Informed Traders, Long-Dated Options, and the Cross Section of Stock Returns

Informed Traders, Long-Dated Options, and the Cross Section of Stock Returns PDF Author: Mark Clements
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description
Option prices predict the cross section of equity returns. We show that, unconditionally, the prices of long-dated options contain all the information relevant for predicting returns. Information, however, shifts towards short-dated options when an earnings announcement is imminent and when options are cheap to trade. The difference between short- and long-dated options also predicts the timing of merger announcements. Our results are consistent with option prices reflecting the actions of informed traders, and with these traders optimally choosing option maturities to maximize the value of their information.

Informed Traders, Long-Dated Options, and the Cross Section of Stock Returns

Informed Traders, Long-Dated Options, and the Cross Section of Stock Returns PDF Author: Mark Clements
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description
Option prices predict the cross section of equity returns. We show that, unconditionally, the prices of long-dated options contain all the information relevant for predicting returns. Information, however, shifts towards short-dated options when an earnings announcement is imminent and when options are cheap to trade. The difference between short- and long-dated options also predicts the timing of merger announcements. Our results are consistent with option prices reflecting the actions of informed traders, and with these traders optimally choosing option maturities to maximize the value of their information.

The Joint Cross Section of Stocks and Options

The Joint Cross Section of Stocks and Options PDF Author: Byeong-Je An
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Stocks with large increases in call implied volatilities over the previous month tend to have high future returns while stocks with large increases in put implied volatilities over the previous month tend to have low future returns. Sorting stocks ranked into decile portfolios by past call implied volatilities produces spreads in average returns of approximately 1% per month, and the return differences persist up to six months. The cross section of stock returns also predicts option-implied volatilities, with stocks with high past returns tending to have call and put option contracts which exhibit increases in implied volatility over the next month, but with decreasing realized volatility. These predictability patterns are consistent with rational models of informed trading.

Differences in Options Investors' Expectations and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

Differences in Options Investors' Expectations and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns PDF Author: Panayiotis C. Andreou
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description
We provide strong evidence that the dispersion of individual stock options trading volume across moneynesses (IDISP) contains valuable information about future stock returns. Stocks with high IDISP consistently underperform those with low IDISP by more than 1% per month. In line with the idea that IDISP reflects dispersion in investors' beliefs, we find that the negative IDISP-return relationship is particularly pronounced around earnings announcements, in high sentiment periods and among stocks that exhibit relatively high short-selling impediments. Moreover, the IDISP effect is highly persistent and robustly distinct from the effects of a large array of previously documented cross-sectional return predictors.

A Smiling Bear in the Equity Options Market and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

A Smiling Bear in the Equity Options Market and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns PDF Author: Hye-hyun Park
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
We propose a measure for the convexity of an option-implied volatility curve, IV convexity, as a forward-looking measure of excess tail-risk contribution to the perceived variance of underlying equity returns. Using equity options data for individual U.S.-listed stocks during 2000-2013, we find that the average return differential between the lowest and highest IV convexity quintile portfolios exceeds 1% per month, which is both economically and statistically significant on a risk-adjusted basis. Our empirical findings indicate the contribution of informed options trading to price discovery in terms of the realization of tail-risk aversion in the stock market.

The Information Content of Options

The Information Content of Options PDF Author: Yonatan Navon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
The objective of this thesis is to examine the information content of stock options in financial markets. A key question in financial economics is how information diffuses across markets and how quickly it is reflected in security prices. This thesis aims at exploring this question by investigating the informational role that options play in financial markets. This is achieved by exploring the joint cross section of option and bond prices, the informational role of options in seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), and the information content of options trading prior to announcements of changes to the S&P 500 Index.The thesis comprises three essays, each exploring the information content of equity options trading from a different angle. The first essay examines the joint cross section of option implied volatility and corporate bond returns. Theoretical and empirical work in finance suggests that stocks and bonds of the same issuing firm should share common risk factors. Therefore, new information about a firm should affect both its stock and bond prices. However, if one market offers trading incentives over other markets, informed traders and traders with better ability to process information may choose to trade in that market over the others. As a result, markets that provide advantages to informed traders will incorporate information prior to other markets. The empirical analysis in this chapter reveals that options trading is strongly predictive of corporate bond returns. A strategy of buying (selling) the portfolio with the lowest (highest) changes in option implied volatility yields an average monthly excess bond return of 1.03%. This strategy is statistically highly significant and economically very meaningful and indicates that information is incorporated into option prices prior to bond prices. In contrast, I find no evidence that bond prices incorporate information prior to option or stock prices. Since bond investors are generally sophisticated institutional investors who process information efficiently and the predictive ability of options is persistent, I conclude that informed trading rather than superior information processing abilities is responsible for the predictive ability of options.The second essay explores the information content of option implied volatility around the announcements and issue dates of SEOs. The literature on SEOs indicates that announcements and issue dates contain important information about firms and therefore provide profitable opportunities for traders with private information. While prior research has focused on the information content of short sales around SEOs, this study focuses on the information content of options which can act as an alternative for short selling. The empirical analysis provides evidence of informed trading in the options market around SEO announcements. Around SEO issue dates, I find that higher demand for put options is significantly related to larger issue discounts which is consistent with the manipulative trading hypothesis. The results in this study indicate that regulators should consider extending the short-sale restrictions of Rule 105 to restrict trading in related securities.Finally, the third essay investigates the information content of options prior to the S&P 500 Index inclusion and exclusion announcements. These announcements are unique events since they are not announced by the firm and, as stated by S&P, they should convey no new information. In addition, the large abnormal returns observed following these announcements make them distinctive ground for testing the informational role of options. Consistent with the notion that informed traders operate in the options market, the empirical results in this essay indicate that there is a significant relationship between options trading preceding index inclusion announcements and abnormal returns following these announcements. In contrast, I find no evidence for a relationship between options trading and abnormal returns following exclusion announcements.

