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Summary
Testing Lower Boundary Conditions
for Index Options Using Futures
Prices: Evidences from the Indian
Options Market
Alok Dixit, Surendra S Yadav and P K Jain
KEY WORDS Arbitrage Profits Ex-post Analysis Market Efficiency
Options Market
Options are the contracts which serve as a tool for risk hedging, price discovery, and better allocation of capital. The efficiency of an options market, i.e., the correctness of option prices denotes that it is working well at its well-identified functions (Ackert and Tian, 2000). In view of this, the efficiency of options market has been of equal interest to the academics as well as practitioners and a number of studies on efficiency of options market have been carried out across the globe in different options markets. The present paper attempts to assess the pricing efficiency of the S&P CNX Nifty index options in India by testing the Lower Boundary Conditions (LBCs) using futures prices instead of spot values. The methodology adopted essentially tests a joint market effi-ciency hypothesis of index options and index futures. This has been done in view of the fact that the use of futures markets helps in doing away with the short-selling constraint as futures can easily be shorted. And, it becomes a natural choice for analy-sis as the short-selling has been banned in the Indian securities market during the period under reference. Moreover, the use of futures markets, to a marked extent, helps in ensuring the exploitability of arbitrage opportunities when underlying asset is an index.
The study covers a period of six years from June 4, 2001 (starting date for index options in India) to June 30, 2007. The major findings of the study are:
• The put options market is more efficient than the call options market, given the existing market microstructure in India during the period under reference. • Another equally important finding is that the put options market showed an
im-provement in the pricing efficiency over the years whereas the call options market demonstrated a counterintuitive and adverse development.
• However, the profit potential offered by highly traded opportunities both in the cases of call and put options seems to be unexploitable in the presence of transac-tion costs.
• Moreover, the dearth of liquidity in the case of otherwise exploitable opportunities which carry higher profit potentials has been the main inhibiting factor to arbitrageurs.
Therefore, in short, it is reasonable to conclude that majority of violations in call as well as put options could not be exploited on account of the existing market-micro-structure in India during the period under reference (especially short-selling con-straint that caused underpricing in futures to persist) and the dearth of liquidity in the options market. In other words, the revealed state of options pricing can be designated to the short-selling constraints and dearth of liquidity.
T
he options markets play a central role in an economy in view of the fact that they enhance better allocation of capital in securities market by virtue of their functions, namely, risk hedging and price discovery. In today’s parlance where the demand for the structured financial products (which require excessive use of options contracts) is booming in India, the role of such markets has acquired greater significance. The ‘open interests’ in the options segment of the Indian derivatives market has even surpassed that of the futures market for the last few months since April, 2008. This development has put the Indian derivatives market at an equal footing with the other international (developed) markets where the options are preferred to futures. There could be two major reasons for such a development. Firstly, increase in the portfolio management services (PMS) which provide structured financial products (using options market) to high profile investors. Secondly, there has taken place an increase in the variety of the products (in terms of matu-rity period) on account of the introduction of long-dated options on March 03, 2008. These options enable an in-vestor to take a position up to five years.Considering the increasing importance of the options market in India, it is desired that the market should carry out its required functions in the best possible way. For the purpose, it is imperative that the market should be effi-cient. The reason is that well-functioning options mar-kets are vital to a thriving economy as these marmar-kets facilitate price discovery, risk hedging, and allocation of capital to its most productive uses. Inefficiency of a finan-cial market (e.g., options market in this paper) indicates that it is not performing the best possible job at the above-mentioned important functions (Ackert and Tian, 2000). The present paper attempts to assess the pricing efficiency of the index options in India using the futures contracts on the same underlying asset, i.e., S&P CNX Nifty index. The use of futures markets helps, to a marked extent, in ensuring the exploitability of arbitrage opportunities when the underlying asset is an index. Moreover, the use of futures markets helps in doing away with the short-selling constraint as a futures can easily be shorted. No-tably, the use of futures prices on the same underlying asset instead of spot prices essentially makes this ap-proach a test of joint market efficiency, as opined by Fung, Cheng and Chan (1997). At the same time, the use of fu-tures prices facilitates in assessing the degree of integra-tion or pricing interrelaintegra-tionships between the different
derivative instruments being traded in the market (Lee and Nayar, 1993). In other words, this approach helps in addressing the question whether market participants con-sider important pricing interrelationships while pricing the index options. The scope of the present study is confined to the pricing interrelationship between index options and index futures.
The use of futures prices, however, puts one restriction on the otherwise model-free approach, i.e., it assumes cost-of-carry model to hold. Therefore, this approach cannot be designated as ‘model-free’ unlike the test of the bound-ary condition using spot prices. However, the approach still remains less restrictive compared to those based on certain pricing models, e.g., those based on Black-Scholes model (1973) which assumes that the stock price and vola-tility are governed by some stochastic processes. The violations or mispricing signals observed from the test procedures have been classified as per ‘liquidity with three specified levels’ and ‘maturity with four specified levels’. Also, the violations so classified as per the specified lev-els of maturity have further been sub-classified as per the three specified levels of liquidity. The classification fa-cilitates a meaningful explanation to the exploitability of such violations and, therefore, is very crucial in assess-ing the efficiency of the market. This has been done in view of the fact that mere presence of violations does not indicate market inefficiency; it is the unexploitability and persistence of such violations which pose serious con-cerns/threats to the market efficiency.
Moreover, the learning behaviour of the investors in op-tions markets has also been examined. This has been done by analysing the number of violations vis-à-vis the num-ber of observations analysed over the years under refer-ence for both the call and put options. The learning hypothesis, which requires that the number of violations should go down over the years, has been proposed to gauge the developments related to the efficiency of the market. The analysis of violations over the years under reference is in line with Mittnik and Rieken (2000), a study done in German stock index options market.
The findings of this research paper might be useful to brokerage houses, institutional investors --domestic as well as foreign, the National Stock Exchange (NSE), and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI); these findings are likely to be equally significant to the aca-demics.
THE BOUNDARY CONDITION
This section discusses lower boundary conditions using futures prices. The lower boundary conditions, first pro-posed by Merton (1973) and further extended by Galai (1978), play a crucial role in assessing the options market efficiency. A number of research studies have been car-ried out in different options markets using the lower boundary conditions to assess the efficiency of the mar-kets including the first one by Galai (1978). The other studies which tried to diagnose the options market effi-ciency based on the violation of lower boundary condi-tions include Bhattacharya (1983), Halpern and Turnbull (1985), Shastri and Tandon (1985), Chance (1988), Puttonen (1993a), Berg, Brevik and Saettem (1996), Ackert and Tian (2001), Mittnik and Rieken (2000), Dixit, Yadav and Jain (2009).
The lower boundary conditions of option prices denote the minimum price of an options contract at a given point of time during the life of an options contract. The viola-tion of the condiviola-tion indicates arbitrage opportunities. Therefore, the price for an options contract should neces-sarily be equal to or higher than that suggested by the lower boundary conditions. In order to ensure the correct pricing in an options market, this is a necessary condi-tion which needs to be satisfied to uphold the well-known no-arbitrage argument of options pricing. In literature, the lower boundary conditions have been defined for the European options as well as American options. In this paper, as we are analysing the S&P CNX Nifty Index op-tions which are European (that can be exercised only at maturity) in nature; the condition defined for European options constitutes the basis of the study.
