IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v106y2012i2p262-286.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The option to stock volume ratio and future returns

Author

Listed:
  • Johnson, Travis L.
  • So, Eric C.

Abstract

We examine the information content of option and equity volumes when trade direction is unobserved. In a multimarket asymmetric information model, equity short-sale costs result in a negative relation between relative option volume and future firm value. In our empirical tests, firms in the lowest decile of the option to stock volume ratio (O/S) outperform the highest decile by 0.34% per week (19.3% annualized). Our model and empirics both indicate that O/S is a stronger signal when short-sale costs are high or option leverage is low. O/S also predicts future firm-specific earnings news, consistent with O/S reflecting private information.

Suggested Citation

  • Johnson, Travis L. & So, Eric C., 2012. "The option to stock volume ratio and future returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 262-286.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:106:y:2012:i:2:p:262-286
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2012.05.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X12000797
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfineco.2012.05.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bakshi, Gurdip & Cao, Charles & Chen, Zhiwu, 2000. "Do Call Prices and the Underlying Stock Always Move in the Same Direction?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(3), pages 549-584.
    2. Glosten, Lawrence R. & Milgrom, Paul R., 1985. "Bid, ask and transaction prices in a specialist market with heterogeneously informed traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-100, March.
    3. Manaster, Steven & Rendleman, Richard J, Jr, 1982. "Option Prices as Predictors of Equilibrium Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1043-1057, September.
    4. Jun Pan & Allen M. Poteshman, 2006. "The Information in Option Volume for Future Stock Prices," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(3), pages 871-908.
    5. Nagel, Stefan, 2005. "Short sales, institutional investors and the cross-section of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 277-309, November.
    6. Bruce N. Lehmann, 1988. "Fads, Martingales, and Market Efficiency," NBER Working Papers 2533, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:4:p:949-64 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Amihud, Yakov, 2002. "Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time-series effects," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 31-56, January.
    9. Geczy, Christopher C. & Musto, David K. & Reed, Adam V., 2002. "Stocks are special too: an analysis of the equity lending market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 241-269.
    10. Bruce N. Lehmann, 1990. "Fads, Martingales, and Market Efficiency," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(1), pages 1-28.
    11. Roll, Richard & Schwartz, Eduardo & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2009. "Options trading activity and firm valuation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 345-360, December.
    12. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    13. Diamond, Douglas W. & Verrecchia, Robert E., 1987. "Constraints on short-selling and asset price adjustment to private information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 277-311, June.
    14. Robert Battalio & Paul Schultz, 2011. "Regulatory Uncertainty and Market Liquidity: The 2008 Short Sale Ban's Impact on Equity Option Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 2013-2053, December.
    15. Simon Gervais & Ron Kaniel & Dan H. Mingelgrin, 2001. "The High‐Volume Return Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 877-919, June.
    16. Guillermo Llorente & Roni Michaely & Gideon Saar & Jiang Wang, 2002. "Dynamic Volume-Return Relation of Individual Stocks," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(4), pages 1005-1047.
    17. Sanders, Ralph W. & Zdanowicz, John S., 1992. "Target Firm Abnormal Returns and Trading Volume around the Initiation of Change in Control Transactions," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(1), pages 109-129, March.
    18. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan, 1990. "Evidence of Predictable Behavior of Security Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 881-898, July.
    19. Xing, Yuhang & Zhang, Xiaoyan & Zhao, Rui, 2010. "What Does the Individual Option Volatility Smirk Tell Us About Future Equity Returns?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(3), pages 641-662, June.
    20. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2008. "All That Glitters: The Effect of Attention and News on the Buying Behavior of Individual and Institutional Investors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(2), pages 785-818, April.
    21. Cremers, Martijn & Weinbaum, David, 2010. "Deviations from Put-Call Parity and Stock Return Predictability," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(2), pages 335-367, April.
    22. Charles M.C. Lee & Bhaskaran Swaminathan, 2000. "Price Momentum and Trading Volume," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 2017-2069, October.
    23. Stephan, Jens A & Whaley, Robert E, 1990. "Intraday Price Change and Trading Volume Relations in the Stock and Stock Option Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 191-220, March.
    24. Roll, Richard & Schwartz, Eduardo & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2010. "O/S: The relative trading activity in options and stock," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 1-17, April.
    25. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:2:p:431-465 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. Brennan, Michael J. & Chordia, Tarun & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 1998. "Alternative factor specifications, security characteristics, and the cross-section of expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 345-373, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Du, Brian & Fung, Scott, 2018. "Directional information effects of options trading: Evidence from the banking industry," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 149-168.
    2. Jank, Stephan & Roling, Christoph & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2021. "Flying under the radar: The effects of short-sale disclosure rules on investor behavior and stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 209-233.
    3. Delisle, R. Jared & Lee, Bong Soo & Mauck, Nathan, 2012. "The dynamic relation between short sellers, option traders, and aggregate returns," MPRA Paper 42566, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Huang, Tao & Li, Junye, 2019. "Option-Implied variance asymmetry and the cross-section of stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 21-36.
    5. Andreou, Panayiotis C. & Kagkadis, Anastasios & Philip, Dennis & Tuneshev, Ruslan, 2018. "Differences in options investors’ expectations and the cross-section of stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 315-336.
    6. Turan G. Bali & Robert F. Engle & Yi Tang, 2017. "Dynamic Conditional Beta Is Alive and Well in the Cross Section of Daily Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3760-3779, November.
    7. Keming Li, 2021. "The effect of option trading," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-32, December.
    8. Chen, Zhuo & Lu, Andrea, 2017. "Slow diffusion of information and price momentum in stocks: Evidence from options markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 98-108.
    9. Lee, Yen-Hsien & Wang, David K., 2016. "Information content of investor trading behavior: Evidence from Taiwan index options market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 149-160.
    10. Guo, Hui & Qiu, Buhui, 2014. "Options-implied variance and future stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 93-113.
    11. Amit Goyal, 2012. "Empirical cross-sectional asset pricing: a survey," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 26(1), pages 3-38, March.
    12. Ma, Yao & Yang, Baochen & Su, Yunpeng, 2021. "Stock return predictability: Evidence from moving averages of trading volume," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    13. Haehean Park & Baeho Kim & Hyeongsop Shim, 2019. "A smiling bear in the equity options market and the cross‐section of stock returns," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(11), pages 1360-1382, November.
    14. Simon Gervais & Ron Kaniel & Dan H. Mingelgrin, 2001. "The High‐Volume Return Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 877-919, June.
    15. Chan, Konan & Li, Fengfei & Lin, Ji-Chai & Lin, Tse-Chun, 2017. "What do stock price levels tell us about the firms?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 34-50.
    16. Hannes Mohrschladt & Judith C. Schneider, 2021. "Idiosyncratic volatility, option-based measures of informed trading, and investor attention," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 197-220, October.
    17. DeLisle, R. Jared & Diavatopoulos, Dean & Fodor, Andy & Kassa, Haimanot, 2022. "Variation in option implied volatility spread and future stock returns," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 152-160.
    18. Bianchi, Daniele & Babiak, Mykola & Dickerson, Alexander, 2022. "Trading volume and liquidity provision in cryptocurrency markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    19. Alejandro Bernales & Thanos Verousis & Nikolaos Voukelatos & Mengyu Zhang, 2020. "What do we know about individual equity options?," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 67-91, January.
    20. Sun, Kaisi & Wang, Hui & Zhu, Yifeng, 2023. "Salience theory in price and trading volume: Evidence from China," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 38-61.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Short-sale costs; Options; Trading volume; Return predictability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:106:y:2012:i:2:p:262-286. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.