We study how the excess market return depends on the time of the day using E-mini S&P 500 futures that are actively traded for almost 24 hours. Strikingly, four hours around European open account for the entire average market return. This period's returns are consistently positive in every year,...

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...

We find that short sale costs eliminate the abnormal profits generated by asset pricing anomalies. While many anomalies persist out-of-sample, they cannot be profitably exploited due to stock borrow fees. Using a comprehensive sample of 162 anomalies, we show that the average of these long-short...

We use “tick-by-tick” quote data for 39 liquid U.S. stocks and options on them, and focus on events when the two markets disagree about the stock price in the sense that the option-implied stock price obtained from the put-call parity relation is inconsistent with the actual stock price....

Closing auctions set daily closing prices for U.S. stocks and account for a striking 7.5% of daily volume in 2018, up from 3.1% in 2010. We study the causes and implications of this major trend. Difference-in-difference analyses suggest that closing volume is fueled directly and indirectly by...

The option implied volatility spread and skew predict stock returns. These variables also reflect the expected cost of borrowing stock to sell short. The stock borrowing fee implied from options prices predicts changes in quoted borrowing fees and stock returns; however, the volatility spread...