The catastrophic losses from the combined 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons resulted in significant price increases and mass non-renewals in the residential property insurance market in Florida. The public outcry to these insurer decisions yielded a highly salient insurance pricing environment. On...

Recent work has considered whether information is simultaneously reflected in both option and equity markets. We provide new evidence supporting Black's (1975) conjecture that information is first revealed in option markets. Specifically, changes in call and put open interest levels have...

Recent work considers whether information is simultaneously reflected in both option and equity markets. We provide new evidence supporting Black's (Financ. Anal. J. 31:36–72, 1975) conjecture that information is first revealed in option markets. Specifically, changes in call and put...

Using computer based content analysis, we quantify the linguistic tone of quarterly earnings conference calls for publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). After controlling for the earnings announcement, we examine the relation between conference call tone and the contemporaneous...

Prior literature shows that the implied volatility spread between call and put options is a bullish signal for future returns on the underlying stocks. A common interpretation is that a high call-put implied volatility spread indicates favorable private information revealed by informed option...

Using computer based content analysis, we quantify the linguistic tone of quarterly earnings conference calls for publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). After controlling for the earnings announcement, we examine the relation between conference call tone and the contemporaneous...

Quarterly earnings conference calls are becoming a more pervasive tool for corporate disclosure. However, the extent to which the market embeds information contained in the tone (i.e. sentiment) of conference call wording is unknown. Using computer aided content analysis, we examine the...

The Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) recently issued Accounting Standards Update No. 2016-01 which requires firms to report unrealized gains and losses on available-for-sale (AFS) equity securities in net income, thus reducing firms’ ability to manage or smooth earnings. Previously,...

Managerial, or discretionary, earnings opacity is the intentional lack of transparency to hide the intrinsic value of a firm. Opacity arises through two channels. The first is ex ante, when managers manipulate current expectations about future performance; and the second is ex post, when managers...