Option-Implied Objective Measures of Market Risk

Abstract

Foster and Hart (2009) introduce an objective measure of the riskiness of an asset that implies a bound on how much of one’s wealth is ‘safe’ to invest in the asset while (a.s.) guaranteeing no-bankruptcy. In this study, we translate the Foster-Hart measure from static and abstract gambles to dynamic and applied finance using nonparametric estimation of risk-neutral densities from S&P 500 call and put option prices covering 2003 to 2013. The dynamics of the resulting ‘option-implied Foster-Hart bound’ are assessed in light of other well-known option-implied risk measures including value at risk, expected shortfall and risk-neutral volatility, as well as high moments of the densities and several industry measures. Rigorous variable selection reveals that the new measure is a significant predictor of (large) ahead-return downturns. Furthermore, it grasps more characteristics of the risk-neutral probability distributions in terms of moments than other measures and exhibits predictive consistency. The robustness of the risk-neutral density estimation is analyzed via Monte Carlo methods.

Keywords: risk measure, risk dynamics, risk-neutral densities, value at risk, expected shortfall

JEL Classification: D81, D84, G01, G32