Volume,volatility and information linkages in the stock and option markets

This paper examines the relationship between option trading activity and stock market volatility. Although the option market is uniquely suited for trading on volatility information, there is little analysis on how trading activity in this market is linked to stock price volatility. The bulk of the discussion tends to focus on whether trading activity in the stock market is informative about stock volatility. To analyze the information in option trading activity for stock market volatility, a sample of 15 stocks with the highest option trading volume is selected. For each stock, it is noted that the trading activities in the put and call option markets have significant explanatory power for stock market volatility. In addition, the results indicate that the call option trading activity has a stronger impact on stock volatility compared with that of the put options. Our results demonstrate that information and sentiment in the option market is useful for the estimation of stock market volatility. Also, the significance of the effects of option trading activity on stock price volatility is observed to be comparable to that of stock market trading activity. Furthermore, the persistence and asymmetric effects in the volatility of some stocks tend to disappear once option trading activity is taken into account.     

Overconfidence among option traders

The investor overconfidence theory predicts a direct relationship between market‐wide turnover and lagged market return. However, previous research has examined this prediction in the equity market, we focus on trading in the options market. Controlling for stock market cross‐sectional volatility, stock idiosyncratic risk, and option market volatility, we find that option trading turnover is positively related to past stock market return. In addition, call option turnover and call to put ratio are also positively associated with the past stock market return. These findings are consistent with the overconfidence theory. We also find that overconfident investors trade more in the options market than in the equity market. We rule out explanations other than investor overconfidence, such as momentum trading and varying risk preferences, for our findings.     

Volatility spreads and earnings announcement returns

Prior research documents that volatility spreads predict stock returns. If the trading activity of informed investors is an important driver of volatility spreads, then the predictability of stock returns should be more pronounced during major information events. This paper investigates whether the predictability of equity returns by volatility spreads is stronger during earnings announcements. Volatility spreads are measured by the implied volatility differences between pairs of strike price and expiration date matched put and call options and capture price pressures in the option market. During a two-day earnings announcement window, the abnormal returns to the quintile that includes stocks with relatively expensive call options is more than 1.5% greater than the abnormal returns to the quintile that includes stocks with relatively expensive put options. This result is robust after measuring volatility spreads in alternative ways and controlling for firm characteristics and lagged equity returns. The degree of announcement return predictability is stronger when volatility spreads are measured using more liquid options, the information environment is more asymmetric, and stock liquidity is low.     

Executive compensation and informed trading in acquiring firms around merger announcements

This paper analyzes informed trading in acquiring firms through (stock) merger announcements. We show that pre-announcement abnormal option volumes in acquiring firms strongly increase ahead of a stock merger (by approximately 300%). Furthermore, we show that the direction of option trades (puts or calls) prior to an announcement can predict post-announcement stock returns. Our results also indicate that higher wealth-to-performance sensitivities of top executives are related to higher abnormal put than call option trading before stock merger announcements. Overall, our results support the view that top executives have a hedging motive. They tend to purchase protection against, e.g., confounding (negative) information policies and/or empire-building mergers with negative NPVs, in order to avoid short-term salary losses (lower bonuses, lower stock options, etc.).     

The Cross-Sectional Relationship Between Trading Costs and Lead/Lag Effects in Stock & Option Markets

Prior empirical research has failed to settle the question of lead/lag effects between stock and option markets. This study investigates the relation between cross-sectional differences in trading costs and intraday lead/lag effects in stock and option markets. The data for the study comprise 19 firms sampled at five-minute intervals over a two-month period. Consistent with a trading cost hypothesis, results indicate overall stock market leading behavior. However, the lead appears to be related to option market trading costs. This study uses an error correction model framework to investigate the lead/lag effects. This approach provides information on both the long run equilibrating process as well as the short term interactions between stock and option markets. Information regarding the long run equilibrating process is important to the overall understanding of lead/lag effects and cannot be determined from time series models of differenced data. Specific criteria for assessing lead/lag effects in cointegrated series are also proposed. One advantage of these new criteria is their ability to identify leading behavior in the presence of feedback. All models are estimated with quote data and are constructed to eliminate overnight effects. Hence, the results are robust to previously identified distortions due to closing, overnight, and potential non-trading effects. However, caution should be employed in generalizing the results as the study covers a two-month trading period for a limited number of firms.     

