In light of the recently passed 2010 Dodd–Frank Act, we assess the effect of margin changes on prices, the risk-sharing between speculators and hedgers, and the price stability of 20 commodity futures markets. We find that margin increases decrease the rate at which prices change, yet they impair the risk sharing function and they decrease market liquidity in certain markets. The regulator should set margins by taking the heterogeneity of commodity futures markets into account. Certain effects of margin changes diffuse across related markets though. Our results are robust to endogenously set margins by the exchanges and to alternative ways of measuring market liquidity. Interestingly, the effect of margin changes is more pronounced in commodity futures markets than in major equity and interest rate futures markets.

We explore whether the market variance risk premium (VRP) can be predicted. We measure VRP by distinguishing the investment horizon from the variance swap’s maturity. We extract VRP from actual S&P 500 variance swap quotes and we test four classes of predictive models. We find that the best performing model is the one that conditions on trading activity. This relation is also economically significant. Volatility trading strategies which condition on trading activity outperform popular benchmark strategies, even once we consider transaction costs. Our finding implies that broker dealers command a greater VRP to continue holding short positions in index options in the case where trading conditions deteriorate.