Using prices of both S&P 500 options and recently introduced VIX options, we study asset pricing implications of volatility risk. While pointing out the joint pricing kernel is not identified nonparametrically, we propose model-free estimates of marginal pricing kernels of the market return and...

Option market activity increases by more than 10 percent in the four days before quarterly earnings announcements. We show that the direction of this pre-announcement trading foreshadows subsequent earnings news. Specifically, we find option traders initiate a greater proportion of long (short)...

In this paper, we consider hedging and pricing of illiquid options on an untradable underlying asset, where an alternative instrument is used as a hedging instrument. We assume that the trade price of the hedging instrument is subject to market impacts caused by the hedger, as well as the...

We formally compare two versions of the market Variance Risk Premium (VRP) measured in the equity and option markets. Both VRPs follow common patterns and respond similarly to changes in volatility and economic conditions. However, we reject the null hypothesis that they are identical and find...

Are options on more volatile assets expected to provide higher or lower return? Using analytics, we show the ambiguous nature of the answer when the volatility differential is due to the systematic/priced risk. Here the difference in the expected return of the assets also matters and has an...

This paper shows that option trading does not reduce overpricing in the underlying stock market. A popular view in the literature is that options lower short selling cost, therefore, they allow stock prices to better incorporate negative information and opinions. Testing such a hypothesis is...

In this paper we study the intraday dynamics of E-mini S&P 500 index futures and the option trading strategies employing the weekly E-mini S&P 500 index futures options. We make a number of contributions to the literature in the area of intra-day equity index futures return predictability and...

An anchoring-adjusted option pricing model is developed in which the volatility of the underlying stock return is used as a starting point that gets adjusted upwards to form expectations about call option volatility. I show that the anchoring price lies within the bounds implied by risk-averse...

This paper assesses variance risk premium and forecasts out-of-sample VIX under GARCH(1,1), GJR, and Heston-Nandi models. With the date-t GARCH parameters estimated in a moving window fashion from 3,500 daily returns of the S&P 500 index, a hypothetical date-t VIX turns out to be below the...

I show that the inventory risk faced by market-makers has a first-order effect on option prices. I introduce a simple approach that decomposes the price impact of trades into inventory risk and asymmetric information components. While both components are large for option trades, the inventory...