Trading Activity in Options and Stock Around Price-Sensitive News Announcements

This study investigates the trading activity in options and stock markets around informed events with extreme daily stock price movements. We find that informed agents are more likely to trade options prior to negative news and stocks ahead of positive news. We also show that optioned stocks overreact to the arrival of negative news, but react efficiently to positive news. However, the overreaction patterns are unique to the subsample of stocks with the lowest pre-event abnormal option/stock volume ratio (O/S). This finding suggests that the incremental benefit of option listing is related to the level of option trading activity, over and beyond the presence of an options market on the firm's stock. Finally, we find that the pre-event abnormal O/S is a better predictor of stock price patterns following a negative shock than is the pre-event O/S, implying that the former may contain more information about the future value of stocks than the latter.

What Moved Share Prices in the Nineteenth-Century London Stock Market?

Using a new weekly blue-chip index, this paper investigates the causes of stock price movements on the London market between 1823 and 1870. We find that economic fundamentals explain about 15 per cent of weekly and 34 per cent of monthly variation in share prices. Contemporary press reporting from the London Stock Exchange is used to ascertain what market participants thought were causing the largest movements on the market. The vast majority of large movements were attributed by the press to geopolitical, monetary, railway-sector, and financial-crisis news. Investigating the stock price changes on an independent list of events reaffirms these findings, suggesting that the most important specific events which moved markets were wars involving European powers.

Do Low-Priced Stocks Drive Long-Term Contrarian Performance on the London Stock Exchange?

We investigate whether low-priced stocks drive long-term contrarian performance on the U.K. market. We find that contrarian performance at low, middle, and high price levels is positive. On the Fama-French risk adjusted basis, we find both low-priced and middle-priced losers have significantly positive returns. When we adjust returns by market and liquidity risk, only middle-priced losers maintain their positive returns. Our results reveal that low-priced stocks are not fully responsible for contrarian performance. Our empirical evidence is generally consistent with the overreaction hypothesis and behavioral models of value investing.

What price harmony? Teachers' methods of delivering an ethos of tolerance and respect for diversity in an integrated school in Northern Ireland

The aim of the paper is to explore teachers’ methods of delivering an ethos of tolerance, respect
and mutual understanding in one integrated secondary school in Northern Ireland. Drawing on
interviews with teachers in the school, it is argued that most teachers make ‘critical choices’
which both reflect and reinforce a ‘culture of avoidance’, whereby politically or religiously contentious
issues are avoided rather than explored. Although teachers are well-intentioned in making
these choices, it is shown that they have the potential to create the conditions that maintain or even
harden psychological boundaries between Catholics and Protestants rather than dilute them.

Much Ado About Nothing: The Limitation of Liability and the Market for 19th century Irish Bank Stock

Abstract Limited liability is widely believed to be a prerequisite for the emergence of an active and liquid securities market because the transactions costs associated with trading ownership of unlimited liability firms are viewed as prohibitive. In this article, we examine the trading of shares in an Irish bank, which limited its liability in 1883. Using this bank’s archives, we assemble a time series of trading data, which we test for structural breaks. Our results suggest that the move to limited liability had a negligible impact upon the trading of this bank’s shares.