Market Intraday Momentum and Hedging Demand

Subscribe to newsletter

Day trading is a trading strategy whereby traders aim to take advantage of small price movements in the market. To do this, they buy and sell securities within the same day. Day traders typically use technical, quantitative, or sentiment analysis to make decisions about when to buy and sell.  There are a number of different day trading strategies that traders can use. Some common strategies include momentum trading, mean reversion, and trend following.

Momentum trading is a strategy that seeks to take advantage of upward price momentum. This type of trading relies on the belief that prices tend to move in the same direction once they have started moving. Momentum traders look for stocks that are moving up and try to ride the momentum by buying the stock and selling it later at a higher price.

Reference [1] examined how gamma exposure affects the market intraday momentum.

Subscribe to newsletter https://harbourfrontquant.beehiiv.com/subscribe Newsletter Covering Trading Strategies, Risk Management, Financial Derivatives, Career Perspectives, and More

More importantly, we identify a novel economic force that drives market intraday momentum: market participants’ hedging demand coming from short gamma exposure. Our tests link both cross-sectional and time-series variation in market intraday momentum to such hedging demand. Our evidence suggests that concentrated trades of groups of investors – like portfolio insurers, option market makers and leveraged ETFs – can have substantial, non-fundamental price impact, amplifying price changes and impacting market dynamics around the times they trade. Paradoxically, these dynamics may even lead to leveraged (including short) ETFs to underperform their underlying index, as the hedging impact of their trades tend to revert. At the same time, market dynamics are strongly predictable intraday, and as such, proactive investors can benefit, for example by providing liquidity opportunistically in anticipation of hedging flows, or a smart timing of planned trades.

In short, market intraday momentum is linked to hedging demand coming from short gamma exposure. These dynamics are predictable, and as such, proactive investors can benefit from them.

In a previous post, we discussed how market makers net gamma positions affect the VIX-SPX lead-lag relationship.  The present article [1] contributes to a small number of papers that study how options gamma exposure affects market dynamics.

References

[1] Baltussen, Guido and Da, Zhi and Lammers, Sten and Martens, Martin, Hedging Demand and Market Intraday Momentum (2021). Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), Volume 142, Issue 1, October 2021, Pages 377-403

Subscribe to newsletter https://harbourfrontquant.beehiiv.com/subscribe Newsletter Covering Trading Strategies, Risk Management, Financial Derivatives, Career Perspectives, and More

Further questions

What's your question? Ask it in the discussion forum

Have an answer to the questions below? Post it here or in the forum

LATEST NEWSCentral 1 reports 2024 third quarter financial results
Central 1 reports 2024 third quarter financial results

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 21, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Central 1 Credit Union (Central 1) today reported third quarter performance reflecting steady financial results across business lines, consistent with plans and expectations. “Our stable third quarter results were in line with our expectations,” said Sheila…

Stay up-to-date with the latest news - click here
LATEST NEWSTrulieve cannabis CMO Gina Collins buys $7,962 in shares
Trulieve cannabis CMO Gina Collins buys $7,962 in shares
Stay up-to-date with the latest news - click here
LATEST NEWSAspen Prices Public Offering of US$200 Million of Depositary Shares Representing Interests in Perpetual Non-Cumulative Preference Shares
Aspen Prices Public Offering of US$200 Million of Depositary Shares Representing Interests in Perpetual Non-Cumulative Preference Shares

HAMILTON, Bermuda — Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited (“Aspen” or the “Company”) has priced an underwritten public offering of 8,000,000 Depositary Shares (the “Depositary Shares”), each of which represents a 1/1,000th interest in a share of the Company’s newly designated 7.00% Perpetual Non-Cumulative Preference Shares (the…

Stay up-to-date with the latest news - click here
LATEST NEWSPostmedia Reports Fourth Quarter Results
Postmedia Reports Fourth Quarter Results

TORONTO — Postmedia Network Canada Corp. (“Postmedia” or the “Company”) today released financial information for the three months and year ended August 31, 2024. “While we continue to operate in a challenging advertising marketplace dominated by large, foreign media platforms, Postmedia achieved some important milestones…

Stay up-to-date with the latest news - click here
LATEST NEWSMedical Properties Trust Declares Regular Quarterly Dividend
Medical Properties Trust Declares Regular Quarterly Dividend
Stay up-to-date with the latest news - click here

Leave a Reply