We show that much of the profitability in equity option return strategies, which try to capture option mispricing by taking exposure to underlying volatility, can be explained by an IPCA model. The alpha reduction, relative to competing static factor models, is between 50% and 75% depending on...

We show that much of the profitability in equity option return strategies, that try to capture option mis-pricing by taking exposure to underlying volatility, can be explained by an IPCA model. The alpha reduction, relative to competing static factor models, is between 50% and 75% depending on...

Return anomalies are most pronounced among distressed stocks. We attribute this finding to the role of misvaluation and investors' inability to value distressed stocks correctly. We treat distressed stocks as options and construct a valuation model that explicitly takes into account the value of...

We show that options written on stocks with low prices are over-priced. This effect is robust to a variety of tests, controlling for common stock- and option- risk characteristics, and to reasonable transaction costs. Natural experiments corroborate this finding; options tend to become...

We find that option expensiveness, as measured by delta-hedged option returns, is higher for low-ESG stocks, indicating that investors pay a premium in the option market to hedge ESG-related uncertainty. We estimate this ESG premium to be about 0.3% per month. All three components of ESG...

We document that implied volatility (IV) curves extracted from short-term equity options frequently become concave prior to the earnings announcement day (EAD) reflecting a bimodal risk-neutral distribution for the underlying stock price. Firms with concave IV curves exhibit significantly higher...

Corporate bonds with large increases in implied volatility over the past month underperform those with large decreases in implied volatility by 0.6% per month. In contrast to An, Ang, Bali, and Cakici (2014) who show that implied volatility changes carry information about fundamental news, our...