A profitable modification to global quadratic hedging

Recent research has shown that global quadratic hedging, also known as variance-optimal hedging and mean-variance hedging, can significantly reduce the risk of hedging call and put options with long-term maturities (one year or more), such as Long-Term Equity AnticiPation Securities (LEAPS). We propose a modification to global quadratic hedging that is more profitable on average to the hedger without substantially increasing his down-side hedging risk, if at all. We prove mathematically that the expected terminal hedging gain of our modified strategy is greater than that of the global quadratic hedging strategy. The performance of our strategy is evaluated under simulated return paths from GARCH, regime-switching and jump-diffusion models, and under empirical S&P 500 return paths. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.