The information content of implied skewness and kurtosis changes prior to earnings announcements for stock and option returns

We use option prices to examine whether changes in stock return skewness and kurtosis preceding earnings announcements provide information about subsequent stock and option returns. We demonstrate that changes in jump risk premiums can lead to changes in implied skewness and kurtosis and are also associated with the mean and variability of the stock price response to the earnings announcement. We find that changes in both moments have strong predictive power for future stock returns, even after controlling for implied volatility. Additionally, changes in both moments predict call returns, while put return predictability is primarily linked to changes in skewness.     

Informed Options Trading Prior to Dividend Change Announcements

This paper investigates the information content of options trading prior to dividend change announcements. I find a positive (negative) relation between pre‐announcement abnormal implied volatility (IV) spread (abnormal IV skew) and cumulative abnormal stock returns around dividend change announcements. The predictive power of informed options trading is stronger for announcements of dividend reduction and when the options market is more liquid relative to the stock market and weaker when information has already been incorporated in the stock market. The predictability of informed options trading is robust to a placebo test and alternative measures of informed options trading. Overall results suggest that informed options trading predicts dividend change announcement returns.     

The Joint Cross Section of Stocks and Options

Stocks with large increases in call (put) implied volatilities over the previous month tend to have high (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 that 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.     

Option trading after the opening bell and intraday stock return predictability

Prior literature finds that information is reflected in option markets before stock markets, but no study has explored whether option volume soon after market open has predictive power for intraday stock returns. Using novel intraday signed option-to-stock volume data, we find that a composite option trading score (OTS) in the first 30 min of market open predicts stock returns during the rest of the trading day. Such return predictability is greater for smaller stocks, stocks with higher idiosyncratic volatility, and stocks with higher bid–ask spreads relative to their options’ bid–ask spreads. Moreover, OTS is a significantly stronger predictor of intraday stock returns after overnight earnings announcements. The evidence suggests that option trading in the 30 min after the opening bell has predictive power for intraday stock returns.     

The effect of option transaction costs on informed trading in the options market around earnings announcements

We investigate the effect of option market transaction costs (a form of market imperfection) on the ability of option implied volatility-based measures to predict future stock returns and volatility around quarterly earnings announcements. We find that the predictability is significantly stronger for firms with lower option relative bid-ask spreads. The effect is more pronounced around positive rather than negative earnings news. We find no significant effect of option transaction costs around randomly chosen dates when there is no clustering of major information events. Trading strategies based on option market predictors and transaction costs earn monthly abnormal returns of 1.39% to 1.91%.     

Options and earnings announcements: an empirical study of volatility, trading volume, open interest and liquidity

In this paper we study the impact of earnings announcements on implied volatility, trading volume, open interest and spreads in the stock options market. We find that implied volatility increases before announcement days and drops afterwards. Also option trading volume is higher around announcement days. During the days before the announcement open interest tends to increase, while it returns to regular levels afterwards. Changes in the quoted spread largely respond to higher trading volume and changes in implied volatility. The effective spread increases on the event day and on the first two days following the earnings announcement.     

Option Prices Leading Equity Prices: Do Option Traders Have an Information Advantage?

Recent evidence shows that option volatility skews and volatility spreads between call and put options predict equity returns. This study investigates whether such predictive ability is driven by option traders’ information advantage. We examine the predictive ability of volatility skews and volatility spreads around significant information events including earnings announcements, other firm‐specific information events, and events that trigger significant market reactions. Consistent with option traders having an information advantage relative to equity traders before information events, we find that the option measures immediately before these events have higher predictive ability for short‐term event returns than they do in a more dated window or before a randomly selected pseudo‐event. We also find that option measures have predictive ability after information events. However, this predictive ability holds only for unscheduled corporate announcements, which suggests that, relative to equity traders, option traders have superior ability to process less anticipated information.     

Convertible calls and corporate taxes under asymmetric information

This paper develops a signalling model of call of convertible securities (bonds or preferred stock) in the presence of corporate taxes and asymmetric information about future earnings. In equilibrium, managers with relatively unfavorable information call to force convertible holders to convert to common stock (in spite of the loss of corporate tax benefits if the convertibles are bonds), while those with relatively favorable information do not call. The model predicts that the announcement period common stock returns are more negative at the call of convertible bond than at the call of convertible preferred stock. Furthermore, we predict that when the importance of the tax deductibility of interest differs among firms, so does the stock price reaction to the announcement of convertible debt call. Specifically, the loss of equity value at the announcement decreases with the amount of non-debt tax shield that the calling firm owns, decreases with the book value of convertible debt called, and increases with corporate taxes.     

