China's Stock Index Futures, Margin Settings

Along with a price limit and capital requirement, the existence of a margin decrease the likelihood of a customer defaulting, a broker going bankrupt and systemic instability of the futures market. This paper applies sub-theories of generalized Pareto distribution inherited from extreme value theory to examine the margin policy for price extremal movements. The theoretical framework focuses explicitly on tail returns, thereby properly computing prudent margin level for large levels of risk, This paper finds:(1) The assumption of normality to impose a smaller margin level since the presence of a fat-tail. (2) On the basis of margin insolvency using an expected shortfall, the margin requirements of stock index futures across contracts with a SZ100 contract being the more risky, and SH180 futures indexe is less risky. (3) The ability to capture extreme price movements using expected shortfall is more suitable than the approach of the VaR based on generalized pareto distribution (GPD). (4) the proxy of the appropriate threshold using an expected shortfall can capture well the extreme price movements and can be an excellent risk measure instrument to set the prudent margin level.(5) controlling risks using a perspective of portfolio through applications of copula function should be included in the margin policy . The purpose of this thesis is to propose new risk measure instruments to deal with the margin setting on...