Optimal arbitrage strategies on stock index futures under position limits

Min Dai, Yifei Zhong and Yue Kuen Kwok

Journal of Futures Markets, 2011, vol. 31, issue 4, 394-406

Abstract: Assuming the absence of market frictions, deterministic interest rates, and certainty in dividend payouts from the stocks in the index basket, an arbitrageur can lock in the profit of a positive (negative) arbitrage basis in a stock index futures by adopting a short (long) futures strategy. In addition, the arbitrageur may improve the arbitrage profit by adopting the so‐called early unwinding strategy of liquidating the position before maturity, or more aggressively from the long position directly to the short position or vice versa. In this study, we examine the optimal arbitrage strategies in stock index futures with position limits and transaction costs. In our analysis, the index arbitrage basis is assumed to follow the Brownian Bridge process. The model formulation of the option value functions leads to a coupled system of variational inequalities. We determine the values of the arbitrage opportunities and the optimal threshold values of the arbitrage basis at which the arbitrageur should optimally close an existing position or open a new index arbitrage position. In particular, we examine the impact of transaction costs on the index arbitrage strategies. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 31:394–406, 2011

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jfutmk:v:31:y:2011:i:4:p:394-406

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0270-7314

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Futures Markets is currently edited by Robert I. Webb

More articles in Journal of Futures Markets from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().