Can we forecast the implied volatility surface dynamics of equity options? Predictability and economic value tests

We examine whether the dynamics of the implied volatility surface of individual equity options contains exploitable predictability patterns. Predictability in implied volatilities is expected due to the learning behavior of agents in option markets. In particular, we explore the possibility that the dynamics of the implied volatility surface of individual stocks may be associated with movements in the volatility surface of S&P 500 index options. We present evidence of strong predictable features in the cross-section of equity options and of dynamic linkages between the volatility surfaces of equity and S&P 500 index options. Moreover, time-variation in stock option volatility surfaces is best predicted by incorporating information from the dynamics in the surface of S&P 500 options. We analyze the economic value of such dynamic patterns using strategies that trade straddle and delta-hedged portfolios, and find that before transaction costs such strategies produce abnormal risk-adjusted returns.     

An Event Option Pricing Model with Scheduled and Unscheduled Announcement Effects

There is considerable evidence supporting the time-varying distribution of asset returns. There is also ample evidence that scheduled announcement events such as money supply announcements (in the case of foreign exchange), earnings announcements (in the case of stocks), and crop reports (in the case of commodities), as well as random unscheduled events, can affect the level and volatility of asset returns. This study provides an Event Model for European call options which explicitly addresses effects of these two classes of events. This specification requires estimation of more parameters, but it could provide a more accurate basis for pricing options than previous Poisson jump-diffusion models. Parametric analysis shows that the standard models under price the options relative to the Event Model. The Event Model may be particularly useful in pricing short-term deep out-of-the-money options when scheduled events are present in the market.     

Return predictability and shareholders’ real options

This study re-interprets the properties of the residual income model by highlighting the shareholders’ abandonment (liquidation or adaptation) option. We estimate the value of this real option as an explicit component of abnormal earnings in the residual income model and test the improvement in valuation after incorporating it into the model. Relative to the traditional specification of the residual income model, this real options model has a stronger predictive power for future abnormal stock returns. We also find that the superior return predictability of the real options model is pronounced in the set of firms with a high probability of exercising liquidation options (for example, those with low profitability, low growth opportunities, high underlying asset volatility, and low intangible assets), which is consistent with the importance of shareholders’ abandonment option in equity valuation. The results are robust to extensive sensitivity checks.     

Level of multinationality as an explanation for post-announcement drift

This study tests whether the observed patterns in stock returns after quarterly earnings announcements are related to the level of multinationality, a variable used to proxy for earnings predictability. Our findings show that the level-of-multinationality variable is negatively correlated with the observed post-announcement abnormal returns. The findings suggest that the level of multinationality as a proxy for earnings predictability underlies the predictability of stock returns after earnings announcements.     

Slow diffusion of information and price momentum in stocks: Evidence from options markets

This paper investigates the source of price momentum in the stock market using information from options markets. We provide direct evidence of the gradual information diffusion model in Hong and Stein (1999): momentum profits are larger for stocks whose information diffuses slowly into the stock market. We exploit the options markets to identify stocks with slow information diffusion speed. As informed traders trade options to realize the information that has not been fully incorporated in the stock price, we are able to enhance the momentum strategy by selecting winner/loser stocks with high growth/large drop in call option implied volatility. Our empirical strategy generates a risk-adjusted alpha of 1.8% per month over the 1996–2011 period, during which the simple momentum strategy fails to perform. The results are robust to the impact of earnings announcement, transaction costs, industry concentration, and choice of options’ moneyness and time-to-maturity. Finally, our finding is not driven by existing stock- or option-related characteristics that are known to improve momentum.     

Individuals’ Trading Prior to Earnings Announcements

This paper investigates the relationship between individuals’ net trading and stock price movements before and after annual earnings announcements for the Taiwan Stock Exchange. We conduct an event study on the effects of pre‐event individual trade imbalances on pre‐ and post‐announcement abnormal returns. With a unique and comprehensive dataset, we accurately classify executed orders by aggressiveness of order price. The evidence indicates that while individuals, as a group, are not informed about impending earnings announcements, individuals who place aggressive orders are informed as their net trading coincides with contemporaneous and future stock returns. Aggressive individuals lose their edge during the financial crisis. More importantly, the advantage (disadvantage) for individuals who adopt aggressive (passive) orders weakens when foreign institutions own concentrated equity in firms. We also find that net individual trading contains information about abnormal returns that either past returns or volume does not subsume. Controlling for past returns, trading volume and volatility, or using an alternative measure of net individual trading does not change our conclusions.     

