The liquidity of automated exchanges: new evidence from German Bund futures

Previous literature has suggested that automated exchanges such as the Deutsche Terminborse (DTB) may be less liquid than their open-outcry counterparts such as the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE), although evidence provided on this issue has been mixed. This paper provides new evidence on the relative magnitudes of bid-ask spreads in the Bund contract traded on the DTB and LIFFE using intraday data from a period in which each exchanges share of total Bund trading was closer than previous research. The findings suggest that quoted bid-ask spreads are wider on the LIFFE than the DTB, even after controlling for their determinants. Furthermore, bid-ask spreads on the DTB increase more rapidly as price volatility increases relative to the LIFFE. Overall, this evidence implies that while automated exchanges are capable of providing more liquidity than floor traded exchanges, the relative performance of automated exchanges deteriorates during periods of higher volatility.     

Multimarket trading and liquidity: a transaction data analysis of Canada–US interlistings

We use transaction data for Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) listed stocks to examine the impact on trading costs of the decision to interlist on a US exchange. We measure trading costs using both ‘posted’ bid-ask spreads and ‘effective’ bid-ask spreads that measure actual transaction prices relative to standing bid-ask quotes. After controlling for price level, trade size and trading volume effects, we find that overall posted and effective spreads in the domestic (TSE) market decrease subsequent to the interlisting. However, the decrease in trading costs is concentrated in those TSE stocks that experience a significant shift of total trading volume (TSE and US) to the US exchange after listing. We interpret this result in the context of theories of multimarket trading as a competitive response by TSE market makers to the additional presence of US market makers.     

The determinants of price discovery: Evidence from US-Canadian cross-listed shares

We examine the determinants of price discovery for Canadian firms cross-listed on the main US stock exchanges over the period 1996–2011. Sampling at a one-minute frequency, we compute Gonzalo and Granger Component Shares (CS) and employ a system GMM approach to control for persistence in price discovery and endogeneity between CS and its determinants. We find that price discovery is highly persistent and that there is strong evidence of simultaneity between CS and its determinants. We conclude that lower relative spreads and higher relative trading activity increase an exchange’s contribution to price discovery. We also document that it is small trades that drive price discovery, particularly since the introduction of decimalization.     

Surprises,sentiments, and the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates

Between 2005 and 2009, we document evident time-varying credit risk price discovery between the equity and credit default swap (CDS) markets for 174 US non-financial investment-grade firms. We test the economic significance of a simple portfolio strategy that utilizes fluctuation in CDS spreads as a trading signal to set stock positions, conditional on the CDS price discovery status of the reference entities. We show that a conditional portfolio strategy which updates the list of CDS-influenced firms over time, yields a substantively larger realized return net of transaction cost over the unconditional strategy. Furthermore, the conditional strategy’s Sharpe ratio outperforms a series of benchmark portfolios over the same trading period, including buy-and-hold, momentum and dividend yield strategies.     

An empirical examination of the impact of market microstructure changes on the determinants of option bid-ask spreads

This paper examines the determinants of bid-ask spreads in the Australian Options Market before and after it switched from a quote-driven floor-traded market to an order-driven screen-traded market. This study reports that both put and call option bid-ask spreads are positively related to the option's value, its remaining term-to-maturity, its absolute hedge ratio and the volatility of returns from the underlying asset and negatively related to the level of trading activity in that option series. The study also reports that spreads are generally less when market makers are obliged to maintain continuous quotes in the market. The paper also finds that following the change in trading regime, both call and put option spreads became more sensitive to the absolute value of the option's delta. This finding is consistent with previous theoretical and empirical work from equities markets that has suggested that a switch to an electronic trading regime results in an increase in the adverse selection component of the bid-ask spread. There is also some limited evidence that suggests that the switch to electronic trading resulted in call option spreads being less sensitive to the return volatility of the underlying asset but more sensitive to the option's price.     

LIQUIDITY AND TICK SIZE: DOES DECIMALIZATION MATTER?

The effect of the move to decimalization by the Toronto Stock Exchange, where the minimum tick size was decreased to $0.05 from $0.125, is examined. Liquidity is measured by the price impact of unexpected volume. Results show an unambiguous gain to investors. Effective spreads decrease significantly, but the price impact is unaffected. In addition, evidence indicates an increase in trading activity in absolute terms as well in relation to U.S. exchanges for cross-listed stocks. This is consistent with the observed decrease in transaction costs.     

Relative performance of bid–ask spread estimators: Futures market evidence

The issue of transaction costs is the mainstay of the equity market microstructure. Research in the microstructure of futures markets has lagged behind. A primary reason is that futures exchanges in the U.S. do not record bid–ask quotes, requiring these costs to be imputed from transaction price data. A reliable estimator of bid–ask spreads would significantly enhance microstructure research in futures markets. Unique intraday data from the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) that include both transaction prices and bid–ask spreads allow us to compare bid–ask spread estimation techniques proposed in the literature against the benchmark of actual spreads in a futures market, and thus identify the best-performing estimator. To maximize relevance, we impose all the constraints that apply in U.S. futures data to perform our estimations. We find that the four bid–ask spread estimators considered significantly underestimate the actual spreads. However, simple moments-based estimators perform better in predicting spreads.     