The method applied to test the efficiency of the options market is in line with other studies conducted in different markets for the same purpose with only one difference, i.e., use of the futures prices of the same underlying asset instead of its spot prices. The test of Lower Boundary Conditions using futures prices is in line with Puttonen (1993a), a study done in the Finnish index options mar-ket. Moreover, the test of options market efficiency using futures prices (on the same underlying asset) is in line with Lee and Nayar (1993), Fung and Chan (1994), Fung, Cheng and Chan (1997), Fung and Fung (1997), Fung and Mok (2001), etc., with the only difference that the condition tested in the paper is the lower boundary con-ditions for the option prices whereas all the above
stud-ies focus on the put-call-futures parity condition. The lower boundary conditions using corresponding fu-tures prices (with the same maturity date) are given in the equations (1) and (2) for the call and put options respec-tively. These conditions are expected to hold in an effi-cient options market. Though the transaction costs have not been incorporated in the equations (1) and (2), the results have been interpreted considering the estimate of transaction costs discussed in the data section.
(1) (2) In the above equations,
Ct = market price of a call option at time t, Pt = market price of a put option at time t,
Ft = value of the S&P CNX Nifty futures (with same expiration date as of the options under consider-ation) at time t,
K = strike price of the options contract,
T = expiration time of the options contract at the time when it was floated,
r = continuously compounded annual risk-free rate of return,
(T-t) = time to maturity of the options contract at time t (measured in years).
The dividends expected from the underlying asset dur-ing the life of the option have been ignored since the un-derlying asset used in the test is futures prices/value of the index instead of the spot prices/value. This has been done in view of the fact that the futures prices (in an effi-cient market) are expected to have impounded the effect of dividends on the prices of the underlying asset. In short, the use of futures prices essentially tests the joint hypothesis of the market efficiency of futures as well as options contracts in India.
Testable Form of the Lower Boundary Conditions
The equations (1) and (2) have been rearranged in order to make them testable to gauge the efficiency of the op-tions market. The testable form, to gauge the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) using lower boundary condi-tions, is given in the equations (3) and (4) for call and put options respectively.
(3) (4) In the above equations, and denote the absolute amount of abnormal profits (ex-post) or mispricing sig-nals from call and put options respectively, if the viola-tion of lower boundary condiviola-tion occurs. A violaviola-tion of the lower boundary condition is recorded if >0 and >0 for call and put options respectively. Though the presence of such profits is only indicative of market inef-ficiency, it should not be treated as a conclusive remark on the efficiency of the market.
The equations (3) and (4) have been specified assuming no transaction costs and zero or negligible bid-ask spread. It may be noted that there is always a chance that the arbitrage opportunities suggested by these equations may disappear in the presence of transaction costs and the bid-ask spread. Therefore, the violations have been inter-preted considering the transaction costs and bid-ask spreads. In this regard, an attempt has been made to esti-mate the transaction costs. The details are summarized in the data section. On the contrary, given the fact that the bid-ask spread for options is not included in the transac-tion database provided by NSE and the difficulty to esti-mate such costs, it has been excluded in the above equations. In operational terms, our study is in line with that of Halpern and Turnbull (1985).
In addition to this, commenting upon the exploitability of observed mispricing signals, Trippi (1977), and Chiras and Manaster (1978) concluded that the signals so ob-served were exploitable using a specified trading strat-egy to ensure ex-ante exploitation of such profit opportunities. However, in the present study, no strategy has been specified to ensure ex-ante exploitability of ab-normal profits suggested by mispricing signals as the test procedure applied is ex-post in nature.
Normalization of Abnormal Profits
In order to facilitate comparison across different levels of liquidity, maturity, and time-period (years) under refer-ence, the amount of absolute abnormal profits has been normalized to the ‘strike price plus premium’. That is, in the case of call options and for put options. The normalization criterion is in line with Nilsson (2008) since it has used strike price as a normal-ization parameter. Also, the normalnormal-ization procedure is
similar to the one used by Kamara and Miller Jr. (1995) since their results are more or less identical with those documented by Nilsson (2008) in this regard using strike prices as a normalization criterion. In the present study, the ‘strike price plus premium’ has been used as a normal-ization criterion as it forms the basis of charging broker-age (which is a major constituent of the transaction costs in the Indian derivatives market). Therefore, this proce-dure facilitates a direct comparison of the violations (in percentage terms) vis-à-vis transaction costs and, thus, helps in assessing the exploitability of the mispricing sig-nals in the presence of transaction costs.
DATA
Options, Futures and Interest Rates
The data considered for the analysis can be broadly clas-sified into three categories, namely, (i) data related to S&P CNX Nifty index options contracts, (ii) data related to the futures contracts, i.e., the S&P CNX Nifty index futures and (iii) data on the risk-free rate of return. The data on the options consist of daily closing prices of options, strike prices, deal dates, maturity dates, and number of con-tracts traded of call and put options respectively. In order to minimize the bias associated with nonsynchronous trad-ing1, only liquid option quotations2 are being considered for the analysis. The second data set is regarding the fu-tures contracts. It includes daily closing prices of S&P CNX Nifty index futures, deal dates, maturity dates and number of contracts traded. The third data set consists of monthly average yield on 91-days Treasury-bills. The yield on T-bills has been converted into continuously com-pounded annual rate of return using the relationship given in equation 5.
(5) Where, r = Proxy for continuously compounded annual risk-free rate of return, r = Average annual yield on 91-days T-bill of the maturity corresponding to the maturity
1 Nonsynchronous trading refers to the phenomenon of different
timings of closing transactions in the two markets (i.e., the options market and the underlying’s market in this case).
2 In the study, the liquid options quotations have been defined as
those quotations which have at least one contract traded. Though the definition of liquid contracts is not useful in ensuring exploitability of arbitrage opportunities on account of the high bid-ask spread for such options, this has been done in order to gauge the total number of violations in Indian options market. Moreover, while ensuring the exploitability of the arbitrage opportunities, due consideration has been given to the liquidity.
date of the options contract.
Notably, the data on index futures has been matched with the corresponding options contracts on the basis of two criteria, viz., (a) deal date and (b) the expiration date of the options contract.
The data for all the three mentioned categories have been collected from June 4, 2001 (starting date for index op-tions in Indian securities market) to June 30, 2007. The first and second data sets have been collected from the website of NSE and the third category of data set has been collected from the website of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Transaction Costs
Transaction costs typically include brokerage charged by the brokerage houses/trading members of the exchanges, service tax on the brokerage, stamp duty, opportunity cost of the margin deposits required in the case of futures con-tracts and short options positions, etc. In the Indian capi-tal market, another charge, namely, Securities Transactions Tax (STT) was introduced and implemented with effect from October 1, 2004. Notably, such charges were to be levied only on the sell side of the transactions in the derivatives market unlike the equity market trans-actions where STT was proposed to be levied on both legs of the transactions. In short, the transaction costs being considered in the study typically include brokerage, ser-vice tax on the brokerage, and STT (October 1, 2004 on-wards).
