Effective and Cost-Efficient Volatility Hedging Capital Allocation: Evidence from the CBOE Volatility Derivatives Yueh-Neng Lin ∗∗∗ Imperial College Business School and National Chung Hsing University Email:
[email protected] ,
[email protected] Tel: +44 (0) 20 759 49168 Abstract The challenge in “long volatility contracts” is to minimize the cost of carrying such insurance, as implied volatility continues to trade above realized levels. This study proposes a cost-efficient strategy for CBOE volatility contracts that is subject to substantial protection against severe downturns in a portfolio of S&P 500 stocks, while still participating upside preservation. The results show (i) timely hedging strategy removes the extreme negative tail risk and reduces the negative skewness in exchange for slightly fewer instances of large positive returns; (ii) dynamic volatility hedging capital allocation effectively solves the negative cost-of-carry problem; and (iii) using volatility contracts as extreme downside hedges can be a variable alternative to buying out-of-the-money S&P 500 index puts. Keywords: Dynamic effective hedge; VIX calls; VIX futures; Variance futures; S&P 500 puts; Negative cost of carry JEL classification code: G12; G13; G14 ∗ Corresponding author: Yueh-Neng Lin, Academic Visitor, Imperial College Business School, 53 Princes Gate, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom, Phone: +44 (0) 20759-49168, Email:
[email protected],
[email protected]. The author thanks Jun Yu, Walter Distaso and Jeremy Goh for valuable opinions that have helped to improve the exposition of this article in significant ways. The author also thanks Jin-Chuan Duan, Joseph Cherian and conference participants of the 2011 Risk Management Conference in Singapore for their insightful comments.