Equity Options Market Research Articles

Excess cash and equity option liquidity

AbstractWe examine the relation between excess corporate cash holdings and equity option market liquidity from January 3, 2005 to December 31, 2019. We show that the level of cash reserve in excess of what can be captured by firm characteristics significantly explains stock option liquidity. Trading volume and option open interest increase in companies with a higher magnitude of excess cash, whereas the bid–ask spreads of stock options decline in excess cash. Our findings confirm the theoretical prediction that excess cash improves option market liquidity as it reduces adverse selection problems caused by uncertainty in firm valuations. This relation remains more pronounced with put options, out‐of‐the‐money contracts, and short‐maturity contracts. In addition, excess cash has a stronger impact on option liquidity within firms that have a greater degree of informed trading and during high‐volatility periods in financial markets. Our results show that when uncertainty about firm prospects rises, excess cash becomes more valuable and affects option market liquidity.

Is Firm-Level Political Risk Priced in the Equity Option Market?

Abstract We find a negative relation between firm-level political risk and future delta-hedged equity option returns. A quasi-natural experiment based on Brexit corroborates this finding since after the referendum there is a decrease in the option returns of the positive-Brexit exposure firms. The predictability is driven by the jump risk component of political uncertainty, is more pronounced in periods of high intermediary constraints, and is stronger among high-demand pressure options but weaker among politically active firms. Finally, consistent with a risk-based explanation, investors of options on politically risky firms are compensated with high returns when major unexpected political shocks happen. (JEL G13, G18)

Belief distortion near 52W high and low: Evidence from Indian equity options market

AbstractWe examine investors' behavioral biases and preferences in the options market near 52‐week high and low (52W‐H/L) using Indian options market data. We document that as the stock price approaches 52W high (low), the skewness of risk‐neutral density (RND), and out‐of‐the‐money (OTM) call volume decreases (increases), while OTM put volume increases (decreases). After crossing the 52W high (low), the skewness of RND and OTM call volume increases (decreases), while OTM put volume decreases (increases). The effects are economically large and significant. Our findings provide evidence consistent with the anchoring theory of belief distortion near 52W‐H/L. There is no evidence of preference distortion, contrary to what prospect theory predicts.

The Leland Model as a Consistent Framework for Analytic Valuation of Equity and Options on Equity

Although there are many well-established models for valuing corporate debt and equity, option pricing literature rarely takes these models as their starting point. This happens in part because such models value equity as an option on the firm’s assets, and options on equity then become compound options that cannot generally be priced analytically. In this article, we present a consistent and unified framework for valuing equity and options on equity within the 1994 Leland model. We show that it is possible to value not only European call and put options but also exotic options such as barriers and lookbacks in closed form. Moreover, we show that the model produces an implied volatility skew that is typically observed in the equity options market.

Informed trading of out‐of‐the‐money options and market efficiency

AbstractWe examine the stock return predictability of out‐of‐the‐money (OTM) put‐to‐call trading volume ratio (OTMPC). Our numerical analysis predicts that in the US equity option market, informed investors rarely write OTM options because the leverage effect is not sufficient to compensate for transaction costs. OTMPC thus captures the informed investors’ OTM put purchase volume relative to their OTM call purchase volume. After controlling for existing empirical proxies for informed option trading, we find that OTMPC predicts future stock returns and corporate news. The return predictability offers implementable stock portfolio strategies. Our findings suggest that market inefficiency can emerge from uninformed investors’ limited knowledge about how transaction costs influence the trading strategies of informed investors.

The price of COVID-19-induced uncertainty in the options market

This paper investigates the pricing of uncertainty associated with the COVID-19 responses for 28 countries/regions in 2020. We find that such uncertainty is priced in the equity options market. Specifically, there is a price premium for options that provide protection to hedge against price risk, variance risk, and tail risk caused by a variety of World Health Organization (WHO) announcements and the lockdown announcements from governments on COVID-19. Moreover, such options tend to be more expensive when the governments place stricter restrictions.