Since the transaction costs constitute a major constraint to arbitrage (Ofek, Richardson and Whitelaw, 2004), an attempt has been made to have an estimate of such costs in Indian derivatives market. For the purpose, interviews were conducted with the senior employees of brokerage houses based at Delhi, India. This has been done in view of the fact that the trading member organizations (broker-age houses) are the best source of information in this re-gard as they themselves deal in the market and facilitate trading in F&O as well as cash market for different types of investors. Therefore, it would be reasonable to use the feedback of trading member organizations in this regard. Moreover, it may be noted that some of the studies on F&O segment (e.g., Vipul, 2008, a study in the Indian context) have estimated the transaction costs on the same lines. Based on the responses from the trading member firms, a consensus was arrived at an estimate of brokerage, viz.,
0.05 per cent (including service taxes) of ‘(strike price +
premium)*lot size’ for options contracts and ‘Futures price at the time of the transaction*lot size’ for futures
con-tracts in the case of retail investors throughout the period under reference. However, such costs may go down up to 0.03 per cent (including service taxes) for the institutional investors. Notably, the brokerage houses bear the least cost of trading amongst all types of investors/players in the market as they are not required to pay any brokerage. However, it would be reasonable to consider the oppor-tunity cost for the brokerage house and a logical estimate could be the cost incurred by the institutional investors, i.e., 0.03 per cent as pointed out by Vipul (2008).
Moreover, the STT charge of 0.01 per cent (on the sales side of the transactions in derivatives market) has also been considered while interpreting the results over the years. Since the STT was introduced in October 1, 2004, it has been considered as part of the transaction costs for the arbitrage opportunities which occurred after October 2004, i.e., in years 2004-05, 2005-06, and 2006-07 in the present study. Therefore, for the analysis purpose, the major constituents of the transaction costs have been the brokerage and the service tax on it before October 1, 2004 and it additionally includes STT on the sales side of the transactions thereafter. The definition of the transaction costs has been confined to the brokerage and STT (wher-ever applicable) as these constitute, in general, more than 90 per cent of the transaction costs (excluding bid-ask spread). Though the analysis has been conducted ignor-ing the bid-ask spread and opportunity cost of the mar-gin deposits, these have been given due consideration while ensuring the exploitability of mispricing signal. This has been done in view of the fact that bid-ask spread, in particular, plays a very important role in assessing the options market efficiency, as opined by Baesel, Shows and Thorpe (1983) and Phillips and Smith (1980). Before adding the transaction costs of options and fu-tures contracts in order to arrive at the transaction costs for the arbitrage strategy, it becomes necessary to calcu-late them on the same basis, i.e., (K+C) for call options and (K+P) for put options. This is required in view of the fact that the mispricing signals have been normalized to these criteria. And, therefore, it would facilitate a fair and direct comparison of mispricing signals and transaction costs. Since the transaction costs in the case of options are based on ‘(strike price + premium)’ and ‘futures price’ forms the basis for the transaction costs in the case of
futures contracts, the transactions costs of futures con-tracts has to be seen in relation to the ‘(strike price + pre-mium)’ to ensure the uniformity of basis for transaction costs and normalization of violations. In this regard, the transaction costs on the futures prices (0.05*Futures price) have been normalized to ‘strike price+ premium’. Empiri-cally, it was found that the amount of transaction cost on futures when normalized to ‘strike price+ premium’ re-mained intact at the level of 0.05 and 0.03 per cent on an average in the case of call options for the retail and insti-tutional investors/trading members respectively; it turned out to be 0.043 and 0.026 per cent in the case of put op-tions. Therefore, the transaction costs of futures (which should be added to that of options’ in order to arrive at the total transaction costs) are 0.05 per cent and 0.043 per cent in the cases of call and put options respectively for retail investors; such costs are 0.03 per cent and 0.026 per cent for institutional investors/trading member organi-zations.
The transaction costs applicable in the case of a short hedged position, needed to exploit the mispricing indicated by a call option, was estimated at 0.10 per cent before October, 2004 and 0.11 per cent thereafter. In this case, the arbitrageur needs to buy the call option and sell a futures on the same underlying asset. In short, the trans-action cost considered in the paper is 0.10 (0.05+0.05) per cent prior to October 1, 2004 and 0.11(including STT of 0.01 per cent) thereafter for the retail investors. Likewise, in the case of a put option, there is a need to create a long-hedged position, i.e., to buy the underpriced put option and take a long position in the futures contract on the same underlying asset. In this case, the applicable trans-action costs would be 0.093 (0.05+0.043) for the whole period under reference and no STT needs to be included as it is levied on the sales side of a transaction. However, for the trading member firms and institutional investors, it would be 0.06 per cent before October 1, 2004 and 0.07 (including STT of 0.01 per cent) thereafter for call options, and 0.056 (0.03+0.026) per cent for put options through-out the period under reference.
ANALYSIS AND EMPIRICAL RESULTS Magnitude of the Violations
In order to have better insights about the behaviour of the mispricing signals obtained from the lower boundary conditions, the violations have been examined with re-spect to liquidity and maturity. In addition to this, both
the parameters have further been classified into specified levels. Liquidity of the options has been decomposed into three levels based on the trading volume, namely, (i) thinly traded, options which have 1 to 100 contracts traded per day; (ii) moderately traded, options which have 101 to 500 contracts traded per day; and (iii) highly traded, op-tions which have more than 500 contracts traded per day. Likewise, maturity of the options has been classified into four levels, namely, (i) ‘0-7’ days to maturity; (ii) ‘8-30’ days to maturity; (iii) ‘31-60’ days to maturity; and (iv) ‘61-90’ days to maturity.
Also, the violations so classified as per the specified lev-els of maturity have further been sub-classified as per the three specified levels of liquidity in view of the fact that liquidity constitutes the basis for exploitation of arbitrage opportunities. The proposed classifications and their sub-classifications enable us to draw some meaningful infer-ences about the exploitability of the observed mispricing signals which, in turn, help to assess the role of the exist-ing market-microstructure in facilitatexist-ing market efficiency in the Indian derivative market. The results related to vio-lations, classified as per the specified levels of liquidity and maturity along with their sub-classifications, are summarized in Tables 1 and 2 respectively.
Notably, the results across the specified levels of liquid-ity have direct implications for the exploitabilliquid-ity of the observed mispricing signals as the higher the liquidity is, the lower would be the trading cost and bid-ask spread. Also, the higher liquidity ensures execution of the trad-ing strategy required to tap such abnormal profit poten-tials. In contrast, the different specified levels of maturity have an indirect impact since these primarily influence the liquidity and, hence, the exploitability of such viola-tions. And, therefore, the behaviour of violations with re-spect to maturity has been interpreted in light of the liquidity levels corresponding to their specified levels. The results summarized in Table 1 denote that the num-ber of violations observed are 3,593 out of the total obser-vations of 40,298 in the case of call options that amounts to 8.92 per cent of the total number of observations analysed. Likewise, 1,815 violations are found out of 35,171 observations for put options that accounts for 5.16 per cent of the total number of observations examined. In addition to this, the results regarding the different levels of liquidity, summarized in Table 1, clearly indicate that the mean percentage of the normalized violations
(mag-nitude) decreases as the liquidity increases. The majority of the violations in this category, i.e., about 96 per cent of the violations both in the case of call and put options, are confined to the thinly and moderately traded options which can be designated as unexploitable because of (i) higher bid-ask spread and (ii) difficulty in implementa-tion of the strategy. Also, for the highly liquid contracts (which are approximately 4 per cent of the total viola-tions both in the case of call and put opviola-tions) where the possibility of exploitability is quite high as the bid-ask spread is expected to be considerably low, the means of abnormal profits are merely 0.08 and 0.13 per cent for call and put options respectively. In general, such meagre exploitable profit opportunities are clearly not attractive propositions for the retail arbitrageurs as the brokerage and securities transaction tax (STT) for exploiting such opportunities amounts to 0.10 and 0.093 per cent for call and put options respectively.