The competitive effects of US decimalization: Evidence from the US-listed Canadian stocks

This paper analyzes the impact of US decimalization on the Canadian stocks listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) and either the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System (Nasdaq) in the US. Using a sample of 126 firms, we find that the US trading of these stocks increases after decimalization, but this increase is not at the expense of TSE volume. Indeed, the TSE volume increases substantially for those securities that are traded on Nasdaq and increases marginally for those securities that are traded on the NYSE. Most of the increase in volume is in retail-sized trades. The bid–ask spreads and the quote depths decline on all exchanges, but by a greater amount in the US than in Canada. The depths on the NYSE decline from being above the TSE depths to well below the TSE depths. We also find that the decline in the TSE spread is directly related to the size of the firm and to the decline in the US spread, and is inversely related to the pre-decimalization ratio of spreads on the US exchange and the TSE. Overall, our results indicate that the US decimalization had the desired positive impact on trading in both the US and Canada, with a decrease in spreads and an increase in retail-sized trading.     

Arbitrage and deflators in illiquid markets

This paper presents a stochastic model for discrete-time trading in financial markets where trading costs are given by convex cost functions and portfolios are constrained by convex sets. The model does not assume the existence of a cash account/numeraire. In addition to classical frictionless markets and markets with transaction costs or bid–ask spreads, our framework covers markets with nonlinear illiquidity effects for large instantaneous trades. In the presence of nonlinearities, the classical notion of arbitrage turns out to have two equally meaningful generalizations, a marginal and a scalable one. We study their relations to state price deflators by analyzing two auxiliary market models describing the local and global behavior of the cost functions and constraints.     

Anonymity,liquidity and fragmentation

We examine the effects of the removal of broker identifiers from the central limit order book of the Australian Stock Exchange. We find that spreads and order aggressiveness decline, and order book depth increases, with the introduction of anonymous trading. This is consistent with the hypothesis that limit order traders are more willing to expose their orders when they can do so anonymously. Anonymous markets attract order flow from non-anonymous substitute markets, but this effect is only seen in large stocks. Our results suggest that exchanges operating in fragmented markets should consider anonymous trading to improve price competition and liquidity, although some of these benefits may be significant only if the stocks are sufficiently large and liquid.     

Liquidity skewness

Bid–ask spreads in equities have declined on average but have become increasingly right-skewed. This finding holds across exchanges as well as size, price, and volume quartiles. Higher right-skewness is consistent with more competition among market makers; which may reduce cross-subsidization across periods of high and low asymmetric information, unlike a monopolistic regime that can maintain a relatively constant spread. Confirming this intuition, proportional differences in spreads between earnings announcements and normal periods have increased considerably even as trading costs have declined on average. Skewness also is cross-sectionally related to information proxies such as institutional holdings and analyst following.     

Why do security prices change? A transaction-level analysis of NYSE stocks

This article develops and tests a structural model of intradayprice formation that embodies public information shocks andmicrostructure effects. We use the model to analyze intradaypatterns in bid-ask spreads, price volatility, transaction costs,and return and quote auto-correlations, and to construct metricsfor price discovery and effective trading costs. Informationasymmetry and uncertainty over fundamentals decrease over theday, although transaction costs increase. The results help explainthe U-shaped pattern in intraday bid-ask spreads and volatility,and are also consistent with the intra-day decline in the varianceof ask price changes.     

限制交易政策如何影响期现关系?——对股指期货价格发现功能的实证检验

本文利用2015年中国股市大幅下跌期间,对股指期货严格限制交易政策这一独特事件前后的高频数据,研究限制交易政策对股指期货与股票市场价格引导关系的影响。利用I-S模型和分位数回归方法的实证结果表明:限制交易政策实施前,股指期货对股票市场的价格影响更强,尤其表现在价格急剧下跌时期;限制交易政策显著增加了期货市场交易成本,从而降低了期货市场的信息份额,削弱了其对股票市场的价格影响,并且改变了期货价格对现货价格“助跌强于助涨”的影响模式,增强了股指期货在价格上涨时对股票市场的影响。研究结果一方面直接量化了期货交易成本变动对其价格发现功能的负面影响,另一方面也从价格引导关系的视角提供了股市危机时期股指期货限制交易政策监管效果的实证证据。     

Asymmetry in Stock Returns Following Block Trades on the Australian Stock Exchange: A Note

A number of recent US. studies have examined the price impact of large (block) trades using intraday data. A major finding is that the price movement following block trades continues upwards following purchases but reverses following sales. This asymmetry in price behaviour, which suggests that block sellers pay a liquidity premium while block buyers do not, has been described as 'intriguing' and a 'key puzzle'. The purpose of this note is to determine whether the phenomenon exists on the Australian Stock Exchange. Evidence consistent with the 'puzzling' asymmetry is shown to exist when returns are measured from the block trade until the close of trade. Contrary to US. findings, which have shown that prices appear to reverse following both block purchases and sales in transaction time analysis, the asymmetry in price behaviour is also demonstrated to exist in transaction returns for the ASX. All results are found to be robust to a number of research design innovations and data partitions.     

