Equity volatility: The technicalities of a variance swap
Equity volatility: Strategies
Equity market volatility in advanced economies shot through the roof when the credit and liquidity crisis kicked in last year and has been high ever since. It might have been expected then that the variance swaps market, which in the past has suffered its own liquidity gluts because the market is historically prone to one-sided trading, would also have gone into lock-down mode.
But that wasn’t the case. Dealers say the market, which enables investors to take exposure to equity market volatility, continued to function relatively smoothly, with buyers and sellers of volatility operating consistently throughout the third and fourth quarters of last year, and they say it has continued to do so since.
"The fact that the variance market behaved as we would have hoped was good news and showed that people now rely on variance to...