However, such opportunities might be exploitable on the part of the institutional investors and the trading mem-ber organizations (brokerage firms) as these firms enjoy relatively lower transaction costs of 0.06 and 0.056 per cent in the cases of call and put options respectively. Moreover, amongst the violations relating to highly liq-uid contracts, only 25 per cent observations, i.e., the third quartile (as reported in the Table 1) seem to be exploitable as the profit for such violations is higher than 0.09 and 0.16 per cent for call and put options respectively. The remaining 75 per cent observations amongst highly liq-uid category yield the returns that are fairly below the exploitable level in the presence of transaction costs. Therefore, only 1 per cent (25 % of 4 %) of the violations
for the call as well as put options seems to be exploitable by institutional investors and trading member organiza-tions after factoring transaction costs.
Besides, an attempt has been made to analyse the behaviour of liquidity (number of contracts traded) in S&P CNX Nifty index futures contracts vis-à-vis maturity over the period of analysis. This has been done in view of the fact that the liquidity of futures plays an important role in assessing the exploitability of mispricing signals identi-fied using futures prices. To gauge the behaviour of li-quidity across the different levels of maturity, the total and average number of contracts traded have been classi-fied as per the three levels of maturity in the Indian de-rivatives market, namely, near-the-month contracts (NTM) having ‘0-30’ days to maturity; next-the-month (NXTM) having ‘31-60’ days to maturity, and far-the-month (FTM) having ‘61-90’ days to maturity. The results in this re-gard are depicted in Figures 1 and 2.
Table 1: Liquidity-wise Magnitude of Violations of Lower Boundary Conditions for Call and Put Options in Indian Securities Market (June 2001-07)
Liquidity Call Options Put Options
Number of Magnitude of Violations Number of Magnitude of Violations
Violations (in Percentage) Violations (in Percentage)
Mean SD Q1 Q2 Q3 Mean SD Q1 Q2 Q3
Thinly traded 3,066 (85.3) 0.93 2.10 0.10 0.30 0.79 1,557 (85.8) 0.85 1.62 0.10 0.34 0.88 Moderately traded 372 (10.4) 0.19 0.31 0.04 0.09 0.20 182 (10.0) 0.38 0.90 0.04 0.11 0.31
Highly traded 155 (4.3) 0.08 0.13 0.01 0.04 0.09 76 (4.2) 0.13 0.22 0.03 0.05 0.16
Total 3,593 0.84 1.96 0.08 0.24 0.67 1,815 0.78 1.54 0.09 0.28 0.79
Total number of observations analysed 40,298 35,171
Percentage of violations observed 8.92 % 5.16 %
Note: 1. Figures in parentheses indicate percentage.
2. In the table, SD, Q1, Q2 and Q3 denote standard deviation, first quartile, second quartile (i.e., median) and third quartile respectively.
Figure 1: Total Number of Contracts Traded
Classified as per the Three Levels of Maturity Maturity-wise Liquidity of S&P CNX Nifty Futures in India,
June 2001-07 NXTM 9.43% FTM 0.22% NTM 90.34%
The results clearly indicate that the liquidity of futures is confined to the NTM contracts as 90.34 per cent of the total number of contracts traded (along with the highest average) belong to this category. Therefore, the NTM fu-tures contracts can be designated as the most traded con-tracts and are expected to have negligible bid-ask spread compared to NXTM and FTM.
In another significant observation, the frequency of viola-tions across different levels of maturity signifies a decreas-ing trend with an increase in the time to maturity. As reported in Table 2, majority of the mispricing signals are confined to the options having ‘0-7’ and ‘8-30’ days to maturity, approximately 94 per cent in call options and 90 per cent in put options. However, for the next two lev-els, i.e., ‘31-60’ and ‘61-90’ days to maturity, the com-bined percentage is merely 5.9 per cent and 9.8 per cent for call and put options respectively. The concentration of the violations in the ‘0-30’ days to maturity category and especially in ‘0-7’ days to maturity is quite similar to that reported by Bhattacharya (1983) for the US market where 42 per cent of the total violations had one week or less to maturity.
The concentration of violations in ‘0-7’ days to maturity category can be attributed to the fact that most of the arbitrageurs, in general, try to unwind their arbitrage positions when the options are nearing maturity. On ac-count of this, the liquidity in such options is expected to be very thin as there are only a few or no buyers. This, in turn, causes the transaction costs especially the bid-ask Figure 2: Average Number of Contracts Traded
Classified as per the Three Levels of Maturity Maturity-wise Average Liquidity of S&P CNX Nifty Futures in
India, June 2001-07
Average Liquidity
Maturity Levels
Table 2: Magnitude of Violations of Lower Boundary Conditions in Indian Options Market as per ‘the Specified Levels of Time-to-Maturity and their Sub-classification as per the Specified Levels of Liquidity’ for Call and Put Options (June 2001-07)
Days to Liquidity Call Options Put Options
Maturity No. of Magnitude of Violations No. of Magnitude of Violations
Violations (in Percentage) Violations (in Percentage)
Mean SD Q1 Q2 Q3 Mean SD Q1 Q2 Q3
‘0-7’ Days Thinly traded 1,327(77.29) 0.92 2.17 0.10 0.28 0.76 744(82.21) 0.70 1.32 0.09 0.24 0.70 Moderately traded 249(14.50) 0.15 0.23 0.03 0.08 0.17 101(11.16) 0.35 1.08 0.03 0.08 0.21 Highly traded 141(8.21) 0.08 0.14 0.01 0.04 0.09 60(6.63) 0.09 0.12 0.03 0.05 0.11
Overall 1,717 0.74 1.94 0.07 0.18 0.58 905 0.62 1.26 0.07 0.19 0.63
‘8-30’ Days Thinly traded 1,536(92.20) 0.88 1.86 0.11 0.31 0.80 647(88.51) 0.99 1.93 0.11 0.41 1.03 Moderately traded 117(7.02) 0.23 0.30 0.05 0.15 0.26 68(9.30) 0.36 0.60 0.05 0.16 0.42 Highly traded 13(0.78) 0.08 0.10 0.01 0.05 0.10 16(2.19) 0.27 0.40 0.03 0.13 0.34
Overall 1,666 0.83 1.80 0.10 0.28 0.74 731 0.92 1.84 0.10 0.36 0.95
‘31-60’ Days Thinly traded 186(96.37) 1.14 3.18 0.13 0.34 0.89 149 (93.12) 0.91 1.38 0.19 0.46 0.85 Moderately traded 6(3.11) 0.74 0.60 0.04 0.09 0.48 11(6.88) 0.56 0.50 0.18 0.43 0.77
Highly traded 1(0.52) NA NA NA NA 0(0.00) NA NA NA NA NA
Overall 193 1.39 3.14 0.12 0.34 0.81 160 0.89 1.34 0.19 0.45 0.88
‘61-90’ Days Thinly traded 17(100) 1.67 1.81 0.31 0.55 3.36 17 (89.47) 1.89 2.00 0.53 1.05 2.50 Moderately traded 0 (0.00) NA NA NA NA NA 2 (10.53) 1.62 0.74 1.10 1.62 2.14
Highly traded 0(0.00) NA NA NA NA NA 0(0.00) NA NA NA NA NA
Overall 17 1.67 1.81 0.31 0.55 3.36 19 1.86 1.90 0.61 1.10 2.43
Note: 1. Figures in parentheses indicate percentage.
