An Empirical Study on Implied Volatility Skew Using PCA

Jin Woo Kim (Soongsil University)
Joon H. Rhee (Soongsil University)

Journal of Derivatives and Quantitative Studies: 선물연구

ISSN: 1229-988X

Article publication date: 31 August 2016

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Abstract

This paper extracts the factors determining the implied volatility skew movements of KOSPI200 index options by applying PCA (Principal Component Analysis). In particular, we analyze the movement of skew depending on the changes of the underlying asset price. As a result, it turned out that two factors can explain 94.6%~99.8% of the whole movement of implied volatility. The factor1 could be interpreted as ‘parallel shift’, and factor2 as the movement of ‘tilt or slope’. We also find some significant structural changes in the movement of skew after the Financial Crisis. The explanatory power of factor1 becomes more important on the movement of skew in both call and put options after the financial crisis. On the other hand, the influences of the factor2 is less. In general, after financial crisis, the volatility skew has the strong tendency to move in parallel. This implies that the changes in the option price or implied volatility due to the some shocks becomes more independent of the strike prices.

Keywords

Citation

Kim, J.W. and Rhee, J.H. (2016), "An Empirical Study on Implied Volatility Skew Using PCA", Journal of Derivatives and Quantitative Studies: 선물연구, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 365-397. https://doi.org/10.1108/JDQS-03-2016-B0001

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016 Emerald Publishing Limited

License

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode


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