Informed short sales and option introductions

Benjamin Blau ()

Annals of Finance, 2013, vol. 9, issue 3, 365-382

Abstract: This study examines how the introduction of options affects the level of informed short selling. In particular, we test whether option introductions increases or decreases the level of informed short selling. Our tests are motivated by a theoretical debate in the literature. The first stream of literature argues that introducing options into markets may increase speculative trading which can result in less informed trading when informed traders perceive speculative trades as noise. The second stream argues that introducing options into markets improves the informational environment of the market because option prices provide an additional information mechanism for informed traders. We approximate informed short selling by examining (i) non-exempt short sales, (ii) contrarian short-selling activity, and (iii) the return predictability contained in shorting activity. Results show that non-exempt shorting activity increases after options become available. Further, we show that both the level of contrarian short selling and the return predictability contained in short selling increase after options are listed. Our results suggest that informed short selling increases after options are introduced. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2013

Keywords: Short sales; Option listings; Informed trading; G10; G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10436-012-0190-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:annfin:v:9:y:2013:i:3:p:365-382

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/finance/journal/10436/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10436-012-0190-5

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Finance is currently edited by Anne Villamil

More articles in Annals of Finance from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().