spread to be considerably high. Therefore, lack of liquid-ity and less time to maturliquid-ity might be cited as the major reasons why such observed mispricing signal remained unexploited.
In addition to this, the reason why such options remained unexploited becomes clearer when they are seen in light of their corresponding levels of liquidity as reported in Table 2. The results indicate that only 8.21 per cent and 6.63 per cent of the total violations in ‘0-7’ days to matu-rity category for call and put options respectively belong to the highly traded category which is apparently exploit-able. However, their magnitude, i.e., the mean percentage turned out to be 0.08 per cent and 0.09 per cent respec-tively; even this insignificant number virtually ceases to be profitable when the transaction costs are considered for the retail investors. Moreover, from the viewpoint of institutional investors/trading member organizations, one-fourth of such opportunities seem to be profitable as the third quartile turns out 0.09 per cent and 0.11 per cent for call and put options respectively. And, obviously, less than 25 per cent of such opportunities would be profit-able for retail investors. Precisely, 2 per cent (25 % of 8.21 %) and 1.6 per cent (25 % of 6.63 %) of the total observa-tions having ‘0-7’ days to maturity seem to be exploitable in call and put options respectively. And, the remaining violations in ‘0-7’ days to maturity category (pertaining to the relatively illiquid category) amount to 91.79 per cent and 93.37 per cent in the cases of call and put op-tions respectively. A plausible explanation for the exist-ence of such options, despite the higher magnitude of profit they offer, could be the higher bid-ask spread. Notably, the behaviour of violations pertaining to the ‘8-30’ days to maturity category is quite similar to that of ‘0-7’ days to maturity category as the violations belonging to the highly liquid category are only 0.81 per cent in the case of call options and 2.19 per cent in the cases of put options of the total violations registered in this category. Equally revealing observation is that the majority of the violations belong to the relatively lower levels of liquid-ity, i.e., approximately 99 per cent and 98 per cent in the cases of call and put options respectively. Empirically, for the call options, the violations belonging to the highly liquid contracts in this category clearly seem to be unexploitable in the presence of transaction costs. In con-trast, the violations in the case of put options, per-se, seem to be exploitable as the average magnitude of violations is 0.27 per cent. However, the number of exploitable
vio-lation further goes down as only the third quartile pos-sesses profitable opportunities in the presence of trans-action costs. In short, the percentage of such exploitable violations in put options becomes considerably low, i.e., 0.55 per cent (25 % of 2.19 %).
In addition to the above, the last two levels of time to maturity, i.e., ‘31-60’ and ‘61-90’ days to maturity clearly depict a lack of the highly liquid contracts for call as well as put options. It may be noted that the majority of viola-tions for both categories pertain to the thinly traded cat-egory, viz., 96.37 per cent and 100 per cent in the cases of call options; 93.12 per cent and 89.47 per cent for put options. Also, the mean percentages of magnitude of these levels of maturity are significantly high compared to the first two levels and, prima-facie, seem to be exploitable. But the exploitability of such abnormal profit opportuni-ties is questionable in view of the lack of liquidity in such options in the Indian options market. The unexploitability of such violations is reinforced by the fact that liquidity for the futures contracts having ’31-60’ and ’61-90’ days to maturity is relatively very low (Figure 1) which causes bid-ask spread for futures contracts to be high. Further Figure 2 depicts that the average number of contracts for such futures contracts are 13,138 and 310 vis-à-vis 1,14,494 contracts in futures having ‘0-30’ days to maturity. In short, as far as the exploitability of the observed mispricing signals is concerned, the results regarding maturity are in line with those in the case of liquidity as the majority of violations pertain to the relatively illiquid categories for all the four levels of maturity for call as well as put options.
Statistical Significance of the Differences in the Magnitude of Violations
In view of the above findings, it can be observed that there seems to be a difference in the mean percentages of the magnitudes of violations among the specified levels of liquidity and maturity for call as well as put options. And, to validate the finding statistically, a well-known statisti-cal test — Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) — was pro-posed initially. However, before applying the test statistics on the data, the main assumption of ANOVA, i.e., the samples have been drawn from a normally distributed population, has been validated using the one-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistics. The results are summa-rized in Table 3.
Since the results depict severe departure from the nor-mality (revealed by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) statis-tics), ANOVA cannot be applied as it requires data to follow the normal distribution. Therefore, the differences have been analysed using a non-parametric statistics which does not require the data to follow any specified distribution. The test statistics applied in the present study is Kruskal-Wallis (H-statistics) test which is a non-para-metric substitute for the one-way ANOVA. In addition to this, Dunn’s multiple comparison test has been used for post-hoc analysis of all possible pairs in the analysis. The results of H statistics and Dunn’s test for the differ-ences across the specified levels of liquidity and maturity are summarized in Tables 4 (a) and (b), 5 (a) and (b) re-spectively.
The significance values given in Tables 4 (a) and 5 (a) clearly indicate that the differences among the specified levels of liquidity as well as maturity are significant even at 1 per cent level of significance for both call and put options. Moreover, the post-hoc diagnosis, i.e., Dunn’s multiple comparison test signifies that magnitude of vio-lations (in percentage) for the thinly traded options is significantly different from that for the moderately traded as well as highly traded options both for call and put options. The magnitudes of violations across the speci-fied levels of maturity are lower for exploitable options (i.e., ‘0-7’ days to maturity and ‘8-30’ days to maturity) compared to unexploiatble options (i.e., ’31-60’ days to maturity and ’61-90’ days to maturity) for call as well as put options; however, all the possible pairs are not sig-nificantly different at 5 per cent level of significance. Table 3: Summary of One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Statistics to Assess Normality
Call Options Put Options
Variable LBC_Normalized (in percentage) LBC_Normalized (in percentage)
Number of Observations 3,593 1,815
Normal Parameters(a,b) Mean 0.819510 0.776377
Std. Deviation 1.9641043 1.5417408
Most Extreme Differences Absolute 0.338 0.307
Positive 0.291 0.250
Negative -0.338 -.307
Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z 20.285 13.097
Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 0.000
a Test distribution is normal b Calculated from data.
