Measuring gambling activity in options market

Purpose - This paper investigates how the gambling measure captures market bubble events, and how it predicts stock return and option return. Design/methodology/approach - This paper proposes a gambling activity measure by jointly considering open interest and moneyness of out-of-the-money (OTM) individual equity call options. Findings - The new measure, CallMoney, captures excessive optimism during the dot-com bubble, the oil price bubble and the pre-GFC stock market bubble. CallMoney robustly and negatively predicts both OTM and at-the-money call option returns cross-sectionally. The option return predictability of CallMoney is stronger when stock price is further from its 52-weeks high, capital gains overhang is lower, and when information uncertainty of the underlying stock is higher. CallMoney also robustly and negatively predicts cross-sectional stock returns. Originality/value - The gambling measure has the advantages of being economically intuitive, model-free, easy to measure. The measure performs more robustly than existing lottery measures with respect to option and stock return predictability and more reliably captures the overpricing of options and stocks. The work helps understanding the gambling related anomalies in equity option returns and stock returns.