Trading costs for listed options: The implications for market efficiency

This paper reexamines the anomalous evidence concerning the efficiency of the listed options exchanges. We focus on the structure of trading costs in that market, and note several costs which generally have been ignored, the largest of which is the bid-ask spread. When we adjust the published trading rules for our estimates of these trading costs, the reported abnormal returns are eliminated.     

Effective credit costs in retail financial markets: Leasing versus borrowing

This study examines reported credit cost information in the automobile sales market to determine if vehicle leasing really is cheaper than installment borrowing. In addition, the study evaluates the accuracy of credit cost data furnished to consumers by commercial banks, vehicle leasing firms, and automobile dealers to gauge whether any systematic differences exist in the accuracy of reported credit cost information. Results of the study suggest that the cost of leasing is significantly different from borrowing, yet neither financing alternative is unilaterally cheaper than the other. In addition, suppliers of credit in consumer finance markets routinely and significantly understate effective credit costs reported to consumers.     

Information flows between non-deliverable forward (NDF) and spot markets: Evidence from Korean currency

This paper investigates the interrelation and information flows between the Won–Dollar spot and offshore forward, i.e., NDF markets. In particular, this paper focuses on the impact of the reform in the Korean exchange rate systems, which occurred in December 1997 in response to the currency crisis, on the relation between the two markets. Using the augmented GARCH formulation, this paper finds that during the pre-reform period a mean spillover effect exists from the spot to the NDF market but not vice versa, and a volatility spillover effect exists in both directions. After the reform, however, the results are reversed and a mean spillover effect exists from the NDF to the spot market. Also, the volatility spillover effect exists only in the same direction. These findings suggest that there are information flows between the two markets, and the reform has changed the direction of the dynamic relation.     

Uncertainty of trading rules in currency markets: an application of non-parametric bootstrapping

The problem of measuring the precision of signals generated by fundamental macroeconomic models is not trivial. In this paper, we suggest three different approaches for the estimation of the true and unknown distribution of the population signal. We apply the bootstrapping procedure described by Efron and Tibshirani (Stat. Sci. 1 (1986) 54) to estimate the empirical distribution of the signal and measure its precision at a specific point in time with confidence intervals. Direct and indirect bootstrapping methods are devised as a way to capture the unknown variability of the signal without altering the information content of the available data. This framework is then implemented for a simple fundamental model for the CAD/$ exchange rate. We find that accounting for skewness and prediction bias affects significantly the shape and width of the estimated confidence intervals around the estimated directional signal, and that the two proposed forms of bootstrapping are more satisfactorily than a naı̈ve Historical approach in highlighting the uncertainty surrounding the model's predictions, and generating a measure of precision in the resulting model's recommendations.     

Industry costs of equity: Evidence from frontier markets

Frontier markets are considered a good destination for international diversification due to their low level of integration with global markets. However, a diversification strategy into frontier markets with respect to country factors does not optimally capture their full diversification potential. Enhancing this strategy by simultaneously incorporating industry factors improves the ability to diversify portfolio risk. We investigate the industry costs of equity in frontier markets using five asset pricing models, taking into account the differences in five regions of frontier markets, namely, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Caribbean, and Asia. Additionally, we examine how well the explanatory factors of developed and emerging markets can explain industry returns in frontier markets. Our results precisely identified two industries in Africa, and two industries in Eastern Europe that exhibit segmentation from developed markets, and two industries in Africa and one industry in Asia show segmentation from emerging markets. However, we document the limited temporal variation in four regions of frontier markets indicating more precise estimates than US, UK, and European ones. Unlike previous studies, our findings show that the time-varying slopes in frontier markets follow a random-walk process.     