Table 4(a): Kruskal-Wallis (H-statistics) Test for the Differences among the Violations across the Specified Levels of Liquidity for Call and Put Options (June 2001-07)
Liquidity Call Options Put Options
Rank Test Statistics (a,b) Rank Test Statistics (a,b)
N Mean Rank Chi-Square df Sig. N Mean Rank Chi-Square df Sig.
Thinly traded 3,066 1,935.50 1,557 961.24
Moderately traded 372 1,124.32 393.42 2 0.000 182 653.04 122.93 2 0.000
Highly traded 155 671.87 76 427.87
a. Kruskal Wallis Test
b. Grouping Variable: Liquidity
Table 4(b): Dunn’s Test for Multiple Comparisons amongst the Specified Levels of Liquidity for Call and Put Options
Dunn’s Multiple Comparison Test Call Options Put Options
Difference in Rank Sum Significant (P < 0.05) Difference in Rank Sum Significant (P < 0.05)
Thinly traded vs.Moderately traded 810 Yes 308.2 Yes
Thinly traded vs.Highly traded 1,300 Yes 533.4 Yes
In operational terms, the results imply that the average magnitude of violations for exploitable options contracts is significantly different from those for options contracts which can be designated as unexploitable. Empirically, the finding validates that the magnitude of exploitable violations is significantly less than that in the case of unexploitable options. It demonstrates a good sign for the market that the truly exploitable mispricing opportu-nities were meagre in magnitude and significantly no-ticeable violations existed only in the cases of unexploi-table contracts due to lack of liquidity in such options.
The Learning Curve
In addition, an effort has been made to analyse the behaviour of the mispricing signals over the years under reference. This part of the paper attempts to test the
learn-ing hypothesis for call as well as put options markets in
the Indian context. The hypothesis warrants improvement in the market efficiency over the years as investors are expected to be more familiar/experienced with the new market year after year and, thus, are expected to behave more rationally in pricing the options contracts. To put it explicitly, it has been hypothesized that the mispricing signals should depict a declining trend for call as well as put options. The examination of the violations over the
years under reference is similar with the study done by Mittnik and Rieken (2000).
In this regard, the results, summarized in Table 6 and Figure 3, indicate that the percentage of violations in call options has shown an increasing (counterintuitive) trend over the years except in the last year (2006-07) of the study. The percentage has gone up from 6.21 per cent in the year 2001-02 to 10.47 per cent in the year 2005-06 with an alarming increase of 68.59 per cent. The finding clearly indicates violation of the learning hypothesis for call op-tions. In contrast, the results regarding the put options, conforming to the learning hypothesis, have shown a declining trend, i.e., percentage of violations has been decreasing over the years of analysis as presented in Table 6 and Figure 4. The percentage of violations has declined from 7.63 per cent in the year 2001-02 to 3.09 per cent in the year 2005-06 with a considerable decrease of 59.50 per cent. This validates the warranted improvement in the efficiency of the put options market which, evidently, could not be observed in the case of call options market. The persistence of violations in the case of call options and observed decline in the case of put options are in line with those reported by Mittnik and Rieken (2000) in the context of German index options market.
Table 5(a): Kruskal-Wallis (H-statistics) Test for the Differences among the Violations across the Specified Levels of Maturity for Call and Put Options (June 2001-07)
Maturity Call Options Put Options
Rank Test Statistics (a,b) Rank Test Statistics (a,b)
N Mean Rank Chi-Square df Sig. N Mean Rank Chi-Square df Sig.
0-7 days to maturity 1717 1,664.76 905 817.97
8-30 days to maturity 1666 1,897.63
62.602 3 0.000 731 971.14 70.955 3 0.000
31-60 days to maturity 193 2,040.65 160 1,066.56
61-90 days to maturity 17 2,525.06 19 1,432.00
a. Kruskal Wallis Test b. Grouping Variable: Maturity
Table 5(b): Dunn’s Test for the Multiple Comparisons amongst the Specified Levels of Maturity for Call and Put Options
Dunn’s Multiple Comparison Test Call Options Put Options
Difference in Significant Difference in Significant
Rank Sum (P < 0.05) Rank Sum (P < 0.05)
0-7 days to maturity vs. 8-30 days to maturity -230 Yes -150 Yes
0-7 days to maturity vs. 31-60 days to maturity -380 Yes -250 Yes
0-7 days to maturity vs. 61-90 days to maturity -860 Yes -610 Yes
8-30 days to maturity vs. 31-60 days to maturity -140 No -95 No
8-30 days to maturity vs. 61-90 days to maturity -630 No -460 Yes
Further, the results summarized in Table 7 reveal that the percentage of violations belonging to the thinly traded category has declined over the years for both call (except the last year, 2006-07) and put options. This finding, per se, indicates that the percentage of violations which could Figure 3: Percentage of Violations in Relation to the
Total Observations Analysed for Call Options The Learning Curve_Call Options
Figure 4: Percentage of Violations in Relation to the Total Observations Analysed for Put Options
The Learning Curve_Put Options
have been exploited has increased over the years. How-ever, the exploitability of such arbitrage opportunities can be ascertained if we look at the ‘magnitudes of abnormal profits’ they offered.
In the year 2001-02, there are no violations pertaining to the highly liquid category (which are the most exploit-able as the bid-ask spread for such options is assumed to be very low) for call as well as put options. Moreover, the moderately traded options, where the bid-ask spread is assumed to be relatively high compared to the highly traded options, possess a mean percentage of 0.14 and 0.20 for call and put options respectively which, per se, seem to be exploitable. However, their unexploitability could be attributed to the high bid-ask spread. Apart from this, for the rest of the five years under reference (from 2002-03 to 2006-07), the percentage of violations belong-ing to the highly liquid category has offered considerably low abnormal profits as indicated by the third quartiles for both call and put options. And, therefore, such viola-tions seem to be unexploitable in the presence of transac-tion cost except the year 2003-04 for call optransac-tions (as the third quartile is 0.17 per cent); years 2005-06 and 2006-07 for put options(as the third quartiles are 1.07 and 0.16 per cent).
In short, no exploitable violations (considering the bid-ask spread and transaction costs) were registered in the first four years of analysis for call as well as put options except the third year, i.e., 2003-04 in the case of call op-tions where a negligible 0.39 per cent (25 % of 1.57 %) of all the violations observed seem to be exploitable. At the same time, the last two years (2005-06 and 2006-07) of analysis did not show any exploitable violations for call options. In contrast, the results regarding the put options depict that a meagre 1.86 per cent and 2.79 per cent of violations were exploitable in the years 2005-06 and 2006-Table 6: Frequencies of the Violations of Lower Boundary Conditions for Call and Put Options (June 2001-07)
Year Call Options Put Options
No. of Observations No. of Violations Percentage No. of Observations No. of Violations Percentage
Analysed Observed Analysed Observed
2001-02 3,496 217 6.21 2,557 195 7.63 2002-03 3,898 283 7.26 3,376 248 7.35 2003-04 7,173 700 9.76 6,189 412 6.66 2004-05 7,010 721 10.29 6,702 323 4.82 2005-06 9,323 976 10.47 7,931 377 4.75 2006-07 9,398 696 7.41 8,416 260 3.09 Total 40,298 3593 8.92 35,171 1815 5.16
07 respectively. However, if we look at the absolute fig-ures, all the exploitable violations in call as well as put options seem to be negligible, i.e., only 3 cases (25% of 11) in call options for the year 2003-04; only 7 cases (25% of 28 and 29) in put options for the years 2005-06 and 2006-07.