Three Essays on the Information Content of Stock Options

Three Essays on the Information Content of Stock Options PDF Author: Zekun Wu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This dissertation consists of three essays that explore the information content embedded in equity options. The results improve our understanding of the cross-section of option returns, informed trading in the options market, and the industry effect of IPOs. In the first essay, we study the relation between option-implied skewness (IS) and the crosssection of option returns under daily hedging to better understand skewness pricing in isolation from lower moments. Creating portfolios of delta-hedged (D-hedged) and delta-vega-hedged (DV-hedged) options with daily rebalancing, we find that IS is negatively (positively) related to call (put) option returns, but the relation to put options is statistically significant only during economic recessions. The relation is more substantial when the underlying stock has a larger market beta and when the firm has more severe information opacity. Our results suggest that investors' skewness preference grows stronger with greater market risk and lower information quality. In the second essay, we examined the informed trading in the options market before FDA drug advisory committee meetings. We find significant abnormal options trading volume before both meeting dates and report creation dates, particularly for small drug firms. Abnormal volume significantly predicts post-meeting stock returns. Informed traders prefer out-of-the-money options and choose maturities to cover the dates when reports are publicly released. They prefer to sell options close to the meeting date, perhaps to capture returns from both expected stock price changes and the sharp drop in implied volatility post-meeting. In the third essay, I investigate the effect of initial public offerings (IPOs) on industry competitors' options market. I find that rival firms' put (call) options volume increases (decreases) around IPOs, leading to price pressure on call options relative to put options as measured by the implied volatility spread. Rival firms' reaction in the options market also predicts the IPO firms' post-IPO stock performance. Lastly, rival firms with strong operating income experience less negative impact in the options market, suggesting competitive operation performance help stabilize rival firms' options market around IPOs.

The Decline of Informed Trading in the Equity and Options Markets

The Decline of Informed Trading in the Equity and Options Markets PDF Author: Charles Cao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Reliable excess returns from active portfolio management derive from informed trading. We investigate the information content of informed trading in the equity market and the options market. We find that informed equity trading and options trading are positively correlated in the time-series, but virtually uncorrelated cross-sectionally. Portfolio-level and stock-level analyses provide robust evidence that the cross-sectional return predictive power of informed trading in each market is distinct. Time-series analyses indicate that aggregate informed options trading is useful for predicting market returns, but that the amount of informed trading has declined significantly in more recent years. The time-series patterns of both our informed trading measures coincide closely with the decline in equity hedge fund excess returns.

Information, Trading and Product Market Interactions

Information, Trading and Product Market Interactions PDF Author: Heather Elise Tookes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description


The nature of informed option trading: Evidence from the takeover market

The nature of informed option trading: Evidence from the takeover market PDF Author: Marco Klapper
Publisher: Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag)
ISBN: 3954896729
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
This study examines the kind of information ‘informed’ traders have prior to a takeover announcement using options of target firms and elaborates on the cross-sectional relationship between options and stocks around takeover announcements. Financial markets are driven by information and by individuals that generate, process, and disclose this information to the market. Naturally, there have to be individuals who possess more information about a firm or a future event than other market participants. Mergers and acquisitions are particularly interesting events in this regard because they can have significant implications for the firms and stakeholders involved, as well as for the competitive dynamics in the respective market. Because of the large potential price impact of such transactions, traders with private information about a prospective takeover are expected to trade on this information to make a profit. But who are these ‘informed traders’ and what kind of information do they possess? This study tries to give a respond to this question.

The Information in Option Volume for Stock Prices

The Information in Option Volume for Stock Prices PDF Author: Allen M. Poteshman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
We find strong evidence of information transmission from the options market to underlying stock prices. Taking advantage of a unique dataset from the Chicago Board Options Exchange, we construct put to call volume ratios for underlying stocks, using only volume initiated by buyers to open new positions. Performing daily cross-sectional analyses from 1990 to 2001, we find that buying stocks with low put/call ratios and selling stocks with high put/call ratios generates an expected return of 40 basis points per day and 1 percent per week. This result is present during each year of our sample period, and is not affected by the exclusion of earnings announcement windows. Moreover, the result is stronger for smaller stocks, indicating that the options market may be a more important avenue for information transmission for stocks with less efficient information flow. Our analysis also sheds light on the type of investor behind the informed option trading. Specifically, we find that option trading from customers of full service brokers provides the strongest predictability, while that from firm proprietary traders is not informative. Furthermore, our analysis shows that while public customers on average trade in the options market as contrarians -- buying fresh new puts on stocks that have done well and calls on stocks that have done poorly, firm proprietary traders exhibit the opposite behavior. Finally, in contrast to the equity options market, we do not find any evidence of informed trading in the index options market.