Stock<>Index Option Arbitrage?

Quote from atticus:
Dispersion
You're best to tinker with OTM calls rather than eat the index skew on short dispersion (in puts).
I think the real edge is in vol or var swap dispersion... if you got enough capital to play, of course.
 
Quote from sondermark:

implied volatility of the components was on (weighted) average 17.55% higher than the index.... seems like an arbitrage opportunity
This. is. not. an. arb.

As a rule of thumb, the formula:

index_vol = sqrt(correlation) * weighted_avergage_component_vol

isn't a bad approximiation.

So index vol at 83% of component vol implies a correlation of 0.69 (.83 squared). Your "arb" is just a bet that realized correlation will be lower than 0.69.

Acutal formula is:

sqrt( summation(i)[v(i)^2*w(i)^2] +2*sumsum(i,j>i)[v(i)*v(j)*w(i)*w(j)*p(i,j)])

where v is vol, w is weight, and p is rho or correlation.

Or in matrix form: sqrt(W'QW)

where Q is the covar matrix and W is a vector of weights.


Did you read the paper posted earlier in the thread?
 
Hi Guys,

Thank you for all your help the last days.

I have read the paper several times and after working a bit with it finally understand dispersion theory. For some reason I was really slow to grasp this.

Again, I do really appreciate your help!

Kind regards,
Steffan
 
Quote from sle:

Really? Are you going to "crunch the numbers"?
My impression was that you specialize in picking bottoms...

Don't mock ForexForex. He puts the ELITE in EliteTrader.

Without him this site is just Trader.
 
Hi, I am trying to understand the concept of dispersion.

Quote from Atticus: "You're best to tinker with OTM calls rather than eat the index skew on short dispersion (in puts)."

Can Atticus or somebody clarify/explain the above quote. Does that mean that it is better to be short index call instead of long index put on short dispersion?

Thanks in advance
 
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