Welcome
I am Danial Sanahurskyj, a finance and economics student at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, graduating in December 2026.
My research studies how geopolitical risk is priced across asset classes, with a focus on Russia's war in Ukraine. Since 2023 I have managed Bedford Capital Management, a multi-asset portfolio.
- danial.sanahurskyj23@gmail.com
- linkedin.com/in/danial-sanahurskyj
- SSRN
- Author page
Research
Working papers
Geopolitical Risk and Cross-Asset Implied Volatility: Evidence from Equity, Oil, and Gold Options
Abstract: This paper examines how geopolitical shocks reprice risk across equity, oil, and gold options markets through both aggregate implied volatility and full volatility surface distortion. Using end-of-day options data on equities, gold, and oil and analyzing systematically identified geopolitical events through geopolitical newspaper coverage frequency, I document statistically significant but structurally distinct responses across the three asset classes. Equity volatility is uniform and risk is not priced into any specific region of the surface. Oil exhibits the most consistent surface distortion, concentrated in the deep out-of-the-money wings. Gold shows the largest response and responds more strongly to anticipated threats than realized acts. All three assets deflate after a geopolitical event consistent with the popular buy-the-rumor, sell-the-news mechanism. The most novel finding is that gold's structurally call-skewed surface intensifies sharply on event days, revealing that investors express safe-haven demand through upside call buying rather than downside put protection. Finally, shock severity above the identification threshold adds little explanatory power, consistent with geopolitical fear operating as a binary regime switch rather than a continuous variable.
Work in progress
Expectations of War and Peace: Evidence from Ukraine's GDP-Warrant
Abstract: This study examines how financial markets price expectations of economic recovery during the Russia–Ukraine War using a Ukrainian GDP-linked warrant, a sovereign security whose payouts depend directly on economic performance. Using data from 2016–2025 and a news-based War-Peace index constructed from global media coverage, I test whether changes in conflict conditions influence investor sentiment on Ukraine's economic recovery. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the warrant became increasingly more idiosyncratic from global emerging market conditions. Daily changes in conflict provide limited reliable explanatory power for returns; however, information shocks driven by catalysts and exceeding a certain threshold produce significantly larger effects on returns. These same shocks are associated with approximately 24.2% higher conditional volatility, persisting throughout the asset for roughly four to five days, causing temporary repricing regimes. The warrant's response is also asymmetric, showing escalating shocks are associated with negative returns, while de-escalating shocks produce non statistically reliable volatility response. These findings suggest that during conflict, expectations of economic recovery are revised primarily through discrete geopolitical catalysts rather than continuous news.
Bedford Capital Management
A multi-asset portfolio I founded in November 2023 and continue to manage.
Bedford Capital Management: Investment Report
Summary: A review of the portfolio's first fifteen months, from August 2024 to October 2025: performance and risk relative to the S&P 500, the strategy and investment philosophy behind it, case studies including a hedge held through the April 2025 tariff selloff, and the main lesson of the period, judging decisions by their process rather than their outcome.