Comparing COVID-19 with the GFC: A shockwave analysis of currency markets

I analyze the shockwave effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on currency markets, with a comparison to the global financial crisis (GFC), employing Kapetanios m-break unit root test, investigations of standalone risk measures—downside variance, upside risk, volatility skewness, Gaussian Value at Risk (VaR), historical VaR, modified VaR—and Diebold–Yilmaz volatility spillover analysis. Standalone risk analysis shows that the turmoil in the initial months of COVID-19 was not as severe as that in the GFC. However, examination of co-movements and volatility spillovers illustrates a different scenario. According to the results of the static connectedness measure of Diebold–Yilmaz, the shockwave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the total volatility spillover is about eight times greater than that of the GFC. Among standalone risk measures, the results closest to this finding are obtained from volatility skewness analysis. Additionally, of six foreign exchange rates, the Brazilian real and Turkish lira are the currencies experiencing the greatest increase in received volatility during the GFC and the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. These findings suggest the severe effect of crises on emerging financial markets.     

The total cost of trading Belgian shares: Brussels versus London

Since 1990, London’s SEAQ International (SEAQ-I) has attracted considerable trading volume in Belgian equities. This paper investigates competition between the Brussels CATS market and London’s SEAQ-I. Toward this end, we gathered extensive limit order book data as well as transactions and quotation information. With regard to liquidity (indirect costs), measured by the quoted and effective bid–ask spread, the paper concludes that CATS outperforms SEAQ International for both measures. The effective spread is of course substantially smaller than the quoted spread, with the CATS effective spread showing a U-shaped form. This paper, unique in employing an extensive data set that includes all hidden orders and the whole limit order book, produces results in line with the different market microstructure models. Total trading costs on CATS are lower (higher) for small (large) trade sizes.     

Interdependence and dynamics in currency futures markets: A multivariate analysis of intraday data

This paper investigates long-term interdependencies and short-term dynamics in currency futures utilizing intraday data for six major foreign currencies: the British Pound, Deutsche Mark, Swiss Franc, Australian Dollar, Canadian Dollar, and Japanese Yen. Lack of cointegration (CI) among the foreign exchange futures is found to be the prevailing mode of behavior, but some temporary deviations from the no-CI condition are detected. There is a notable overlap between detected CI relationships and the timing of policy changes, world events, and regime shifts, indicating that the observed CIs are event-driven. The robustness of the CI results is checked with respect to variations in the model, lag structure, data period, sample horizon, and currency basket grouping. Impulse–response functions (IRFs) reveal that currency markets are in general efficient and absorb new information within the day. The interdependence among currencies is found to be asymmetric.     

A note on execution costs for stock index futures: Information versus liquidity effects

This paper examines execution costs and the impact of trade size for stock index futures using price-volume transaction data from the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange. Consistent with Subrahmanyam [Rev. Financ. Stud. 4 (1991) 17] we find that effective half spreads in the stock index futures market are small compared to stock markets, and that trades in stock index futures have only a small permanent price impact. This result is important as it helps to better understand the success of equity index products such as index futures and Exchange Traded Funds. We also find that there is no asymmetry in the post-trade price reaction between purchases and sales for stock index futures across various trade sizes. This result is consistent with the conjecture in Chan and Lakonishok [J. Financ. Econ. 33 (1993) 173] that the asymmetry surrounding block trades in stock markets is due to the high cost of short selling and the general reluctance of traders to short sell on stock markets.     

Dynamics of financial markets and transaction costs: A graph-based study

In financial markets, trading patterns influence the behaviour of arbitrage, surveillance, risk management and pricing returns. The analysis of these patterns is important for defining policies in financial regulation as well as portfolios of international assets. Using financialization as a conceptual framework to understand the current trading patterns of financial markets, this work employs a market graph model for studying the stock indexes of geographically separated financial markets. By using an edge creation condition based on a transaction cost threshold, the resulting market graph features a strong connectivity, some traces of a power law in the degree distribution and an intensive presence of cliques. Furthermore, an inverse relation between transaction costs and maximal clique size is noticed. The market graph model also indicates that infrastructure, sustainability and commodity indexes from APEC, EU and NAFTA affect the behaviour of markets. As a result, the graph approach shows a consistent set of outcomes that mostly explain the financialization dynamics of markets.     

