An Empirical Study on the Hedging Effects of Index ELS

ELS (Equity Linked Security) is the structured product which is one of the fast grown and the most successful in Korean financial markets. In particular, ELS with the index of stocks as underlying asset (‘index ELS') has shown a remarkable growth since 2010. This paper has analyzed the hedging effects of index ELS to the KOSPI200 index and futures market. It verifies that the hedging of index ELS has not shown any significant effect to the return of KOSPI200 index and futures, but it seems that it effects on the volatility. In other words, as ELS issue amount increases, VKOSPI tends to decrease because ELS issuer which has long vega position is trying to hedge it.