This paper attempts to distinguish hedging versus speculative derivative usage by U.S. bank holding companies, and whether that has implications for future performance. This is accomplished by implementing a multi-step procedure that relates the implied volatility from traded options on these...

Insurers in the U.S. hold over $5 trillion in assets, with approximately $1 trillion of these assets held in equities. While insurers manage underwriting risk with reinsurance, insurers increasingly manage asset risk with options, futures, and other derivatives. We demonstrate, using all options...

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) mirror an existing index by holding the same component stocks and matching the weighting scheme. ETFs offer services and investment flexibility that indexed mutual funds generally do not. We expect that if ETFs offer additional benefits over index funds, such as...

Executive stock options (ESOs) have been extensively examined. An unexplored but highly relevant issue is how the options are valued and what information this valuation provides to the market. Understanding ESOs valuation is difficult because there is no set method. Using a model such as...

Using three natural experiments, we test the hypothesis that investor overconfidence produces overpricing of high idiosyncratic volatility stocks in the presence of binding short-sale constraints. We study three events: IPO lockup expirations, option introductions, and the 2008 short-sale ban on...

Current literature is inconclusive as to whether idiosyncratic risk influences future stock returns and the direction of the impact. Prior studies are based on historical realized volatility. Implied volatilities from option prices represent the market's assessment of future risk and are likely...

This paper examines whether a New Year's gambling preference of individual investors impacts prices and returns of assets with lottery features. We find that, in January, call options have higher demand than put options, especially among small investors. In addition, relative to at-the-money...

Prior studies find that the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) predicts returns on broad stock market indices. This is an important finding because it suggests implied volatilities measured by VIX are a risk factor affecting security returns or an indicator of market inefficiency. We extend prior work...

Since the 1987 crash, option prices have exhibited a strong negative skew, implying higher implied volatility for out-of-the-money puts than at- and in-the-money puts. This has resulted in incorporating multiple jumps and stochastic volatility within the data generating process to improve the...

We explore whether changes in stock return skewness and kurtosis, as implied in option prices preceding earnings announcements, provide information about subsequent stock and option returns through the announcement. We demonstrate that the change in skewness and kurtosis can be related to...