Levered and inverse ETPs are designed to provide geared long and short exposures to thedaily returns of different benchmark indexes. The benchmarks can be any reference index.The popular ones are on stocks, bonds, commodities and volatility. The problem with theseproducts is that they are not...

A firm's incentive to disclose has been linked empirically to a range of variables including information asymmetry, agency costs, political costs, and proprietary costs. While the intuition underlying each of the variables seems plausible, Verrecchia (2001) argues that disclosure models can be...

This paper provides a method for testing for regime differences when regimes are long-lasting. Standard testing procedures are generally inappropriate because regime persistence causes a spurious regression problem - a problem that has led to incorrect inference in a broad range of studies...

Whether Republican or Democratic presidents are better for the the stock market has been closely scrutinized for years. Although much of it is discussed only in casual terms, a recent academic study by Santa Clara and Valkanov (2003) documenting that the market does significantly better under...

When the stock market has experienced a long period of rising prices, many investors begin to worry that it is about to fall. They may buy put options, only to kick themselves as a further advance in prices takes their protective puts far out of the money. One solution is a bear market warrant...

A number of seemingly unrelated commodities experienced simultaneous price spikes recently. Congress investigated the increase in prices and concluded that the price increases were not attributable to fundamentals but rather to commodity index investing. The purpose of this study is to evaluate...

The terms of exchange-traded stock option contracts are usually adjusted when corporate actions take place. These adjustments are made to safeguard the value of the outstanding option contracts. Recently, a new type of corporate event has appeared—levered and inverse exchange-traded product...

Recently, commodity index investing has come under attack. A Staff Report by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation (hereafter, the “subcommittee report”) “…finds that there is significant and persuasive evidence to conclude that these commodity index traders, in the...

In the recent weeks of market turmoil, financial news services have begun routinely reporting the level of the CBOE's Market Volatility Index or quot;VIXquot;, for short. While this new practice is healthy in the sense that investors are asking for more information in helping to assess the state...

In the U.S., exchange-traded options are unprotected from cash dividend payments on the underlying stock. Consequently, it may become optimal to exercise deep in-the-money call options just prior to the ex-dividend day. In this study, we examine the extent to which option holders fail to...