This study investigates the behavior of the components of the bid-ask spread around earnings announcements. The authors find that the adverse selection cost component significantly increases surrounding the announcements, while the inventory holding and order processing components significantly decline during the same periods. Their results suggest that the directional change in the total bid-ask spread depends on the relative magnitudes of the changes in these three components. Specifically, the decreases in inventory holding costs and order processing costs imply that earnings announcements may have an insignificant impact on the total bid-ask spread, even when they result in increased information asymmetry.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the behavior of the components of the bid‐ask spread around earnings announcements. We find that the adverse selection cost component significantly increases surrounding the announcements, while the inventory holding and order processing components significantly decline during the same periods. Our results suggest that the directional change in the total bid‐ask spread depends on the relative magnitudes of the changes in these three components. Specifically, the decreases in inventory holding costs and order processing costs imply that earnings announcements may have an insignificant impact on the total bid‐ask spread, even when they result in increased information asymmetry.

This study investigates the behavior of the components of the bid-ask spread around earnings announcements. The authors find that the adverse selection cost component significantly increases surrounding the announcements, while the inventory holding and order processing components significantly decline during the same periods. Their results suggest that the directional change in the total bid-ask spread depends on the relative magnitudes of the changes in these three components. Specifically, the decreases in inventory holding costs and order processing costs imply that earnings announcements may have an insignificant impact on the total bid-ask spread, even when they result in increased information asymmetry.Copyright 1996 by American Finance Association.

This study investigates the extent of information-motivated trading conditional on trade size in the options and stock markets. We find envidence that the options market is the primary venue for information trading only for small investors, whereas large ivestors do not necessarily trade options rather than stocks when they are informed. With different trading mechanisms in the stock and options markets, this finding implies that investors, when facing different impediments to information-related trading, select different vehicles to exploit their information. We also show that the adverse selection component of the bid-ask spread decreases with option delta, implying that options with greater finanical leverage attract more informed investors. Overall, our results reinforce the notion that the options market is a venue for information-motivated trading.

Complete limit order data from Korea show individual stocks’ demand and supply elasticities correlating negatively in short windows. That is, whenever a stock’s demand is unusually elastic, its supply is unusually inelastic, and vice versa. However, in long windows, individual stocks’ demand and supply elasticities correlate positively. Notably, both fall about 40% with the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and remain depressed long after the market and macroeconomic variables recover. A parsimonious model explains both findings with investor information heterogeneity and risk-aversion parameters, fixed in the short-run, being permanently shifted by the crisis.