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Journal of Finance Vol. 50 No. 5 1995

The Allocation of Informed Trading Across Related Markets: An Analysis of the Impact of Changes in Equity-Option Margin Requirements

Stewart Mayhew1; Atulya Sarin2; Kuldeep Shastri3

1 Cornerstone Research · 2 Santa Clara University · 3 University of Pittsburgh

Abstract

We examine the impact of changes in equity-option margin requirements on the liquidity of options and underlying stock markets. We find that the decrease in margin was associated with an increase in spreads and trade informativeness, and a decrease in depth for the underlying stocks. In contrast, options spreads decreased indicating a change in the relative allocation of informed traders between the two markets. When the required margin was increased, no significant change was observed in the underlying stocks, but option spreads increased. Overall, our results indicate that uninformed traders are more sensitive to the margin dimension of trading costs.

DOI
10.2307/2329329
Volume
50
Issue
5
Pages
1635
Sources
openalex crossref

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