Conference calls around merger and acquisition announcements: Do they reduce information asymmetry? UK Evidence

This paper examines conference call meetings held around merger and acquisition (M&A) announcements in the UK market. Our main findings indicate that conference calls not only facilitate the smoother transmission of M&A-related information in the stock market and smooth the rate of the information flow to the market, but also they reduce informed trading through option markets before M&A events. We also find that there is an inverse relation of analysts’ forecast error and conference call probability, that firms initiate conference calls during M&As when their transactions are large and are facing liquidity constraints, and that the probability of a firm holding a conference call around an M&A is strongly and inversely related to the existence of traded equity options on its stock.     

Option trading: Information or differences of opinion?

This paper investigates the motive of option trading. We show that option trading is mostly driven by differences of opinion, a finding different from the current literature that attempts to attribute option trading to information asymmetry. Our conclusion is based on three pieces of empirical evidence. First, option trading around earnings announcements is speculative in nature and mostly dominated by small, retail investors. Second, around earnings announcements, the pre-announcement abnormal turnovers of options seem to predict the post-announcement abnormal stock returns. However, once we control for the pre-announcement stock returns, the predictability completely disappears, implying that option traders simply take cues from the stock market and turn around to speculate in the options market. Third, cross-section and time-series regressions reveal that option trading is also significantly explained by differences of opinion. While informed trading is present in stocks, it is not detected in options.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Pricing of Bank Issued Options versus Options Exchange Options

Since 1998, large investment banks have become active as issuers of options, generally referred to as call warrants or bank‐issued options. This has led to an interesting situation in the Netherlands, where simultaneously call warrants are traded on the stock exchange, and long‐term call options are traded on the options exchange. Both entitle their holders to buy shares of common stock. We start with a direct comparison between call warrants and call options, written on the same stock and with the same exercise price, but where the call option has a longer time to maturity. In 13 out of 16 cases we find that the call warrants are priced higher, which is a clear violation of basic option pricing rules. In the second part of the analysis we use option pricing models to compare the pricing of call warrants and call options. If implied standard deviations from options are used to price the call warrants, we find that the call warrants are strongly overpriced during the first five trading days. The average overpricing is between 25 and 30%. Only a small part of the overpricing can be explained by rational arguments such as transaction costs. We suggest that the overvaluation can be explained by a combination of an active financial marketing by the banks and the framing effect.     

A TRANSACTION DATA STUDY OF DAY-OF-THE-WEEK AND INTRADAY PATTERNS IN OPTION RETURNS

In this study common stock, call, and put option returns from 1983 to 1985 are examined by day of the week and time of day. Stock and call return patterns generally are similar, both having relatively low weekend returns and relatively high returns late in the trading day. Put options have high weekend returns, but do not have low returns late in the trading day.     

The Information Content of Insider Call Options Trading

We examine the information content of two forms of insider trading, insider buy-, and sell-call transactions. We find that the information carried by stand-alone call purchases has only a short-term impact on stock prices, but over a longer term, call purchases accompanied by stock purchases have a positive impact. Call purchases accompanied by stock sales signal negative information about the firm, suggesting that some insiders use complicated trading strategies to manipulate the market. Insider sell-call transactions are followed by negative returns, indicating these transactions are driven by negative information about the firm.     

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.     

Stock and option market divergence in the presence of noisy information

We examine market behavior of the stock and option markets upon the arrival of noisy information in the form of CNBC’s Mad Money recommendations. If stock and option markets are not equally efficient, they should respond differently to noisy information, with the less efficient market more susceptible to noise. We find that the stock market is less efficient than the option market. The abnormal difference between option-implied and actual stock returns is negative and significant upon exposure to noisy information. This difference may yield an economically significant monthly trading profit of up to 5%. We conclude that the stock market is more susceptible to noisy information than the option market and is therefore less efficient.     

An Empirical Examination of the Return Volatility-Volume Relation in Related Markets: The Case of Stock and Options

This paper empirically examines the impact of option trading on the relation between daily stock return volatility and stock trading volume. For a sample of firms for which options were newly listed on the CBOE from 1982 to 1985, the empirical evidence indicates that there is a structural shift in the relation after option trading is introduced. Also, the findings show that daily stock return volatility is significantly and positively correlated with contemporaneous option volume, but not one-day lagged option volume. These results suggest that contemporaneous option volume may be an important variable in modelling daily stock return volatility and heteroskedasticity.     

