Volatility Trading: What is the Role of the Long-Run Volatility Component?

Abstract

In this paper, we study an investor's asset allocation problem with a recursive utility and with tradable volatility that follows a two-factor stochastic volatility model. Consistent with Liu and Pan (2003) and Egloff, Leippold, and Wu's (2009) finding under the additive utility, we show that volatility trading generates substantial hedging demand, and so the investor can benefit substantially from volatility trading. However, unlike existing studies, we find that the impact of elasticity of intertemporal substitution on investment decisions is of first-order importance in the two-factor stochastic volatility model when the investor has access to the derivatives market to optimally hedge the persistent component of the volatility shocks. Moreover, we study the economic impact of model and parameter misspecifications and find that an investor can incur substantial economic losses if he uses an incorrect one-factor model instead of the two-factor model or if he incorrectly estimates one of the key parameters in the two-factor model. In addition, we find that the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is a more sensible description of an investor's attitude toward model and parameter misspecifications than the risk aversion parameter.