Information-Based Trading in the Junk Bond Market

Taking advantage of a unique corporate bond transaction dataset from the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), this paper investigates whether information-based trading takes place in the high-yield corporate bond market, and how firm-specific information flow across related securities, including stocks, options and corporate bonds. Differing from previous studies, I find that current corporate bond returns have explanatory power for future stock price changes. This implies that informed investors do trade in the corporate bond market, and both the stock market and the corporate bond market serve important roles in disseminating new information. The option market, however, contains valuable information about future movements in both stocks and corporate bonds, and these relations are unidirectional, suggesting that the option market is a preferred venue for informed trading. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that informed trading in the option market is distributed across different strike prices, with at-the-money options attracting investors who posses mild firm-specific information, and deep out-of-the-money options catching the attention of those who obtain extreme information. JEL Classification: G14 Key-words: Firm Specific Information, Information-based Trading, Information-risk Premium, Insider Trading, Junk Bonds, Market Microstructure, Price Discovery. ∗ Department of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, 253 Warren Hall, Ithaca NY, 14853. Phone: (607)351-8374; Email: [email protected]. I thank NASD for help with the data. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and not those of any other person or entity, including NASD. I thank Hazem Daouk, Maureen O’Hara, David Easley and Yongmiao Hong for helpful comments and discussions. I also thank Vidhi Chhaochharia, David Ng, Michael Piwowar, and Xiaoyan Zhang for their useful suggestions. Any errors are my own.