This article does four things: it calls attention to an important phenomenon heretofore unmentioned in the literature, that is, the dividend spread; it presents open-interest and early-exercise d ata for in-the-money calls around ex dividend dates; it demonstrates that previous results concerning the efficiency of the options market around the ex dividend date are invalid; and it provides an estimate of the effective bid-ask spread for informationless trades. The auth ors' data indicates that the bid-ask spread for this type of trade is quite small. Copyright 1988 by the University of Chicago.