Investor Sentiment and Option Prices

Bing Han

The Review of Financial Studies, 2008, vol. 21, issue 1, 387-414

Abstract: This paper examines whether investor sentiment about the stock market affects prices of the S&P 500 options. The findings reveal that the index option volatility smile is steeper (flatter) and the risk-neutral skewness of monthly index return is more (less) negative when market sentiment becomes more bearish (bullish). These significant relations are robust and become stronger when there are more impediments to arbitrage in index options. They cannot be explained by rational perfect-market-based option pricing models. Changes in investor sentiment help explain time variation in the slope of index option smile and risk-neutral skewness beyond factors suggested by the current models. The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (144)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhm071 (application/pdf)
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:oup:rfinst:v:21:y:2008:i:1:p:387-414

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Financial Studies is currently edited by Itay Goldstein

More articles in The Review of Financial Studies from Society for Financial Studies Oxford University Press, Journals Department, 2001 Evans Road, Cary, NC 27513 USA.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().