We study the real-time characteristics and drivers of jumps in option prices. To this end, we employ high frequency data from the 24-hour E-mini S&P 500 options market. We find that option prices do not jump simultaneously across strikes and maturities and are uncorrelated with jumps in the...

We use daily positions of futures market participants to identify informed traders. These data cover the period from 2000 to mid-2009 and contain 8,921 unique traders. We identify between 94 and 230 traders as overnight informed and 91 as intraday informed with little overlap between these two...

We derive a general expression for the value of information to a price-taking investor in a dynamic environment and provide a framework for its estimation. We study the value of both private and public information and break it down into its instrumental and psychic parts. To illustrate, we...

We investigate whether the spread of corporate debt contacts can be explained by their ultimate recovery rates. Using the actual realized recovery rates of defaulted debt instruments issued in the U.S. from 1962 to 2007, we find that recovery rate is reflected in the spread at issuance, and that...

The unmediated call auction is a useful trading mechanism to aggregate dispersedinformation. Its ability to incorporate information of a single informed insider,however, is less well understood. We analyse this question by presenting a simplecall auction game where both auction prices and limit...

Generalizing the idea that price momentum can be explained by different levels of uncertainty inherent in the information structure, we implement signal-specific differences in uncertainty in a Kyle type model of strategic trading. We derive the equilibrium in a single-auction setting as well as...

We explain how the common practice of size-discovery trade detracts from overallfinancial market efficiency. At each of a series of size-discovery sessions, traders report theirdesired trades, generating allocations of the asset and cash that rely on the most recent exchangeprice. Traders can...

This paper develops a tractable real options framework to analyze the eects of asym-metric information on investment and nancing decisions when rms require externalfunds to nance investment. Our analysis shows that corporate insiders can signal theirprivate information to outside investors using...

We develop a dynamic model of corporate investment and financing decisions in whichcorporate insiders have superior information about the firm's growth prospects. We show thatrms with positive private information can credibly signal their type to outside investors usingthe timing of corporate...

The weekly release of the U.S. inventory level by the DOE-EIA is known as the market mover in the U.S. oil futures market and to be a significant piece of information for all world oil markets in which the WTI is a price benchmark. We uncover suspicious trading patterns in the WTI futures...