Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) will introduce a standard combination trading function in its stock options market on Monday, 9 May this year to allow investors to use synthetic futures strategies in the trading of five active stock option classes: China Construction Bank, China Life Insurance, China Mobile, HKEx and HSBC.
A synthetic futures strategy is a stock option combination which consists of two legs. The buyer in a synthetic futures transaction buys a call option and sells a put option with the same underlying stock, strike price and expiry date, whereas the seller in the transaction sells a call option and buys a put option with the same features. The following table provides an example of synthetic futures transactions:
Synthetic futures are designed to help investors manage delta exposure in stock options portfolios and reduce their capital outlays in options-related trading activities.
Information vendors’ access codes for synthetic futures (as at 4 May 2011) are set out in the table below: