IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/glofin/v54y2022ics1044028321000442.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cross-market informed trading in the CDS and option markets

Author

Listed:
  • Hu, May
  • Park, Jason
  • Chen, Jane
  • Verhoevenc, Peter

Abstract

This paper analyzes how informed traders balance leverage and liquidity in making cross-market trading decisions. Our findings are three-fold. Using daily data on the actively traded North American CDX Investment Grade and High Yield indexes from 2010 to 2017, first, we find robust evidence that, when the credit default swap (CDS) market is illiquid, informed traders do not hesitate to exploit their information advantage in the option market, and this manifests mainly for negative credit news. Second, we find that informed trading occurs predominantly in the option market for low-rated firms due to high adverse selection risk in the CDS market. Third, there is strong evidence of informed trading taking place in the CDS market for financial firms and we argue that this is due to the interdealer network through which CDS dealers obtain private information about other financial firms and their privileged position as market makers to be able to disguise their informed trades as ordinary market-making activities. Finally, we propose re-thinking market efficiency and how to advance it in a direction which does not privilege a small circle of financiers or create monopoly while keeping the markets liquid and tranquil at all times.

Suggested Citation

  • Hu, May & Park, Jason & Chen, Jane & Verhoevenc, Peter, 2022. "Cross-market informed trading in the CDS and option markets," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:glofin:v:54:y:2022:i:c:s1044028321000442
    DOI: 10.1016/j.gfj.2021.100646
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044028321000442
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.gfj.2021.100646?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. Ana Babus & Péter Kondor, 2018. "Trading and Information Diffusion in Over‐the‐Counter Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1727-1769, September.
    2. Duffie, Darrell & Malamud, Semyon & Manso, Gustavo, 2014. "Information percolation in segmented markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 1-32.
    3. Chakravarty, Sugato, 2001. "Stealth-trading: Which traders' trades move stock prices?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 289-307, August.
    4. Darrell Duffie & Gaston Giroux & Gustavo Manso, 2010. "Information Percolation," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 100-111, February.
    5. Josef Lakonishok & Inmoo Lee & Neil D. Pearson & Allen M. Poteshman, 2007. "Option Market Activity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(3), pages 813-857.
    6. Robert Jarrow & Haitao Li & Xiaoxia Ye & May Hu, 2019. "Exploring Mispricing in the Term Structure of CDS Spreads," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 23(1), pages 161-198.
    7. Cao, Charles & Yu, Fan & Zhong, Zhaodong, 2010. "The information content of option-implied volatility for credit default swap valuation," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 321-343, August.
    8. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    9. Ana Babus & Péter Kondor & Yilin Wang, 2020. "Corrigendum to “Trading and Information Diffusion in Over‐the‐Counter Markets”," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(5), pages 2221-2228, September.
    10. Paul Brockman & Dennis Y. Chung, 2003. "Investor Protection and Firm Liquidity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(2), pages 921-937, April.
    11. Peter Carr & Liuren Wu, 2011. "A Simple Robust Link Between American Puts and Credit Protection," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(2), pages 473-505.
    12. Acharya, Viral V. & Johnson, Timothy C., 2007. "Insider trading in credit derivatives," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 110-141, April.
    13. Burton Hollifield & Artem Neklyudov & Chester Spatt, 2017. "Bid-Ask Spreads, Trading Networks, and the Pricing of Securitizations," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(9), pages 3048-3085.
    14. Christine A. Parlour & Guillaume Plantin, 2008. "Loan Sales and Relationship Banking," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(3), pages 1291-1314, June.
    15. Hendrik Bessembinder & William Maxwell, 2008. "Markets: Transparency and the Corporate Bond Market," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 217-234, Spring.
    16. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:3:p:1235-1258 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Christine Parlour & Guillaume Plantin, 2008. "Loan Sales and Relationship Banking," Post-Print hal-03415832, HAL.
    18. Barclay, Michael J. & Warner, Jerold B., 1993. "Stealth trading and volatility : Which trades move prices?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 281-305, December.
    19. repec:bla:jfinan:v:58:y:2003:i:2:p:921-938 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Bühler, Wolfgang & Trapp, Monika, 2009. "Time-varying credit risk and liquidity premia in bond and CDS markets," CFR Working Papers 09-13, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    21. Easley, David, et al, 1996. "Liquidity, Information, and Infrequently Traded Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1405-1436, September.
    22. Goyenko, Ruslan Y. & Holden, Craig W. & Trzcinka, Charles A., 2009. "Do liquidity measures measure liquidity?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 153-181, May.
    23. Anand, Amber & Chakravarty, Sugato, 2007. "Stealth Trading in Options Markets," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(1), pages 167-187, March.
    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. Hu, May & Narayan, Paresh & Park, Jason & Verhoeven, Peter, 2022. "Informed trading in the CDS and OTM put option markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 353-367.
    2. Augustin, Patrick & Subrahmanyam, Marti G. & Tang, Dragon Yongjun & Wang, Sarah Qian, 2014. "Credit Default Swaps: A Survey," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 9(1-2), pages 1-196, December.
    3. Hwang Hee Lee & Frederick Dongchuhl Oh, 2022. "The role of credit default swaps in determining corporate payout policy," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 51(2), pages 635-661, June.
    4. Tsai, Feng-Tse & Lu, Hsin-Min & Hung, Mao-Wei, 2016. "The impact of news articles and corporate disclosure on credit risk valuation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 100-116.
    5. Foucault, Thierry & Colliard, Jean-Edouard & Hoffmann, Peter, 2018. "Inventory Management, Dealers' Connections, and Prices in OTC Markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 13093, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Ye, Xiaoxia & Yu, Fan & Zhao, Ran, 2022. "Credit derivatives and corporate default prediction," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    7. Robert Czech & Gábor Pintér, 2020. "Informed trading and the dynamics of client-dealer connections in corporate bond markets," Bank of England working papers 895, Bank of England.
    8. Acheson, Graeme G. & Coyle, Christopher & Turner, John D., 2018. "Prices and informed trading: Evidence from an early stock market," QUCEH Working Paper Series 2018-05, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    9. 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.
    10. Czech, Robert & Pintér, Gábor, 2020. "Informed trading and the dynamics of client-dealer connections in corporate bond markets," Bank of England working papers 895, Bank of England, revised 20 Jan 2022.
    11. Zachary Bethune & Bruno Sultanum & Nicholas Trachter, 2022. "An Information-based Theory of Financial Intermediation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(5), pages 2381-2444.
    12. Murphy, Austin & Headley, Adrian, 2022. "An empirical evaluation of alternative fundamental models of credit spreads," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    13. McAdam, Chris, 2020. "Are investors compensated for their sophistication and informedness for company takeovers – An Australian study," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    14. Doojin Ryu & Jinyoung Yu, 2021. "Informed options trading around holidays," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(5), pages 658-685, May.
    15. Upson, James & McInish, Thomas & IV, B. Hardy Johnson, 2021. "Order based versus level book trade reporting: An empirical analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    16. Friewald, Nils & Nagler, Florian, 2018. "Over-the-Counter Market Frictions and Yield Spread Changes," CEPR Discussion Papers 13345, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Chang, Sanders S. & Wang, F. Albert, 2015. "Adverse selection and the presence of informed trading," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 19-33.
    18. Corò, Filippo & Dufour, Alfonso & Varotto, Simone, 2013. "Credit and liquidity components of corporate CDS spreads," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5511-5525.
    19. Joseph, Andreas & Vasios, Michalis, 2022. "OTC Microstructure in a period of stress: A Multi-layered network approach," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    20. Shuo Liu, 2024. "Social Optimal Search Intensity in Over-the-Counter Markets," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 53, pages 224-282, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit default swap; Options; Market efficiency; Informed trading; Over-the-counter markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • 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:glofin:v:54:y:2022:i:c:s1044028321000442. 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/620162 .

    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.