Price Discoveries and Volatility Spillovers in S&P CNX Nifty Future and its Underlying Index CNX Nifty

Abstract

In a perfectly functioning world, every piece of information should be reflected simultaneously in the underlying spot market and its futures markets. However, in reality, information can be disseminated in one market first and then transmitted to other markets due to market imperfections. And, if one market reacts faster to information than the other, a lead-lag relation is observed The lead-lag relationship in returns and volatilities between spot and futures markets is of interest to academics, practitioners, and regulators. In India, there are very few studies which have investigated the lead-lag relationship in the first moment of the spot and futures markets This study investigates the lead-lag relationship in the first moment as well as the second moment between the S&P CNX Nifty and the Nifty future. It also investigates how much of the volatility in one market can be explained by volatility innovations in the other market and how fast these movements transfer between these markets. It conducts Multivariate Cointegration tests on the long-run relation between these two markets. It investigates the daily price discovery process by exploring the common stochastic trend between the S&P CNX Nifty and the Nifty future based on vector error correction model (VECM). It examines the volatility spillover mechanism with a bivariate BEKK model. Finally, this study captures the effects of recent policy changes in the Indian stock market. The results reveal the following: The VECM results show that the Nifty futures dominate the cash market in price discovery. The bivariate BEKK model shows that although the persistent volatility spills over from one market to another market bi-directionally, past innovations originating in future market have the unidirectional significant effect on the present volatility of the spot market. The findings of the study thus suggest that the Nifty future is more informationally efficient than the underlying spot market. These findings may provide insights on the information transaction and index arbitrage between the CNX Nifty and futures markets.