A Comparative Analysis of Informational Efficiency of KOSDAQ50 and KOSPI200 Index Futures

This paper examines the information efficiency of KOSDAQ50 and KOSPI200 index futures markets. The study analyzes and compares both markets in three respects : 1) price discovery (lead-lag relationship between spot and futures markets.), 2) volatility-volume relationship, and 3) mispricings between spot and futures prices. The first, analysis shows the in the KOSPI200 market, futures price leads spot price. While spot price leads futures price in the KOSDAQ50 market. The second analysis shows that the volatility-volume relation is positive in the KOSPI200 futures market, supporting the hypothesis of mixture of distribution. In contrast, there is little relation between volume and volatility in the KOSDAQ50 futures market. This result casts doubt that the futures market price reflects information. The last analysis shows that the magnitude of mispricing becomes smaller with more volume in the KOSPI200 futures market, while it becomes larger with more volume in the KOSDAQ50 futures market. The overall results imply that the KOSDAQ50 futures market is less informationally efficient that the KOSPI200 market. The inefficiency appears due to the lack of institutional investor participation, especially securities firms, in making up the market.