Informed Trading in Stock and Option Markets

We investigate the contribution of option markets to price discovery, using a modification of Hasbrouck's (1995) "information share" approach. Based on five years of stock and options data for 60 firms, we estimate the option market's contribution to price discovery to be about 17% on average. Option market price discovery is related to trading volume and spreads in both markets, and stock volatility. Price discovery across option strike prices is related to leverage, trading volume, and spreads. Our results are consistent with theoretical arguments that informed investors trade in both stock and option markets, suggesting an important informational role for options.     

Trading volume in options and common stock around quarterly earnings announcements

This study examines trading in call and put options around quarterly earnings announcements and investigates whether the existence of these options affects the common stock trading volume response to these announcements. We find that the options trading volume reaction to earnings announcements is larger than the corresponding reaction in common stock. Consistent with the idea that options provide an alternative vehicle for trading on information, the existence of these options lowers the level of trading in common stock. Options also appear to offer investors an alternative method of taking short positions, as shown by the symmetric stock market trading volume reaction to good versus bad news for firms with listed options. In contrast, firms without listed options exhibit a larger trading volume response to good news than to bad news of similar magnitude.     

Short sales and put options: Where is the bad news first traded?

Although the literature provides strong evidence supporting the presence of informed trading in both the option and the short equity markets, it is not clear which market attracts more informed trading. Using a unique dataset that covers intraday transaction data in the option and short equity markets, we investigate informed trading in a cross-market environment by explicitly studying the lead–lag relationship between the put net trade volume and short sales of the underlying stock. Our high frequency analysis shows that in general short sales contain more information. However, put options become more informative before the release of negative earnings announcements.     

Option-implied information and quality of patents

This research explores how option-implied information predicts quality of patents. Using several measures of option-implied information, we find that only the option to stock volume (O/S) ratio positively and significantly predicts quality of patents around patent grant announcements. The findings are not entirely driven by information from the stock market and the probability of informed trading. Further investigations show that the predictability of O/S on patent quality is stronger when market sentiment is high, firms have a higher short-sale cost, and the quality of patents is relatively high.     

THE RELATION BETWEEN OPTION MISPRICING AND VOLUME IN THE BLACK-SCHOLES OPTION MODEL

We investigate the relation between mispricing in the Black-Scholes option pricing (BSOP) model and volume in the option market. Our results indicate heavily traded call options are priced more efficiently and have lower mispricing errors than thinly traded options. However, this relation shifts significantly on days when call option trading is high. On high-volume days, the BSOP model mispricing errors are significantly larger than mispricing errors on normal-volume days. We believe large increases in volume may reflect new and changing market information, thus making pricing less efficient in the BSOP model.     

Informed Trading around Merger Announcements: An Empirical Test Using Transaction Volume and Open Interest in Options Market

This paper provides empirical evidence on the level of trading activity in the stock options market prior to the announcement of a merger or an acquisition. Our analysis shows that there is a significant increase in the trading activity of call and put options for companies involved in a takeover prior to the rumor of an acquisition or merger. This result is robust to both the volume of option contracts traded and the open interest. The increased trading suggests that there is a significant level of informed trading in the options market prior to the announcement of a corporate event. In addition, abnormal trading activity in the options market appears to lead abnormal trading volume in the equity market. This finding supports the hypothesis that the options market plays an important role in price discovery.     

VOLATILITY FORECASTS,TRADING VOLUME,AND THE ARCH VERSUS OPTION‐IMPLIED VOLATILITY TRADE‐OFF

We investigate empirically the role of trading volume (1) in predicting the relative informativeness of volatility forecasts produced by autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) models versus the volatility forecasts derived from option prices, and (2) in improving volatility forecasts produced by ARCH and option models and combinations of models. Daily and monthly data are explored. We find that if trading volume was low during period t?1 relative to the recent past, ARCH is at least as important as options for forecasting future stock market volatility. Conversely, if volume was high during period t?1 relative to the recent past, option‐implied volatility is much more important than ARCH for forecasting future volatility. Considering relative trading volume as a proxy for changes in the set of information available to investors, our findings reveal an important switching role for trading volume between a volatility forecast that reflects relatively stale information (the historical ARCH estimate) and the option‐implied forward‐looking estimate.