Anticipated Information Releases Reflected in Call Option Prices

This study captures the ex ante information content of a financial reporting event (the annual earnings announcement) by examining the behavior of call option prices on dates leading up to and passing through the disclosure date. This approach differs from most previous empirical security price research which has been ex post in nature. The hypothesis that investors anticipate that the future release of annual earnings numbers will affect security prices is empirically confirmed. In particular, systematic changes in variance rates implied by the Black-Scholes option pricing model are demonstrated.