Comparison of Call and Put Options
In order to ascertain the levels of pricing efficiency in the two markets, namely, call options market and put op-tions market, a comparison has been drawn between these markets. The number of violations observed are 3,593 out of a total number of 40,298 observations analysed in the
case of call options. Likewise, 1,815 violations have been observed out of 35,171 observations for put options. As far as the frequency of violations is concerned, the call options market seems to be more inefficient compared to the put options market as the number as well as the per-centage (8.92% of total observations analysed in call op-tions compared to 5.16% in put opop-tions) of violaop-tions are higher vis-à-vis those in the case of put options. Notwith-standing the results regarding the frequency, the magni-tude of violations in the cases of call as well as put options seems to be approximately equal, the respective figures being 0.82 and 0.78 per cent.
Table 7: Magnitude of Violations of the Lower Boundary Conditions and their Sub-Classification as per the Specified Levels of Liquidity in the Indian Options Market (June 2001-07)
Year Liquidity Call Options Put Options
No. of Magnitude of Violations No. of Magnitude of Violations
Violations (in Percentage) Violations (in Percentage)
Mean SD Q1 Q2 Q3 Mean SD Q1 Q2 Q3 2001-02 Thinly liquid 212 (97.70) 0.60 1.13 0.08 0.21 0.61 192 (98.46) 0.61 1.13 0.07 0.19 0.65 Moderately liquid 5(2.30) 0.14 0.06 0.08 0.15 0.19 3(1.54) 0.20 0.25 0.05 0.08 0.28 Highly liquid 0(0.00) NA NA NA NA NA 0(0.00) NA NA NA NA NA Overall 217 0.59 1.11 0.08 0.20 0.58 195 0.60 1.12 0.07 0.19 0.64 2002-03 Thinly liquid 257(90.81) 0.47 0.93 0.07 0.18 0.44 239(96.37) 0.53 0.82 0.08 0.24 0.59 Moderately liquid 24(8.48) 0.10 0.09 0.04 0.06 0.15 09(3.63) 0.06 0.06 0.03 0.05 0.06 Highly liquid 2(0.71) 0.05 0.01 0.04 0.05 0.05 0(000) NA NA NA NA NA Overall 283 0.44 0.90 0.07 0.17 0.42 248 0.51 0.81 0.07 0.21 0.56 2003-04 Thinly liquid 628 (89.72) 1.08 2.78 0.11 0.34 0.90 358 (86.89) 1.19 2.00 0.15 0.56 1.21 Moderately liquid 61(8.71) 0.16 0.21 0.04 0.10 0.19 48(11.65) 0.41 0.68 0.06 0.15 0.39 Highly liquid 11(1.57) 0.10 0.09 0.03 0.07 0.17 6(1.46) 0.13 0.22 0.02 0.05 0.09 Overall 700 0.99 2.65 0.10 0.30 0.78 412 1.09 1.90 0.13 0.46 1.05 2004-05 Thinly liquid 620 (85.99) 0.90 1.64 0.10 0.25 0.84 263(81.42) 0.56 0.90 0.09 0.22 0.66 Moderately liquid 76 (10.54) 0.15 0.29 0.03 0.06 0.16 47(14.55) 0.15 0.22 0.03 0.06 0.16 Highly liquid 25(3.47) 0.14 0.19 0.02 0.06 0.12 13(4.03) 0.20 0.45 0.02 0.03 0.08 Overall 721 0.79 1.55 0.07 0.20 0.70 323 0.49 0.84 0.06 0.17 0.53 2005-06 Thinly liquid 780(79.92) 0.99 1.88 0.14 0.39 0.88 306(81.17) 1.17 2.32 0.15 0.46 1.11 Moderately liquid 134 (13.73) 0.26 0.42 0.05 0.12 0.30 43 (11.40) .29 .42 0.07 0.11 0.29 Highly liquid 62(6.35) 0.10 0.16 0.02 0.05 0.11 28(7.43) .13 .13 0.04 0.09 0.17 Overall 976 0.84 1.72 0.10 0.29 0.74 377 0.99 2.13 0.10 0.38 0.94 2006-07 Thinly liquid 569 (81.75) 1.06 2.55 0.09 0.29 0.76 199 (76.54) .77 1.78 0.13 0.40 0.89 Moderately liquid 72 (10.35) 0.13 0.18 0.02 0.08 0.17 32 (12.31) 0.90 1.82 0.06 0.30 0.54 Highly liquid 55(7.90) 0.04 0.05 0.01 0.03 0.06 29(11.15) 0.10 0.11 0.03 0.06 0.16 Overall 696 0.89 2.33 0.06 0.19 0.59 260 0.71 1.23 0.09 0.31 0.75
Note: 1. Figures in parentheses indicate percentage.
2. In the table, SD, Q1, Q2 and Q3 denote standard deviation, first quartile, second quartile (i.e., median) and third quartile respectively.
The results are more revealing based on the absolute fig-ures as all the exploitable violations pertaining to call as well as put options seem to be negligible. It is eloquently borne out by the fact that there are only 3 cases for call options and only 14 for put options; all the remaining violations might have remained unexploited due to the lack of liquidity. Our finding that the lower boundary condition for call options is violated more frequently com-pared to put options is similar to the one documented by Puttonen (1993a), a study carried out in the context of Finnish index options market.
Moreover, the number of violations of lower boundary conditions (using spot prices) documented by Dixit, Yadav and Jain (2009), another study in the Indian context, are 7,019 and 1,544 in the cases of call and put options re-spectively, while analysing the same number of observa-tions. However, in the present study, the number of violations are 3,593 and 1,815 for call and put options respectively. The reason behind the decrease (increase) in the number of violations for the call (put) options might be the under-pricing of the futures contracts. And, the short-selling of the stock basket is needed to exploit the arbitrage opportunity arising on account of the under-pricing of futures. Therefore, the under-under-pricing of the fu-tures can be attributed to the fact that short-selling has been banned during the period under reference in the Indian securities market. The impact of short-selling con-straints on the pricing of futures contracts has been vali-dated empirically by numerous studies, carried out in different markets across the globe, for example, MacKinlay and Ramaswamy (1988), in the context of the US market; Puttonen and Martikainen (1991), in the context of the Finnish market; Lim (1992), in the context of the Japanese market; Puttonen (1993b), in the context of the Finnish market; Berglund and Kabir (2003), in the context of the UK market; Bialkowski and Jakubowski (2008), in the context of the Polish market. These studies have attrib-uted the absence of short-selling facility in the market as a potential reason for the underpricing of futures con-tracts.
