The emotional cost-of-carry: Chinese investor sentiment and equity index futures basis

PurposeWhile the classic futures pricing tool works well for capital markets that are less affected by sentiment, it needs further modification in China's case as retail investors constitute a large portion of the Chinese stock market participants. Their expectations of the rate of return are prone to emotional swings. This paper, therefore, explores the role of investor sentiment in explaining futures basis changes via the channel of implied discount rates.Design/methodology/approachUsing Chinese equity market data from 2010 to 2019, the authors augment the cost-of-carry model for pricing stock index futures by incorporating the investor sentiment factor. This design allows us to estimate the basis in a better way that reflects the relationship between the underlying index price and its futures price.FindingsThe authors find strong evidence that the measure of Chinese investor sentiment drives the abnormal fluctuations in the basis of China's stock index futures. Moreover, this driving force turns out to be much less prominent for large-cap stocks, liquid contracting frequencies, regulatory loosening periods and mature markets, further verifying the sentiment argument for basis mispricing.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by relying on investor sentiment measures to explain the persistent discount anomaly of index futures basis in China. This finding is of great importance for Chinese investors with the intention to implement arbitrage, hedging and speculation strategies.

The Liquidity Spillover Effects Between the Stock Index Futures and Spot Under the Fractal Market Hypothesis

In recent years, the extreme risk events occurred frequently in the financial market have not only brought huge losses to investors and inflicted heavy losses on the market, but also posed a severe challenge for the traditional effective market hypothesis. These extreme risk events are often accompanied by sudden plummeting of liquidity. Different from the efficient market hypothesis(EMT), firstly, this paper studies the nonlinear fluctuation characteristics and causes of contracts with different maturity periods in China stock index futures market under the framework of fractal market theory and using the multifractal detrended fluctuation model Secondly, under the framework of the fractal market theory, the existence of the liquidity spillover effect between the stock index futures and spot is tested, the direction, intensity, and contribution of spillover between stock index futures and spot are analyzed. Finally, there is a robustness test. The study finds that both stock index futures and stock index spot in China have obvious nonlinear fractal fluctuation characteristics, and stock index futures have higher degree of multifractal, the characteristics are related to correlated multifractal and distributed multifractal; the longer the maturity period of the stock index futures contract, the lower the multifractal degree; there are significant asymmetric liquidity spillover effects between the stock index futures and spot; the multifractal degree has an important influence on the intensity and contribution of the liquidity spillover effect, and the multifractal degree is inversely proportional to the intensity of liquidity spillover and the contribution of spot to futures fluctuations.

Shock Transfer in Futures and Spot Markets: An Agent-Based Simulation Modelling Method

There have been heated debates about the role of stock index futures in the financial market, especially during the crash periods. In this paper, a multiagent spot-futures market model is developed to analyze the micromechanism of shock transfer across spot and futures markets. We assume that there are two stocks and one stock index futures contract in the spot-futures market. Agents are heterogeneous, including fundamentalists, chartists, noise traders, and arbitragers. The spot market and the futures market are linked by arbitragers. The simulation results show that our spot-futures market model can reproduce various important stylized facts, including the price co-movement between stock index prices and index futures prices and the fat-tailed distribution of the returns of risky assets and the basis. Further analysis shows that when we introduce an exogenous fundamental shock to one of the stocks, the backwardation phenomenon appears in the futures market and the shock is widespread across the whole market by means of index futures. Moreover, the backwardation gradually disappears when the number of arbitragers increases. Besides, when there are few arbitragers or when there are sufficient arbitragers, shocks cannot be transferred to other stocks via the futures market, while an intermediate level of arbitrage will amplify the shock transfer and hurt market stability. These findings underscore that arbitragers play an important role in spot-futures market interaction and shock transfer, and adequate arbitrage trading during crises may help eliminate the positive basis and halt the further spread of the crises.

Asymmetric Volatility Relevance in Risk Management: An Empirical Analysis using Stock Index Futures

The objective of this research work is to show the relevance of asymmetries in estimating volatility. The methodology consists in the application of ARCH-type models and implied volatilities of options (IV) to estimate Value-at-Risk (VaR). These for a portfolio of stock index futures for various time horizons. The empirical analysis is carried out for the futures contracts for the Standard and Poors 500 and Mexican Stock Exchange Indices. According to the results, the IV model is superior in terms of precision compared to the ARCH-type models. It is recommended to use the relevant statistical gains when asymmetries are included with respect to when asymmetries are not used. The referred gains range from 4 to 150 basis points of minimum capital risk requirements. The originality of the present work consists of showing the importance of considering the asymmetric effects with IV and ARCH-type models in volatility forecasts within risk management analysis. It is concluded that the methodology means gains in monetary terms.

The Relationship between Crude Oil Futures Market and Chinese/US Stock Index Futures Market Based on Breakpoint Test

Combined with the B-P (breakpoint) test and VAR–DCC–GARCH model, the relationship between WTI crude oil futures and S&P 500 index futures or CSI 300 index futures was investigated and compared. The results show that breakpoints exist in the relationship in the mean between WTI crude oil futures market and Chinese stock index futures market or US stock index futures market. The relationship in mean between WTI crude oil futures prices and S&P 500 stock index futures, or CSI 300 stock index futures is weakening. Meanwhile, there is a decreasing dynamic conditional correlation between the WTI crude oil futures market and Chinese stock index futures market or US stock index futures market after the breakpoint in the price series. The Chinese stock index futures are less affected by short-term fluctuations in crude oil futures returns than US stock index futures.

The Price Discovery Processes in China, India, and Russia’s Stock Index Futures Markets

In this paper, we examine the price discovery patterns in the three BRICS countries’ stock index futures markets which were launched after 2000 – China, India, and Russia. We find the futures market dominates the price discovery process in China and India, but less so in Russia. A closer examination reveals the dynamic nature of the price discovery process, and the significant impacts on futures’ price discovery functions from China’s regulatory changes in September 2015 and Russia’s economic sanctions in March 2014. The results also show a more balanced and bidirectional volatility spillover between futures and spots in China and India than in Russia.