Interpreting the volatility smile
Subtitle: an examination of the information content of option prices
By: Steven A. Weinberg.
Series: International finance discussion papers ;; no. 706; International finance discussion papers (Online) ;; no. 706.
Publisher: Federal Reserve Board
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Washington, D.C
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "This paper evaluates how useful the information contained in options prices is for predicting future price movements of the underlying assets.  We develop an improved semiparametric methodology for estimating risk-neutral probability density functions (PDFs), which allows for skewness and intertemporal variation in higher moments.  We use this technique to estimate a daily time series of risk-neutral PDFs spanning the late 1980's through 1999, for S&P 500 futures, U.S. dollar/Japanese yen futures and U.S. dollar/deutsche mark futures, using options on these futures.  For the foreign exchange futures, we find little discernable additional information contained in the estimated PDFs beyond the information derived from the Black-Scholes model, a fully parametric specification.  For S&P 500 futures, we find that the risk-neutral distribution implied by the volatility smile better fits the realized returns than the Black-Scholes model, although this better overall fit is not exhibited in the second and third moments"--Federal Reserve Board web site.
Notes: Also available in print.
Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 10/22/2004.
System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.