• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.235-261
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• 2003

We examine the relationship between the trading activities of Korea Stock Price Index (KOSPI) 200 futures contract and its underlying stock market volatility for about six years from May 1996 when the futures contract was introduced. The trading activities of the futures contracts are proxied by the volume and open interest, which are divided into expected and unexpected portions by using the previous data. The daily, intradilay, and overnight cash volatility is estimated by the GJR-GARCH model. We find a positive contemporaneous relationship between the intradaily stock market volatility and the unexpected futures volume while the relationship between the volatility and expected futures volume is weakly negative or non-existent. We also find that the unexpected futures volume strongly causes intradaily cash volatility. On the other hand, the overnight cash volatility causes the unexpected futures volume. The impulse responses between these variables are all positive. The result implies that during a trading time futures trading tends to increase the cash volatility while the unexpected overnight changes in cash volatility tends to increase the futures trading activities. We, however, find no association between the cash volatility and futures maturities.