatility risk premium, short option strategies can be profitably exploited only by market makers and institutional investors facing low spreads and funding costs. The findings are suggestive of an informationally efficient market.

Properties of Indian stock market: Evidence using strap option strategy

This study aims to measure the volatility behavior and movement property of the Nifty Index through the strap option strategies by using the trigonometric ratio of options (tan [Formula: see text]). These strategies have been analyzed on the data from 2007 to 2020 on a monthly basis. Long and short strap strategies have been used in this analysis. In both strap option strategies, the angle [Formula: see text] lies more in the bearish volatility quadrant and the range-bound movement quadrant, which indicates that any trader on the Nifty can consistently apply the short strap option for profit generation trading in Nifty.

The cost disadvantage of steep slope viticulture and strategies for its preservation

The falling fallow of steep slope vineyards is caused by cost disadvantages that have not been analysed so far. This study quantified the production costs of different types of steep slopes, identified cost drivers within viticultural processes and assessed the impact of grape yield on the production cost for vertical shoot positioning (VSP) systems. It also examined under what conditions the reshaping of steep slope vineyards into transversal terraces (TTs) is economically viable. Costs were derived from a dataset of 2321 working time records for labour and machine hours from five German wine estates over three years. The costs for standard viticultural processes were compared across five site types with different mechanisation intensities by univariate analysis of variance with fixed and random effects. The net present value (NPV) of reshaping slopes into horizontal terraces was also assessed. Manual management of steep slopes was determined to be 2.6 times more costly than standard flat terrain viticulture. The cost disadvantage of steep slopes mainly stems from viticultural processes with limited mechanisability that require specialised equipment and many repetitions. Current subsidies fall short of covering the economic disadvantage of manual and rope-assisted steep slopes. Climate change-related drought and yield losses further increase the economic unsustainability of steep slopes. Under certain conditions, the transformation of manual steep slope sites into TTs can be a viable economic option. Strategies to reduce the cost disadvantage are outlined. The estimated cost benchmarks provide critical input for steep slope wine growers’ cost-based pricing policy. These benchmarks also give agricultural policy reliable indicators of the subsidies required for preserving steep slope landscapes and of the support needed to transform manual steep slope sites into TTs.

Price risk management in the wheat market using option strategies

Recently, the agricultural business is displayed a greater amount of risk because of price volatility growth. Consequently, it is necessary to have knowledge of how to regulate the risk of price fluctuations. This paper is concerned with the hedging techniques in the commodity market by the help of vanilla options. The main idea is to analyze option strategies with the ambition to demonstrate their utilization by hedging against increasing prices. Hedged buying price formulas are derived for every spot futures price. An additional contribution is considered for applying in the wheat trading. Chicago Mercantile Exchange products, i.e. wheat options on futures are investigated. The profitability of hedged scenarios is examined. A comparative analysis of the designed hedging variants is presented. Suggestions for potential wheat buyers are proposed.

The Impact of Implied Volatility Fluctuations on Vertical Spread Option Strategies: The Case of WTI Crude Oil Market

This paper aims to analyze the impact of implied volatility on the costs, break-even points (BEPs), and the final results of the vertical spread option strategies (vertical spreads). We considered two main groups of vertical spreads: with limited and unlimited profits. The strategy with limited profits was divided into net credit spread and net debit spread. The analysis takes into account West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil options listed on New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) from 17 November 2008 to 15 April 2020. Our findings suggest that the unlimited vertical spreads were executed with profits less frequently than the limited vertical spreads in each of the considered categories of implied volatility. Nonetheless, the advantage of unlimited strategies was observed for substantial oil price movements (above 10%) when the rates of return on these strategies were higher than for limited strategies. With small price movements (lower than 5%), the net credit spread strategies were by far the best choice and generated profits in the widest price ranges in each category of implied volatility. This study bridges the gap between option strategies trading, implied volatility and WTI crude oil market. The obtained results may be a source of information in hedging against oil price fluctuations.

Option Portfolio Selection with Generalized Entropic Portfolio Optimization

In this third and final paper of our series on the topic of portfolio optimization, we introduce a further generalized portfolio selection method called generalized entropic portfolio optimization (GEPO). GEPO extends discrete entropic portfolio optimization (DEPO) to include intervals of continuous returns, with direct application to a wide range of option strategies. This lays the groundwork for an adaptable optimization framework that can accommodate a wealth of option portfolios, including popular strategies such as covered calls, married puts, credit spreads, straddles, strangles, butterfly spreads, and even iron condors. These option strategies exhibit mixed returns: a combination of discrete and continuous returns with performance best measured by portfolio growth rate, making entropic portfolio optimization an ideal method for option portfolio selection. GEPO provides the mathematical tools to select efficient option portfolios based on their growth rate and relative entropy. We provide an example of GEPO applied to real market option portfolio selection and demonstrate how GEPO outperforms traditional Kelly criterion strategies.