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Economic Commentary

Options and the Future: What Do Markets Think?

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We’re used to hearing analysts make predictions about where the economy is headed based on changes in the prices people are paying for stocks, futures, or other assets. Now, recent research is showing how we can analyze the prices of sophisticated new investment products, like options, to also gauge the probability assigned by the markets to possible future events. In short, we can calculate how likely market participants feel it is that an event will take place in the future.

10.01.2002EC 10/1/2002

The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series editor is Tasia Hane. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. This paper and its data are subject to revision; please visit clevelandfed.org for updates.

Suggested Citation

Craig, Ben R. 2002. “Options and the Future: What Do Markets Think?” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary 10/1/2002.

This work by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International