Further, explaining the higher frequency of violations in the case of call options, Mittnik and Rieken (2000) opined that selling the asset short, particularly, when the asset is an index, becomes very difficult. However, in the present study, this could not be a correct explanation to the higher frequency of violations in call options since in order to
exploit the arbitrage opportunities using futures market, the arbitrageur does not have to short the stock basket; rather, he needs to sell the futures that is easily possible. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the indirect impact of the short-selling constraints on the efficiency of the options market on account of the interrelationship of the index options and index futures market has been one of the major reasons amongst others (e.g., liquidity) for the existence of mispricing signals in the Indian options market. In short, the impact of short-selling constraints cannot be ignored even if the violations are identified using futures contracts as the efficiency of futures market does impact the efficiency of options market and, which, in turn, can be ensured when short-selling is allowed.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
The study attempts to test the lower boundary conditions for the S&P CNX Nifty index option prices using the fu-tures prices on the same index in the Indian securities market. The results of the study are, more or less, in line with those drawn in the case of the US market (e.g., con-centration of violations in ‘0-7’ days to the maturity cat-egory) except the magnitude and frequency of violations which have been observed to be more pronounced in the Indian options market alike the Finnish index options market. The clustering of violations is quite similar to that reported by Bhattacharya (1983), a study conducted in the US market, where 42 per cent of the total violations had one week or less to maturity. Also, the frequency of violations in call options have been found to be more pro-nounced compared to that in put options. At the same time, however, the magnitude of violations remained al-most the same for call as well as put options. The viola-tion of lower boundary indicates under-pricing of opviola-tions in the Indian securities market. The finding that the op-tions are under-priced is consistent with that of Varma (2002), a study carried out in the Indian context.
Moreover, as far as comparative performance of the In-dian options market vis-à-vis its international counter-parts is concerned, the findings of the study can be compared with those of a few studies in the context of two more markets from the developed world, i.e., the US and Germany. The US and German markets have been chosen in view of the fact that these markets facilitate comparison of a developing economy with its developed counterpart. For example, the studies of Galai (1978) and
Bhattacharya (1983) which analysed call options traded on Chicago Board Option Exchange (CBOE), USA, re-ported that merely 2.95 per cent and 2.38 per cent of the observations respectively violated the boundary condi-tion. Besides, in the context of German index options market, a study by Mittnik and Rieken (2000) reported nearly 2 per cent violation in the case of call options and nearly 1 per cent in the case of put options, on an average, over the years under analysis. The percentage of viola-tions observed in the Indian opviola-tions market, i.e., 8.92 per cent of the observations analysed is substantially higher compared to those observed in its developed counterparts. However, it may be noted that Galai (1978), Bhattacharya (1983), and Mittnik and Rieken (2000) used spot prices whereas the present study uses futures prices of the un-derlying asset. In sum, the number of violations observed can be attributed to the joint inefficiency of the futures and options market in India.
Though the frequency of violations remained quite high in the Indian options markets compared to the US and German markets, the exploitability of such violations (in the presence of the transaction costs) remained confined to being negligible on account of the dearth of liquidity. It is eloquently borne out by the fact while the percentage of violations turned out 8.92 and 5.16 in call and put op-tions respectively, the absolute figures reduced to 3 and 14 exploitable observations, given the existing market microstructure in India for the period under reference. In other words, a significant number of violations remained unexploitable, plausibly on account of the lack of liquid-ity and the indirect impact of short-selling constraints through the futures market.
The study is equally revealing as far as the behaviour of the investors dealing with the options market in India is concerned. It has been observed that the number of viola-tions in the call opviola-tions market has increased instead of showing a warranted declining trend. In other words, it implies that the irrationalities in the behaviour of inves-tors, particularly in the call options market, have gone up over the years. However, it is gratifying to note that the put options market has behaved the way which is consis-tent with the learning hypothesis, i.e., the number of vio-lations has reduced with the passage of time. Thus, the findings indicate that the put options market is emerging to be more efficient vis-à-vis the call options market. How-ever, the profit potential offered by highly traded
oppor-tunities both in the cases of call and put options seems to be unexploitable in the presence of transaction costs. Moreover, the dearth of liquidity in the case of otherwise exploitable opportunities which carry higher profit po-tentials has been another main inhibiting factor to arbitragers.
Therefore, in short, it is reasonable to conclude that ma-jority of violations in call as well as put options could not be exploited on account of the existing market-microstruc-ture in India during the period under reference (especially short-selling constraint that caused under-pricing of fu-tures to persist) and the dearth of liquidity in the options market.
The aforesaid anomalies might have certain implications for an emerging derivatives market like India. The two notable implications in this regard are: (a) if the price formation in the options market is not in line with the sound principles of option pricing, it might not be help-ful for price discovery in the underlying’s market and (b) it might also hamper the overall hedging efficiency of the market since the advanced dynamic hedging techniques like delta hedging might turn out to be ineffective. Conse-quently, the inefficient functioning of the derivatives mar-ket might have adverse impact on allocation of capital --the foremost functions that a derivative market is expected to facilitate through effective hedging and correct price discovery.
Notably, the recent development in the Indian derivatives market, i.e., allowing the short-selling and establishment of a proper lending and borrowing mechanism for the securities being traded in ‘futures and options segment’ would certainly enhance the pricing efficiency of futures market. And, therefore, the correct pricing of futures is expected to facilitate better exploitability of the mispricing signals and betterment of the options market on account of their interrelationship. Also, the change in the basis for charging the Securities Transaction Tax (STT) from con-tract value to just premium would certainly reduce the transaction cost to a marked extent and, therefore, is ex-pected to bring in more liquidity to the market. Hopefully, these developments would help the market to operate closer to the equilibrium in prices and, therefore, will en-sure better functioning of options market on its well-identified functions, namely, risk hedging and price dis-covery.
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www.nse-india.com; www.rbi.org.in
Alok Dixit is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Finance & Accounting Group at the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIML), India. He teaches Management Accounting, Investment Management and Financial Deriva-tives & Risk Management. He obtained his doctoral degree (Ph.D.) from the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) on the topic, ‘Pric-ing Efficiency of S&P CNX Nifty Index Options’. He was awarded Junior Research Fellowship of the University Grants Commission (UGC-JRF) in management to pursue research anywhere in India. He has published research papers in the journals of national and international repute.
e-mail: [email protected]
Surendra S Yadav is currently Professor of Finance in the Department of Management Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, India. He teaches Corporate Finance, International Finance, International Business, and Security Analysis and Portfolio Management. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris, Paris School of Manage-ment, INSEEC Paris, and the University of Tampa, USA. He
has published nine books and contributed more than 115 pa-pers to research journals and conferences. He has also con-tributed more than 30 papers to financial/economic newspapers.
e-mail: [email protected]
P K Jain is Professor of Finance at the Department of Manage-ment Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, India. He has been the Modi Foundation Chair Professor as well as Dalmia Chair Professor. He has more than 35 years’ teaching experience in subjects related to Management Ac-counting, Financial Management, Financial Analysis, Cost Analysis and Cost Control. He has been a visiting faculty at the University of Paris I, Paris School of Management, AIT Bangkok, Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey; and ICPE, Ljubljana. He has published about a dozen textbooks and 11 research books/monographs. He has contributed more than 125 research papers in journals of national and international repute.
e-mail: [email protected]
