The comparison of pricing performances between cost of carry model and imperfect market model

Abstract

Choosing the right pricing approach is the key to deriving the true derivatives prices. This paper aims to compare the pricing performance of the cost of carry model and the imperfect market model in pricing the SET 50 index futures prices. This study replicates the study of Wang (2007) that compares the futures pricing performances of the cost of carry model and the imperfect market model in the Stock Exchanges of Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Taiwan. By using the mean percent- age errors and the mean absolute percentage errors as criteria in measuring the pricing perfor- mances of two models, the empirical results indicate that the highly impeifect financial market like SET 50 index futures market is relatively mispriced based on the model of perfect market assump- tion, suggesting that the suitable approach in pricing the SET 50 index futures is the imperfect market model. Relying on the perfect market assumption evidences an enormous misprice especially when the calculation is based on the calendar days. Therefore practitioners should identify the ap- propriate pricing method before estimating the theoretical prices of stock index futures.