The Enron Bankruptcy: When did the options market in Enron lose it’s smirk?

The Enron Corporation went from a $65 billion dollar market capitalization to bankruptcy in just 16 months. Using statistical techniques for extracting the implied probability distributions built into option prices, I examine the market’s expectation of Enron’s risk of collapse. I find that the options market remained far too optimistic about the stock until just weeks before their bankruptcy filing. I thank Oded Palmon and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. JEL Classification G13 · G14