Predicting Implied Volatility in the Commodity Futures Options Markets

Abstract

Both academics and practitioners have a substantial interest in understanding interest in understanding patterns in implied volatility that are recoverable from commodity futures option. Such knowledge enhances their ability to accurately forecast volatility embedded in these high risk option. This paper examines option-implied volatility contained in the heavily traded September corn futures option contracts for ten-year period, 1991-2000. We also test whether a “weekend effect” exists in the market for this contacts. We evaluate the performance of various measures widely employed in the literature to estimate historical volatility. We further report the nature of profit from a short straddle strategy which seek to exploit differences between option-implied and historical volatility.