A classic result by Merton (1973) is that, except just before expiration or dividend payments, one should never exercise a call option and never convert a convertible bond. We show theoretically that this result is overturned when investors face frictions. Early option exercise can be optimal...

Conventional estimates of costs of taking liquidity in options markets are large. Nonetheless, options trading volume is high. We resolve this puzzle by showing that options price changes are predictable at high frequency and many traders time executions by buying (selling) when the option fair...

Prior research shows that splitting firms earn positive abnormal returns and that they experience an increase in stock return volatility. By examining option-implied volatility, we assess option traders' perceptions on return and volatility changes arising from stock splits. We find that they do...

We document empirically that the returns from shorting out-of-the-money S&P 500 put options are concentrated in the few days preceding their expiration. Back-month options generate almost no returns, and front-month options do so only towards the end of the option cycle. The concentration of the...

Many financial instruments are designed with embedded leverage such as options and leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs). Embedded leverage alleviates investors' leverage constraints and, therefore, we hypothesize that embedded leverage lowers required returns. Consistent with this hypothesis,...

The BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on April 20, 2010, leading to an unprecedented environmental and financial disaster. This paper details responses in the financial markets for BP securities, including stock, bonds, options, and credit default swaps. Following the disaster BP shares...

We study how equity option trading affects the market risk premium. We find that a measure of aggregate call order imbalance (ACIB), defined as the cross-sectional average of the difference between open-buy and open-sell volume, negatively forecasts future stock market returns significantly from...

This paper investigates whether fundamental accounting information is appropriately priced in the options market. We find that fundamental accounting signals exhibit incremental predictive power with respect to future option returns above and beyond what is captured by implied and historical...