We incorporate a time-varying negative relationship for implied volatility and underlying price into the delta hedging problem, where traders aim to minimize the variance of changes in the value of an option position by trading an appropriate amount of the underlying asset. We show that volatility-price elasticity is mean-reverting and embed predictions of the elasticity in a hedge ratio model that incorporates the negative volatility-price relationship. Our tests show that when applied to index options data, the proposed approach improves hedging performance over methods that rely solely on the long-run mean of the volatility-price relationship.

We examine the notion that financial products which cater to investors’ behavioral biases can yield high trading activity and thus be profitable for issuers. Our setting considers options with a callback feature, namely, callable bull/bear contracts (CBBCs). Such contracts have high skewness when close to callback and thus appeal to cumulative prospect theory preferences. CBBCs with high skewness earn negative average returns, and issuers’ gross profits vary positively with CBBC skewness. Over the 2009–2014 period, issuers earn gross profits of about $1.67 billion by trading CBBCs on the Hang Seng Index. These findings highlight the role of behavioral finance in financial innovation.

We use proprietary brokerage data to study trading patterns within a well-known financial market bubble: the Chinese warrants bubble. Persistently successful investors trade very actively and exhibit characteristics of de facto market makers. Unskilled investors unprofitably trend-chase and increase holdings in out-of-the-money warrants near expiration, whereas sophisticated investors do the reverse. We find that regulators did not properly forecast trading frenzies, as the prespecified price limits often exclude the fundamental values of warrants.

We use proprietary data on intraday transactions at a futures brokerage to analyze how implied leverage influences trading performance. Across all investors, leverage is negatively related to performance, due partly to increased trading costs and partly to forced liquidations resulting from margin calls. Defining skill out‐of‐sample, we find that relative performance differentials across unskilled and skilled investors persist. Unskilled investors' leverage amplifies losses from lottery preferences and the disposition effect. Leverage stimulates liquidity provision by skilled investors, and enhances returns. Although regulatory increases in required margins decrease skilled investors' returns, they enhance overall returns, and attenuate return volatility.