Article
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Capital Structure Arbitrage under a Risk Neutral Calibration
Version 1
: Received: 18 October 2016 / Approved: 18 October 2016 / Online: 18 October 2016 (09:39:57 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Zeitsch, P.J. Capital Structure Arbitrage under a Risk-Neutral Calibration. J. Risk Financial Manag. 2017, 10, 3. Zeitsch, P.J. Capital Structure Arbitrage under a Risk-Neutral Calibration. J. Risk Financial Manag. 2017, 10, 3.
Abstract
By reinterpreting the calibration of structural models, a reassessment of the importance of the input variables is undertaken. The analysis shows that volatility is the key parameter to any calibration exercise by several orders of magnitude. In order to maximize the sensitivity to volatility, a simple formulation of Merton’s model is proposed that employs deep out-of-the-money option implied volatilities. The methodology also eliminates the use of historic data to specify the default barrier thereby leading to a full risk neutral calibration. Subsequently, a new technique for identifying and hedging capital structure arbitrage opportunities is illustrated. The approach seeks to hedge the volatility risk, or vega, as opposed to the exposure from the underlying equity itself, or delta. The results question the efficacy of the common arbitrage strategy of only executing the delta hedge.
Keywords
merton model; structural model; credit default swap; capital structure arbitrage; algorithmic trading
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Finance
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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