Information, Trading, and Product Market Interactions: Cross-sectional Implications of Informed Trading

I present a simple model of informed trading in which asset values are derived from imperfectly competitive product markets and private information events occur at individual firms. The model predicts that informed traders may have incentives to make information‐based trades in the stocks of competitors, especially when events occur at firms with large market shares. In the context of 759 earnings announcements, I use intraday transactions data to test the hypothesis that net order flow and returns in the stocks of nonannouncing competitors have information content for announcing firms.     

Dual foreign currency markets and the role of expectations: Evidence from the Pacific Basin countries

This paper analyzes the role of expectations about the government policy in the official foreign currency market in determining the black market premium. We use data for the recent float from six emerging markets of the Pacific Basin where active black markets for foreign currency exist, namely, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. To test the impact of anticipated and unanticipated shocks to the official exchange rate on the black market premium, we employ the two-step procedure of Hoffman et al. [Hoffman, D.L., Low, S.A., Schlagenhauf, D.E., 1984. Tests of rationality, neutrality and market efficiency: a Monte Carlo analysis of alternative test statistics. J. Monet. Econ. 14, 339–363] which provides corrected F-statistics and allows us to draw valid inference in the presence of generated regressors. The main finding of our analysis is that anticipated and unanticipated shocks to the official exchange rate have an impact on the black market premium in all six Pacific Basin countries. These results suggest that portfolio balance models provide the suitable theoretical framework for analyzing the behaviour of the black market premium in the markets for foreign currency in the Pacific Basin countries. Furthermore, this implies that economic agents in these countries are sensitive to expected returns in foreign exchange.     

Firm-level effects of asymmetric intervention in foreign exchange markets: Evidence from the Swiss currency floor

In January 2015, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) abandoned the Swiss franc's exchange rate floor against the Euro. This paper is the first to study the firm-level effects of this asymmetric type of central bank intervention in foreign exchange markets. Using weekly stock returns for a sample of Swiss non-financial firms, I find significant reductions in total stock return volatility as well as market risk following the introduction of the currency floor. Accounting for the asymmetric nature of the intervention, I show that the enforcement of this policy solely manifests in a significant reduction of incremental EUR/CHF exchange rate risk exposures of exporting firms, while importing firms experience reductions in proportion to the market portfolio only. Thus, the asymmetric policy design is reflected in asymmetric responses of firm-level currency exposures. All effects, however, do not depend on the extent of business activity in the Eurozone. The overall results suggest that the currency floor was successful in supporting the performance of the Swiss economy by effectively reducing stock return sensitivities to market fluctuations and EUR/CHF exchange rate volatility.     

To intervene,or not to intervene: Monetary policy and the costs of currency crises

In case of speculative attacks, the central banks' decisions to intervene or not to intervene seem to play an important role for the economic costs of currency crises. The central bank can either abstain from intervening or start an intervention, which in turn can be successful or unsuccessful. Therefore, an adequate analysis of the costs of currency crises has to take into account three different types of currency crises: (i) an immediate depreciation without any central bank interventions, (ii) a successful defense, and (iii) an unsuccessful attempt to defend the exchange rate. We find that the decision of the central bank to intervene or to remain passive is risky. If the central bank intervenes and succeeds she can achieve the best growth performance on average. However, if the interventions are not maintained and the currency depreciates the subsequent output loss is particularly severe. Abstaining from an intervention yields a scenario with a relatively small drop in output. Giving in to a speculative attack rather than trying to fight it can thus be a suitable option for a risk-averse central bank.     