Risk-Neutral Market Simulation

We develop a risk-neutral spot and equity option market simulator for a single underlying, under which the joint market process is a martingale. We leverage an efficient low-dimensional representation of the market which preserves no static arbitrage, and employ neural spline flows to simulate samples which are free from conditional drifts and are highly realistic in the sense that among all possible risk-neutral simulators, the obtained risk-neutral simulator is the closest to the historical data with respect to the Kullback-Leibler divergence. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and highlight both drift removal and fidelity of the calibrated simulator.

The implied volatility smirk in the Chinese equity options market

This paper analyzes the implied volatility (IV) curve of the SSE 50 ETF options, the first equity options market in mainland China. We quantify the IV curve and find it exhibits a right-skewed smirk shape, which is different to the left-skewed IV smirk shape shown in the international options markets and offshore options based on ETFs tracking large Chinese equities. Consistent with the right-skewed smirk shape, a delta-neutral option writing strategy generates higher profits from writing call options than put options. Finally, we show that the level and slope factors of the IV curve are related to investor sentiment.

Disagreement in the Equity Options Market and Stock Returns

Abstract We estimate investor disagreement from synthetic long and short stock trades in the equity options market. We show that high disagreement predicts low stock returns after positive earnings surprises and high stock returns after negative earnings surprises. The negative effect is stronger for high-beta stocks and stocks that are more difficult to sell short. In the cross-section of all stocks and the subset of the 500 largest companies, high disagreement robustly predicts low monthly and weekly stock returns.

Ideal Investment Protection in Optimistic Perceptions: Evidence From the Indian Equity Options Market

The study is an experiential assessment on the ability of the Indian equity options market to resist the adverse impacts that arise from unexpected changes in the underlying equity market, focusing on two distinct investor perceptions within optimistic dimension in the market, viz. the recovery phase and the growth phase, which were evident in the Indian market scenario post the period of financial upheavals due to global economic crisis during the latter half of 2000s. The risk mitigation capability of the options is examined in terms of long run integration and short run re-equilibrating relationship shown by near month calls and puts with varied stages of exercisability with their underlying equity segment in the National Stock Exchange of India. Further, the ideal hedge sizes of the options and the hedge gains resulting from affecting them in the investment profile are identified under minimum variance framework, using Diagonal BEKK GARCH. The results are indicative that all different options segments express to have the expected resistance ability during both bullish perceptions under consideration, and prove that optimal use of options with equity portfolio provides assured hedge gains in terms of reduction in un-anticipatable variances.

Is firm-level political risk priced in the equity option market?

We provide evidence that firm-level political risk exhibits a robust negative association with subsequent delta-hedged option returns. The effect holds both in a cross-sectional and in a time-series context. Furthermore, it is more pronounced among firms with high default probability, high information uncertainty, and high option demand, while it is mitigated for politically active firms. Using Brexit as a quasi-natural experiment and a difference-in-difference approach, we find that after the referendum option returns significantly decrease for the firms that are exposed to Brexit risk. Overall, we show that political risk is an important determinant of individual stocks’ volatility risk premium.

Is Indian Equity Options Market Suitable for Hedging When the Options Payoff Structure Changes?

Investments are essential as the growth of the stock market denoted through increased investments results in the growth of the economy. But they are always subject to various risks in the market. These risks are to be mitigated for the development of an efficient economic system by the market itself. Apart from the stock segment, the Indian financial market is a home for futures and options segments that facilitate the hedging of risks involved in the investments. For considering any derivative market as a hedging tool, one of the prerequisites is the presence of integration between such derivative market and its underlying market. The present study focuses on testing the relationship between Indian stock market and the options market, represented by NSE Nifty 50 index and index options on it respectively, to know whether the options segment is suitable for hedging the risks implicit with investments in the stock market, with substantial consideration to payoff structure of the market denoted by different moneyness groups viz.

Learning about Uncertainty from Options Trading

We hypothesize that managers can learn about a firm’s investment uncertainty from the equity options market. Using a US sample of 1,865 merger and acquisition attempts during 1996–2015, we show that the volatility implied from an acquiring firm’s equity options around an acquisition announcement negatively predicts the likelihood of acquisition attempts being completed. This negative impact is robust to controls for stock prices, alternative uncertainty proxies, and endogeneity tests. Moreover, we document three economic channels, finding that the effect of option implied volatility on deal completion is stronger among acquirers in which disinvestment is more difficult, whose managers are more susceptible to risk aversion, and whose options market is expected to have more information. Our findings suggest that options trading functions as a feedback mechanism to help managers learn about riskiness when making investment decisions.