Risk,Mispricing, and Value Investing

We evaluate the stock return performance of a modified version of the book-to-market strategy and its implications for market efficiency. If the previously documented superior stock return of the book-to-market strategy represents mispricing, its performance should be improved by excluding fairly valued firms with extreme book-to-market ratios. To attain this, we classify stocks as value or glamour on book-to-market ratios and accounting accruals jointly. This joint classification is likely to exclude stocks with extreme book-to-market ratios due to mismeasured accounting book values reflecting limitations underlying the accounting system. Using both 12-month buy-and-hold returns and earnings announcement returns, our results show that this joint classification generates substantially higher portfolio returns in the post-portfolio-formation year than the book-to-market classification alone with no evidence of increased risk. In addition, this superior stock return performance is more pronounced among firms held primarily by small (unsophisticated) investors and followed less closely by market participants (stock price <$10). Finally, and most importantly, financial analysts are overly optimistic (pessimistic) about earnings of glamour (value) stock, and for a subset of firms identified as overvalued by our strategy, the earnings announcement raw return, as well as abnormal return, is negative. These last results are particularly important because it is hard to envision a model consistent with rational investors holding risky stocks with predictable negative raw returns for a long period of time rather than holding fT-bills and with financial analysts systematically overestimating the earnings of these stocks while underestimating earnings of stocks that outperform the stock market.     

Post earnings announcement drift and the roles of drift-enhanced factors in New Zealand

This study examines the profitability of trading on analyst forecast-based earnings surprises during the post announcement period in the New Zealand stock market over the period 1994 to 2008. The results show that a post earnings announcement drift (PEAD) anomaly exists in the New Zealand equity market. A hedge strategy of going long the top quintile of earnings surprise stocks and short the bottom quintile of earnings surprise stocks can generate more than 6% excess return in the 60 days following the earnings announcement. I further test the association between PEAD and several control variables and find that PEAD is increasing in 1) earnings surprise defined relative to past earnings, and 2) the level of arbitrage risk. Interestingly, I do not find evidence of a positive relation between PEAD and revenue surprise after controlling for earnings surprise as documented in the United States (Jegadeesh and Livnat, 2006). There is also no evidence that the 2002 Disclosure Reform in the New Zealand Stock Exchange reduced the magnitude of PEAD.     

Volatility Information Trading in the Option Market

This paper investigates informed trading on stock volatility in the option market. We construct non-market maker net demand for volatility from the trading volume of individual equity options and find that this demand is informative about the future realized volatility of underlying stocks. We also find that the impact of volatility demand on option prices is positive. More importantly, the price impact increases by 40% as informational asymmetry about stock volatility intensifies in the days leading up to earnings announcements and diminishes to its normal level soon after the volatility uncertainty is resolved.     

The impact of derivatives hedging on the stock market: Evidence from Taiwan’s covered warrants market

We examine the impact of derivatives hedging on the spot market using accurate hedge ratios of covered warrants traded in the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE). Results present significant positive abnormal returns and trading volumes before the announcement of a warrant’s issuance, and the effect is stronger when the hedging demand is larger. Moreover, a significantly positive relationship exists between stock return volatility and the price elasticity of hedging demand. Finally, we observe a significantly negative price effect upon the underlying stock after a call warrant has expired in-the-money due to the liquidation of hedging portfolios.     

Volatility increases Subsequent to NYSE and AMEX Stock Splits

The post-split increase in daily returns volatility is less for AMEX stocks than for NYSE stocks. The exchange trading location is a significant factor in explaining the volatility shift even after stock price and firm size are considered. Furthermore, when measured on a weekly basis, there is no increase in AMEX stocks' returns volatility. These results suggest that measurement errors created by bid-ask spreads and the 1/8 effect, and also one or more of the elements that make the NYSE different from the AMEX, explain why the estimated volatility of daily stock returns increases after the ex split date.     

Revenue surprises and stock returns

This paper examines the relation between revenue surprises and contemporaneous and future stock returns. It also investigates whether analysts update their earnings forecasts in response to revenue surprises in a timely and unbiased fashion. Stock price reaction on the earnings announcement date is significantly related to contemporaneous as well as past revenue surprises. After controlling for earnings surprises, we find significant abnormal returns in the post-announcement period for stocks that have large revenue surprises. Although analysts revise their forecasts of future earnings in response to revenue surprises, they are slow to incorporate fully the information in revenue surprises.