Spillovers and connectedness between major precious metals and major currency markets: The role of frequency factor

We examine the volatility spillovers and hedging characteristics between four major precious metals futures (gold, palladium, platinum, and silver) and seven major currencies (Australian dollar, British pound, Canadian dollar, Chinese yuan, Euro, Japanese yen, and Swiss franc) at three time horizons (short term, intermediate term, and long term). We draw our empirical results using the index methods of Diebold and Yilmaz, 2012, Diebold and Yilmaz, 2014 and Baruník and Křehlík (2018). The results show that the precious metals, except for gold, have the largest spillovers on the Australian dollar and Canadian dollar and receive the largest spillovers from these currencies for all the time horizons. In addition, with the exception of gold, the smallest spillovers from the precious metals are exerted on the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan and these currencies have the smallest spillovers to the precious metals. The Japanese yen and Chinese yuan act primarily as spillover receivers, whereas the other currencies act as both spillover transmitters and receivers in different time periods. The spillovers for most of the pairs are asymmetric for all the time horizons, are more pronounced in the short term, and noticeably increase during times of financial and economic uncertainty. Finally, adding precious metal futures contracts to currency portfolios provides diversification and hedging advantages, with hedging effectiveness higher in the short term than in the intermediate and long terms.     

Disclosure versus recognition: the case of expensing stock options

The SFAS 123R comment process generated over 6,500 comment letters, most of which were against the standard’s enactment. This outpouring of emotion indicates that many believe that disclosure versus recognition matters. Our paper provides evidence for the debate whether managers’ discretion, motivation, and accuracy of stock option estimates differ under the recognition and disclosure reporting regimes. We compare firms that are mandatorily forced to recognize stock options expense with those voluntarily choosing to do so. First we find that mandatory firms (versus voluntary) with more intensive stock option granting tend to understate option estimates, especially in the post SFAS123R period. Our results suggest that a higher recognition cost motivates firms for doing so. Second, we find that mandatory firms with lower future operating risk have better accuracy in the post SFAS123R period, as compared to themselves in the pre SFAS123R period and voluntary firms in the post SFAS123 period. Our results support the notion that the informativeness of option estimates explains the level of accuracy. The findings of this paper add to the debate on the benefits of recognizing stock option expenses.     

Measuring the costs and benefits of regulation: Conceptual issues in securities markets

This paper reviews the economic theory of regulation and surveys the empirical evidence on its application to past and recent changes in U.S. securities regulation. The theory provides multiple potential motives for regulation and cautions the empirical researcher against naïve modeling of the costs and benefits of regulatory change. Moreover, the nature of the regulatory process compounds the standard pitfalls of empirical analysis such as endogeneity and confounding events. Productive empirical techniques include the development of cross-sectional predictions of the effects of regulation as well as the use of unregulated control samples. An important avenue for future research is a more refined estimation of the extent to which regulation has unintended consequences.     

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.     

Analytical pricing of discretely monitored Asian-style options: Theory and application to commodity markets

We compute an analytical expression for the moment generating function of the joint random vector consisting of a spot price and its discretely monitored average for a large class of square-root price dynamics. This result, combined with the Fourier transform pricing method proposed by Carr and Madan [Carr, P., Madan D., 1999. Option valuation using the fast Fourier transform. Journal of Computational Finance 2(4), Summer, 61–73] allows us to derive a closed-form formula for the fair value of discretely monitored Asian-style options. Our analysis encompasses the case of commodity price dynamics displaying mean reversion and jointly fitting a quoted futures curve and the seasonal structure of spot price volatility. Four tests are conducted to assess the relative performance of the pricing procedure stemming from our formulae. Empirical results based on natural gas data from NYMEX and corn data from CBOT show a remarkable improvement over the main alternative techniques developed for pricing Asian-style options within the market standard framework of geometric Brownian motion.     

Trading on Private Information: Evidence from Members of Congress

I examine the stock trades of members of Congress and find that over 2004–2010 the buy‐minus‐sell portfolios of powerful Republicans have the highest abnormal returns, exceeding 35% on an annual basis under a one‐week holding period. Among powerful Republicans, the abnormal returns are mostly concentrated in the portfolios of those with less trading experience. I also find that the positive abnormal returns disappear after the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act was passed in 2012. My results imply that the STOCK Act affected politicians' incentives to trade on private information, which they acquired through their power and party membership.