IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/annfin/v9y2013i3p365-382.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Informed short sales and option introductions

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Blau

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

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Blau, 2013. "Informed short sales and option introductions," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 365-382, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:annfin:v:9:y:2013:i:3:p:365-382
    DOI: 10.1007/s10436-012-0190-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10436-012-0190-5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10436-012-0190-5?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. Hart, Oliver D & Kreps, David M, 1986. "Price Destabilizing Speculation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(5), pages 927-952, October.
    2. Miller, Edward M, 1977. "Risk, Uncertainty, and Divergence of Opinion," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(4), pages 1151-1168, September.
    3. Edwards, Amy K. & Hanley, Kathleen Weiss, 2010. "Short selling in initial public offerings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 21-39, October.
    4. Ekkehart Boehmer & Charles M. Jones & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2008. "Which Shorts Are Informed?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(2), pages 491-527, April.
    5. Jianguo Xu, 2007. "Price Convexity and Skewness," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(5), pages 2521-2552, October.
    6. Hemang Desai & K. Ramesh & S. Ramu Thiagarajan & Bala V. Balachandran, 2002. "An Investigation of the Informational Role of Short Interest in the Nasdaq Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 2263-2287, October.
    7. Doron Avramov & Tarun Chordia & Amit Goyal, 2006. "The Impact of Trades on Daily Volatility," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(4), pages 1241-1277.
    8. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    9. Kraus, Alan & Smith, Maxwell, 1996. "Heterogeneous Beliefs and the Effect of Replicatable Options on Asset Prices," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(3), pages 723-756.
    10. 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.
    11. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:6:p:2205-2223 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Asquith, Paul & Pathak, Parag A. & Ritter, Jay R., 2005. "Short interest, institutional ownership, and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 243-276, November.
    13. Engelberg, Joseph E. & Reed, Adam V. & Ringgenberg, Matthew C., 2012. "How are shorts informed?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 260-278.
    14. Danielsen, Bartley R. & Sorescu, Sorin M., 2001. "Why Do Option Introductions Depress Stock Prices? A Study of Diminishing Short Sale Constraints," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(4), pages 451-484, December.
    15. Stein, Jeremy C, 1987. "Informational Externalities and Welfare-Reducing Speculation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(6), pages 1123-1145, December.
    16. 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.
    17. Eduardo Giménez, 2007. "On the positive fundamental value of money with short-sale constraints," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 3(4), pages 455-469, October.
    18. Senchack, A. J. & Starks, Laura T., 1993. "Short-Sale Restrictions and Market Reaction to Short-Interest Announcements," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 177-194, June.
    19. Tom Arnold & Alexander W. Butler & Timothy Falcon Crack & Yan Zhang, 2005. "The Information Content of Short Interest: A Natural Experiment," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(4), pages 1307-1336, July.
    20. Figlewski, Stephen & Webb, Gwendolyn P, 1993. "Options, Short Sales, and Market Completeness," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(2), pages 761-777, June.
    21. Christophe, Stephen E. & Ferri, Michael G. & Hsieh, Jim, 2010. "Informed trading before analyst downgrades: Evidence from short sellers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 85-106, January.
    22. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1845-1876 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Dechow, Patricia M. & Hutton, Amy P. & Meulbroek, Lisa & Sloan, Richard G., 2001. "Short-sellers, fundamental analysis, and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 77-106, July.
    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. Benjamin Blau & Tyler Brough, 2015. "Are put-call ratios a substitute for short sales?," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 51-73, April.
    2. Blau, Benjamin M. & Wade, Chip, 2012. "Informed or speculative: Short selling analyst recommendations," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 14-25.
    3. Blau, Benjamin M. & Van Ness, Robert A. & Warr, Richard S., 2012. "Short selling of ADRs and foreign market short-sale constraints," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 886-897.
    4. Benjamin Blau & Chip Wade, 2013. "Comparing the information in short sales and put options," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 567-583, October.
    5. Benjamin M. Blau & Tyler J. Brough, 2014. "Short Sales and Option Listing Decisions," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 43(3), pages 703-724, September.
    6. Blau, Benjamin M. & Smith, Jason M., 2014. "Autocorrelation in daily short-sale volume," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 31-41.
    7. Blau, Benjamin M. & Pinegar, J. Michael, 2013. "Are short sellers incrementally informed prior to earnings announcements?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 142-155.
    8. Blau, Benjamin M. & Tew, Philip L., 2014. "Short sales and class-action lawsuits," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 79-100.
    9. Charles M. Jones & Adam V. Reed & William Waller, 2016. "Revealing Shorts An Examination of Large Short Position Disclosures," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(12), pages 3278-3320.
    10. Blau, Benjamin M. & Van Ness, Bonnie F. & Van Ness, Robert A., 2009. "Information and trade sizes: The case of short sales," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 1371-1388, November.
    11. Hackney, John & Henry, Tyler R. & Koski, Jennifer L., 2020. "Arbitrage vs. informed short selling: Evidence from convertible bond issuers," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    12. R. Jared DeLisle & Bong Soo Lee & Nathan Mauck, 2016. "The dynamic relation between options trading, short selling, and aggregate stock returns," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 645-671, October.
    13. Blau, Benjamin M. & DeLisle, Jared R. & Price, S. McKay, 2015. "Do sophisticated investors interpret earnings conference call tone differently than investors at large? Evidence from short sales," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 203-219.
    14. Callen, Jeffrey L. & Fang, Xiaohua, 2015. "Short interest and stock price crash risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 181-194.
    15. Comerton-Forde, Carole & Do, Binh Huu & Gray, Philip & Manton, Tom, 2016. "Assessing the information content of short-selling metrics using daily disclosures," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 188-204.
    16. Alldredge, Dallin M. & Blau, Benjamin M. & Brough, Tyler J., 2012. "Short selling after hours," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 64(6), pages 439-451.
    17. Lin, Chih-Yung & Bui, Dien Giau & Lin, Tse-Chun, 2020. "Do short sellers exploit risky business models of banks? Evidence from two banking crises," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    18. Wang, Shu-Feng & Lee, Kuan-Hui & Woo, Min-Cheol, 2017. "Do individual short-sellers make money? Evidence from Korea," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 159-172.
    19. Jose Gutierrez & Steve Johnson & Robert Stretcher, 2018. "A synthesized model of short selling constraints and their impact on stock returns," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 42(1), pages 191-210, January.
    20. Fellner, Gerlinde & Theissen, Erik, 2014. "Short sale constraints, divergence of opinion and asset prices: Evidence from the laboratory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 113-127.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Short sales; Option listings; Informed trading; G10; G14;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • 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:kap:annfin:v:9:y:2013:i:3:p:365-382. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.