Academic Events

Topic:

Time&Date:

10:30 am - 12:00 pm, March 28, 2025 (Friday)

Venue

Room D804, Teaching Complex D Building

Speaker:

Vikas Agarwal

Georgia State University

We analyze a market-wide panel dataset on retail options from India, which has an 80% share in option contracts traded worldwide. Retail participation dominates and is concentrated in index options. Traders exhibit short-term speculative behavior with day trading and short-duration directional bets especially as options converge to 0DTE. Three natural experiments indicate that financial constraints and lottery-like preferences drive investor behavior. An exogenous supply shift induces trading and shifts volume to short-term options. Lot-size increases and delivery margins targeting speculation are offset by speculative shifts to cheaper and riskier options. While stock market inclusion and participation increase welfare in canonical household finance models, they can also entrench speculative behavior that is difficult to undo.

Biography:

Vikas Agarwal is Distinguished University Professor of the University System of Georgia, and Professor of Finance at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business. Vikas received his Ph.D. in finance from the London Business School. He is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Financial Research, University of Cologne, Germany. He also holds a Research Associate position at EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Center, France. His broad areas of research interest include investments, household finance, private equity, and behavioral finance. His articles have appeared in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Review of Finance, and Management Science.