Crash of '87 - Was it expected?. Aggregate market fears and long-range dependence

Abstract

We develop a dynamic framework to identify aggregate market fears ahead of a major market crash through the skewness premium of European options. Our methodology is based on measuring the distribution of a skewness premium through a q-Gaussian density and a maximum entropy principle. Our findings indicate that the October 19th, 1987 crash was predictable from the study of the skewness premium of deepest out-of-the-money options about two months prior to the crash. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.