Excess Cash and Equity Option Liquidity

This study examines the relationships between excess corporate cash holding and equity option market liquidity over the period from Jan 3, 2005 to Dec 31, 2019. We show that the level of cash reserve in excess of what can be captured by firm characteristics significantly explains the liquidity of stock options. Trading volume and open interests of the options increase in companies with a higher magnitude of excess cash while the bid-ask spreads of stock options decline in excess cash. Our findings confirm the theoretical predictions by Gopalan et al. (2012) that excess cash improves market liquidity as it reduces adverse selection problems caused by the uncertainty in firm valuations. This relation remains more pronounced with put options, out-of-the money contracts or those with short maturities. In addition, excess cash has stronger impacts on option liquidity within firms with a greater degree of informed trading or during periods of high volatility in financial markets. Our result shows that when the uncertainty about prospects of firms rises, excess cash becomes more valuable and affects option market liquidity.

Deep Hedging: Learning to Simulate Equity Option Markets

We construct realistic equity option market simulators based on generative adversarial networks (GANs). We consider recurrent and temporal convolutional architectures, and assess the impact of state compression. Option market simulators are highly relevant because they allow us to extend the limited real-world data sets available for the training and evaluation of option trading strategies. We show that network-based generators outperform classical methods on a range of benchmark metrics, and adversarial training achieves the best performance. Our work demonstrates for the first time that GANs can be successfully applied to the task of generating multivariate financial time series.

Disagreement in the Equity Options Market and Stock Returns

We estimate investor disagreement from synthetic long and short stock trades in the equity options market. We show that high disagreement predicts low stock returns after positive earnings surprises and high stock returns after negative earnings surprises. The negative effect is stronger for high-beta stocks and stocks that are more difficult to sell short. In the cross-section of all stocks and the subset of the 500 largest companies, high disagreement robustly predicts low monthly and weekly stock returns.

A Closer Look at the Disposition Effect in U.S. Equity Option Markets

The authors explore whether the disposition effect occurs in U.S. equity option markets. The disposition effect implies past winning securities will be undervalued and past losing securities will be overvalued. By adapting Grinblatt and Han’s unrealized capital gains proxy to the option markets, the authors document a significant relationship between option capital gains overhang and option returns. They also find open interest decreases as option capital gains overhang increases, consistent with a disposition effect in U.S. equity options. This evidence contributes to the emerging literature on behavioral finance in derivative securities.

Distress cost and corporate financing policy: evidence from the equity options market

ABSTRACTThis study examines the link between distress cost and corporate financing policy through the lens of the equity options market. Four features stand out. First, the cost of distress is comparable to the tax shield from debt financing. Second, the results provide evidence that ordinary least-squares estimates understate the impact of market leverage on default risk. Third, consistent with the information models of debt maturity, firms with higher default probability use more long-term debt. Finally, more distressed firms rely on secured debt to a greater extent. Overall, the results support the trade-off theory of capital structure.

A smiling bear in the equity options market and the cross‐section of stock returns

AbstractWe propose a measure for the convexity of an option‐implied volatility curve, IV convexity, as a forward‐looking measure of risk‐neutral tail‐risk contribution to the perceived variance of underlying equity returns. Using equity options data for individual US‐listed stocks during 2000–2013, we find that the average realized 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.

Who benefits in a crisis? Evidence from hedge fund stock and option holdings

We use a unique data set of hedge fund long equity and equity option positions to investigate a significant lockup-related premium earned during the tech bubble (1999–2001) and financial crisis (2007–2009). Net fund flows are significantly greater among lockup funds during crisis and noncrisis periods. Managers of hedge funds with locked-up capital trade opportunistically against flow-motivated trades of non-lockup managers, consistent with a hypothesis of rent extraction in providing crisis era liquidity. The success of this opportunistic trading is concentrated during periods of high borrowing costs, in less liquid stock markets, and is enhanced by hedging in the equity option market.