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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 106 No. 3 2012

Pinning in the S&P 500 futures

Benjamin Golez1; Jens Carsten Jackwerth2

1 University of Notre Dame · 2 University of Konstanz

Abstract

We show that Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 futures are pulled toward the at-the-money strike price on days when serial options on the S&P 500 futures expire (pinning) and are pushed away from the cost-of-carry adjusted at-the-money strike price right before the expiration of options on the S&P 500 index (anti-cross-pinning). These effects are driven by the interplay of market makers' rebalancing of delta hedges due to the time decay of those hedges as well as in response to reselling (and early exercise) of in-the-money options by individual investors. The associated shift in notional futures value is at least $115 million per expiration day.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2012.06.010
Volume
106
Issue
3
Pages
566-585
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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