If firms issue convertible securities to facilitate sequential investment, the securities should be engineered to give sufficient flexibility to accommodate timing of follow‐on investment. We examine call provisions in convertible bonds and argue that firms with investment options expected to expire sooner (later) will offer weaker (stronger) call protection. We find that issues with weak or no call protection are offered by firms that invest greater amounts soon after issuance than those issuing convertibles with strong protection. Moreover, capital expenditure levels during the 5‐year period following issuance are inversely related to the length of call‐protection periods.

This paper examines the relation between net buying pressure and the shape of the implied volatility function (IVF) for index and individual stock options. We find that changes in implied volatility are directly related to net buying pressure from public order flow. We also find that changes in implied volatility of S&P 500 options are most strongly affected by buying pressure for index puts, while changes in implied volatility of stock options are dominated by call option demand. Simulated delta‐neutral option‐writing trading strategies generate abnormal returns that match the deviations of the IVFs above realized historical return volatilities.

We investigate whether executive stock option repricings are systematically timed to coincide with favorable movements in the company's stock price. For a sample of 236 repricing events, we observe sharp increases in stock price in the 20‐day period following the repricing date. In addition, repricing dates tend to either precede the release of good news or follow the release of bad news in the quarterly earnings announcements. Since information about stock option repricing is not generally released to the public around the repricing date, these findings suggest that CEOs opportunistically manage the timing of the option repricing date.