Differences between European and American IPO Markets

This brief survey discusses recent developments in the European initial public offering (IPO) market. The spectacular rise and fall of the Euro NM markets and the growth of bookbuilding as a procedure for pricing and allocating IPOs are two important patterns. Gross spreads are lower and less clustered than in the USA. Unlike the USA, some European IPOs, especially those in Germany, have when‐issued trading prior to the final setting of the offer price. Current research includes empirical studies on the valuation of IPOs and both theoretical and empirical work on the determinants of short‐run underpricing.     

Credit default swaps and the market for sovereign debt

In this paper, we analyze the determinants and effects of credit default swap (CDS) trading initiation in the sovereign bond market. CDS trading initiation is associated with a 30–150 basis point reduction in sovereign bond yields, with greater yield reductions accruing to higher default risk economies. For countries with high default risk, rated B or lower by Standard and Poor’s, CDS initiation is also associated with significant price efficiency benefits in the underlying market. CDS trading initiation is more likely following increases in local equity index volatility, index spreads for regional and global CDS markets, or depreciation of the local currency relative to the US dollar, and decreases in a country’s ability to service foreign debt. Our results are robust to selection bias controls based on these factors.     

Transaction Volume and Price Dispersion in the Presale and Spot Real Estate Markets

Noise trading has been intensively studied in finance, but rarely in real estate. Theories of price dispersion have also been well established in retailing research, but less so in real estate. This paper is the first attempt to study the effect of noise trading on price dispersion in the real estate spot and presale (forward) markets. Quality-controlled price dispersion data series are estimated using a sample of transaction data in the housing presale and spot markets in Hong Kong. Our results show that transaction volume has a negative and significant effect on price dispersion in the spot market, but a positive and significant effect in the presale market. These support our conjecture that there are more noise traders in the presale market due to lower transaction costs. The volume effects also provide support for the use of a volume weighted least squares model when constructing a repeat sales index.     

The value of the floor

Existing theoretical literature suggests that floor trading has discernable benefits over electronic trading. In particular floor relationships lead to a reduction in asymmetric information and hence lower spreads. The ability of floor brokers to participate in incoming order flow without revealing their supply and demand curves increases total liquidity and dampens liquidity shocks leading to lower volatility. We develop hypotheses and test them on a sample of stocks that switch from floor trading to an electronic system with fairly identical rules and pre-trade transparency. We find strong support for existing theory and our hypotheses. In particular asymmetric information and volatility are significantly higher on the electronic system. This leads to an increase in investor transaction costs which dwarfs the operational cost advantages of the electronic systems. Our results are robust to tests involving samples that control for company specific factors and market wide trends.     

Eliminating the 20-F reconciliation from IFRS to U.S. GAAP: Short-term and long-term liquidity effects

This paper examines the effects of the SEC’s 2008 decision to no longer require foreign private issuers using IFRS and trading on U.S. exchanges to reconcile their financial statements to U.S. GAAP. Extant research has found conflicting results using short event windows, while studies using longer event windows have found limited capital market impact from eliminating the reconciliation. Motivated by the SEC’s interest in understanding how disclosure rules impact market liquidity, we examine changes in effective bid-ask spreads, the price impact of trades, and quoted depth around 20-F filing dates for a sample of foreign private issuers. We find that effective spreads increase more around 20-F filing dates for filers using IFRS than for filers using U.S. GAAP, suggesting the 20-F report is more informative for filers using IFRS. We then find, in a subsample of filers using IFRS, that the increase in effective spreads for IFRS firms around 20-F filing dates is directly related to the magnitude of differences in book values between IFRS and U.S. GAAP. In sum, our results suggest a loss of useful information after the SEC’s rule change.     

Price dispersion in OTC markets: A new measure of liquidity

In this paper, we model price dispersion effects in over-the-counter (OTC) markets to show that, in the presence of inventory risk for dealers and search costs for investors, traded prices may deviate from the expected market valuation of an asset. We interpret this deviation as a liquidity effect and develop a new liquidity measure quantifying the price dispersion in the context of the US corporate bond market. This market offers a unique opportunity to study liquidity effects since, from October 2004 onwards, all OTC transactions in this market have to be reported to a common database known as the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE). Furthermore, market-wide average price quotes are available from Markit Group Limited, a financial information provider. Thus, it is possible, for the first time, to directly observe deviations between transaction prices and the expected market valuation of securities. We quantify and analyze our new liquidity measure for this market and find significant price dispersion effects that cannot be simply captured by bid-ask spreads. We show that our new measure is indeed related to liquidity by regressing it on commonly-used liquidity proxies and find a strong relation between our proposed liquidity measure and bond characteristics, as well as trading activity variables. Furthermore, we evaluate the reliability of end-of-day marks that traders use to value their positions. Our evidence suggests that the price deviations from expected market valuations are significantly larger and more volatile than previously assumed. Overall, the results presented here improve our understanding of the drivers of liquidity and are important for many applications in OTC markets, in general.