Economic Benefits of Derivatives for Long Term Investments-Equity Linked Securities

Abstract

In this paper, we examined the economic benefits of derivatives in the aspect of investment assets. Our study differs from previous studies in that it analyzed the differences in the economic benefits of derivatives between for short term investors and for long term investors, and focused on the equity linked securities (ELS) rather than plain vanilla derivatives. We found the following results from the analysis over 1 to 20 years of investment horizons for four different types of equity linked securities, including ‘Auto-callable ELS’, ‘Knock-out ELS’, ‘Digital ELS’ and ‘Reverse Convertible ELS.’ First, equity linked securities contribute to improving the performance of the optimal portfolio for most investors, except for some investors who have extremely low degrees of risk aversion. Second, these economic benefits of equity linked securities are consistently observed regardless of investment horizon. Third, investment demand for equity linked securities is higher for investors with a medium-level of risk aversion rather than for aggressive or conservative investors. In addition, equity linked securities are mainly used as substitutes for risk-free bonds rather than risky assets (i.e., stocks). Finally, most of our results are still valid even when different market environments are assumed or alternative decision rules are used to derive investors’ optimal portfolio.