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This study examines if informed trading is present in the index option market by analyzing the KOSPI 200 options, the most actively traded derivative product in the world. The spread decomposition model developed by Madhavan, Richardson, and Roomans (1997) is utilized and the adverse-selection cost component of the spread estimated by the model is then used as a proxy for the degree of informed trading. We find that adverse-selection costs constitute a nontrivial portion of the transaction costs in index options trading. Approximately one-third of the spread can be accounted for by information asymmetry costs. A further analysis indicates that adverse-selection costs are positively related with option delta. Our regression analysis shows that option-related variables are significantly associated with estimated information asymmetry costs, even when controlling for proxies for informed trading in the index futures market. Finally, we find the evidence that foreign investors are better informed compared to domestic investors and that domestic institutions have an edge in terms of information over domestic individuals.

This paper examines whether commodity futures momentum can predict business cycles in the US, China, UK, Japan, and India. Momentum as a risk factor may play a role as a state variable in the spirit of Liew and Vassalou (). We find significant and negative predictability of commodity futures momentum, although the basis factor of the commodity futures markets shows insignificant results. Moreover, we find that commodity futures momentum is an independent factor that cannot be fully explained by traditional risk factors, macroeconomic variables, or commodity sector momentum. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 37:803–835, 2017

In the present study, we examine two important issues related to the information content of a trade in option markets: (i) whether trade size is related to information content; and (ii) whether buy and sell transactions carry different information content. Our analysis is based on comprehensive market microstructure data on the KOSPI 200 options, the single most actively traded derivative securities in the world. We use two structural models modified from the Madhavan et al. [Review of Financial Studies 10 (1997) 1035-1064] model, the size-dependent model (SDM), and the dummy variable model (DVM). The SDM incorporates trade size in the model to estimate the magnitude of the information content of a trade. The DVM separately estimates information contents for buyer-and seller-initiated trades using a dummy variable. Our SDM analysis reveals that large trades are in general more informative than small trades. The results from the DVM analysis indicate that buyer-initiated trades generally have greater information content than seller-initiated trades. A further analysis using investor-type information shows that the asymmetry in information content between buy and sell trades is mostly attributable to the orders submitted by foreign and domestic institutional investors.

This article empirically examines the lead-lag relations among the KOSPI200 spot market, the KOSPI200 futures market, and the KOSPI200 options market, and provides some explanations for the observed lead-lag relations. In general, the KOSPI200 futures and options markets lead the KOSPI200 spot market by up to 10 minutes in terms of returns and by 5 minutes in terms of volatilities, even after purging the infrequent trading effect as well as the bid-ask spread effect. The KOSPI200 options market leads and lags the KOSPI200 futures market by 5 minutes only in terms of returns. The observed lead-lag relations seem to be caused by the difference in transaction costs of the three markets. JEL Classification: G13; G14

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We study the relation between the illiquidity premium and economic states in the Korean stock market. We find that aggregate market liquidity improves following real economic expansions and expansive monetary states and worsens after economic recessions and restrictive monetary states. The improved liquidity in the expansion-expansive state generates a huge illiquidity premium, while an illiquidity premium does not exist in the recession-restrictive state. As a result, the observed illiquidity premium displays strong state-dependent variations. Our empirical results indicate that a significant unconditional illiquidity premium in the Korean stock market arises due to a substantial illiquidity premium in the expansion-expansive state.

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