We investigate the effect of transaction costs related to trading options on the directional and volatility informed trading in the option market. We find that both forms of informed trading are significantly stronger among firms with lower option bid-ask spread. Importantly, the effect of transaction costs is significant around earnings announcements, but not significant (on average) around randomly chosen dates with no events of consequence. This suggests that transaction costs play a particularly important role during information intensive periods. Trading strategies based on directional informed trading and option transaction costs earn monthly abnormal returns of 1.39% to 1.91%.
Keywords: earnings announcement, informed trading, option trading strategy, price discovery process, transaction costs
JEL codes: D23, G11, G13, G14, M41
