The effectiveness of any sanction depends on the costs of avoiding its restrictions. We examine whether bearish option strategies were substitutes for short sales during the September 2008 short-sale ban. We find a significant diminution in option volumes and a significant increase in option...

Companies planning a private placement typically gauge the interest of institutional buyers before the offering is publicly announced. Regulators are concerned with this practice, called wall-crossing, as it might invite insider trading, especially when the potential investors are hedge funds....

We show that short sellers are constrained by their losses. Using unique data on the mark-to-market profits of short sellers of U.S. stocks, we document an asymmetric response of short selling to gains versus losses. Short selling substantially falls following large losses but does not respond...

How synchronized are short sellers? We examine a unique dataset on the distribution of pro fits across a stock's short sellers and find evidence of substantial dispersion in the initiation of their positions. Consistent with this dispersion reflecting "synchronization risk," i.e., uncertainty...

Convertible arbitrageurs combine long positions in convertibles with short positions in the underlying stock. We exploit worldwide differences in short-sale constraints to examine whether convertible arbitrage short selling creates downward pressure on convertible issuers' stock prices. Using a...

While convertible offerings announced between 1984 and 1999 induce average abnormal stock returns of −1.69%, convertible announcement effects over the period 2000–2008 are more than twice as negative (−4.59%). We hypothesize that this evolution is attributable to a shift in the convertible...