Analysis of Price Discovery Effect in the Single Stock Futures Market

Abstract

This paper examines the price dynamics in the single stocks futures and spot markets. In order to enhance the liquidity of the stock futures market, Korea Exchange introduced the liquidity provider in 2014, and exempted the securities transaction taxes on stocks sold for hedging purposes of liquidity provider from 2015. This study performed a vector error correction model (VECM) based on spot-futures market linkage to evaluate the effectiveness of the liquidity policy by examining the difference in the price discovery around the event. The main empirical analysis results are summarized as follows. First, a statistically significant sample of price discovery over the entire period was evident in the interrelationship between spot and futures. This implies that stock futures have information effect equivalent to spot price, which is different from the previous studies in which futures lead the spot price discovery significantly as in the case of KOSPI200 futures market. Second, the tendency of feedback between spot and futures is consistent in price discovery even after introduction of liquidity provider and exemption of securities transaction tax. Overall, empirical results suggest that the effectiveness of the stock futures market policy is limited during the sample period and the additional measures to enhance the long term activation are needed.