Strategic Trading in a Dynamic Noisy Market

This paper studies a dynamic model of a financial market with a strategic trader. In each period the strategic trader receives a privately observed endowment in the stock. He trades with competitive market makers to share risk. Noise traders are present in the market. After receiving a stock endowment, the strategic trader is shown to reduce his risk exposure either by selling at a decreasing rate over time or by selling and then buying back some of the shares sold. When the time between trades is small, the strategic trader reveals the information regarding his endowment very quickly.     

Information aggregation in a noisy rational expectations economy

This paper analyzes a general equilibrium model of a competitive security market in which traders possess independent pieces of information about the return of a risky asset. Each trader conditions his estimate of the return both on his own private source of information and price, which in equilibrium serves as a ‘noisy’ aggregator of the total information observed by all traders. A closed-form characterization of the rational expectations equilibrium is presented. A counter-example to the existence of ‘fully revealing’ equilibrium is developed.     

Big elephants in small ponds: Do large traders make financial markets more aggressive?

Market participants often suspect that large traders have a disproportionate effect on financial markets, increasing the aggressiveness of market responses. Prior studies have shown that the impact of a large trader on a currency crisis depends positively on his “size” and informational position. By contrast, this article highlights the role that market sentiment has on the impact of a large trader. If the market believes that fundamentals are weak, then the probability of a crisis depends positively on the trader's size but negatively on the precision of his information, with these effects reversed in a generally optimistic market. A large player, therefore, need not make market responses more aggressive.     

Working Orders in Limit Order Markets and Floor Exchanges

We analyze limit order markets and floor exchanges, assuming an informed trader and discretionary liquidity traders use market orders and can either submit block orders or work their demands as a series of small orders. By working their demands, large market order traders pool with small traders. We show that every equilibrium on a floor exchange must involve at least partial pooling. Moreover, there is always a fully pooling (worked order) equilibrium on a floor exchange that is equivalent to a block order equilibrium in a limit order market.     

Optimal Dynamic Order Submission Strategies in Some Stylized Trading Problems

This study derives optimal dynamic order submission strategies for trading problems faced by three stylized traders: an uninformed liquidity trader, an informed trader and a value-motivated trader. Separate solutions are obtained for quote- and order-driven markets. The results provide practicable rules for how to trade small orders and how to manage traders. Transaction cost measurement methods based on implementation shortfall are proven to dominate other methods.
Since investors demand liquidity when they submit market orders and supply liquidity when they submit limit orders, the results improve our understanding of market liquidity. In particular, the models illustrate the role of time in the search for liquidity by characterizing the demand for and supply of immediacy.     

Equilibrium moment restrictions on asset returns: normal and crisis periods

Empirically, the covariance between stock returns varies with their volatility. We seek a robust theoretical explanation of this. With minimal assumptions, we model stochastic properties of equilibrium returns which result from the interaction between inter-temporal traders and noisy, price-sensitive short-term traders. The inter-temporal traders can have arbitrary investment rules, preferences and information. In all cases we find a set of restrictions between second moments of equilibrium returns. With two assets there is also a bound on the correlation between asset returns. Estimation with second moments of global stock returns supports our theoretical framework. Higher volatility in at least one market can increase comovement among markets. With globalization, covariances between two stock markets can also affect covariances between two other stock markets. We also find that the changes in trader behavior between normal and crisis periods lead to changes in the moment restrictions between asset returns.     

The “make or take” decision in an electronic market: Evidence on the evolution of liquidity

This paper uses experimental asset markets to investigate the evolution of liquidity in an electronic limit order market. Our market setting includes salient features of electronic limit order markets, as well as informed traders and liquidity traders. We focus on the strategies of the traders and how these are affected by trader type, characteristics of the market, and characteristics of the asset. We find that informed traders use more limit orders than do liquidity traders. Our main result is that liquidity provision shifts as trading progresses, with informed traders increasingly providing liquidity in markets. The change in the behavior of the informed traders seems to be in response to the dynamic adjustment of prices to information; they take (provide) liquidity when the value of their information is high (low). Thus, a market-making role emerges endogenously in our electronic markets and is ultimately adopted by the traders who are least subject to adverse selection when placing limit orders.     

Do market prices reveal the decision models of sophisticated investors?: Evidence from the laboratory

If security prices are fully revealing, then all public information should be reflected in prices, and unsophisticated traders may be able to learn how various types of information affect security valuation by observing prices. A series of laboratory asset markets was conducted to examine whether unsophisticated traders are able to learn to evaluate publicly released information by trading with and observing trades made by a sophisticated trader who knows the valuation implications of the information. We find that unsophisticated traders who participate in an asset market with a sophisticated trader show significant improvement in their ability to use public information on a subsequent price estimation task. Conversely, a control group consisting only of unsophisticated traders shows no improvement. We conclude that market prices convey the sophisticated trader’s private information in a manner that permits unsophisticated investors to learn the stock price implications of a public information release.     

Non-linear dynamics in international stock market returns

Recent empirical finance research has reported non-linear dynamics within asset returns. However, much of this extant research has focussed upon asset markets within the US and UK. This paper examines whether such dynamics are also present in a series of six international equity index returns. Using empirical models which are consistent that the theoretical behavioural finance noise trader motivation of non-linearity, whereby market dynamics differ between small and large returns, our results suggest these models improve the in-sample fit and out-of-sample forecast over linear alternatives. Further, the point of regime transition differs between positive and negative returns indicating that noise traders are more likely to engage in trend-chasing behaviour in up markets and anchoring behaviour in down markets. Finally, the forecast gain in the Asia-Pacific markets is greater than in the European markets suggestive that limits to arbitrage are greater perhaps as fundamental traders knowledge of market dynamics and noise trader behaviour is still evolving.     

A learning market-maker in the Glosten–Milgrom model

This paper develops a model of a learning market-maker by extending the Glosten–Milgrom model of dealer markets. The market-maker tracks the changing true value of a stock in settings with informed traders (with noisy signals) and liquidity traders, and sets bid and ask prices based on its estimate of the true value. We empirically evaluate the performance of the market-maker in markets with different parameter values to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm, and then use the algorithm to derive properties of price processes in simulated markets. When the true value is governed by a jump process, there is a two regime behaviour marked by significant heterogeneity of information and large spreads immediately following a price jump, which is quickly resolved by the market-maker, leading to a rapid return to homogeneity of information and small spreads. We also discuss the similarities and differences between our model and real stock market data in terms of distributional and time series properties of returns.     

Large traders,hidden arbitrage,and complete markets

This paper studies hidden arbitrage opportunities in markets where large traders affect the price process, and where the market is complete (in the classical sense). The arbitrage opportunities are “hidden” because they occur on a small set of times (typically of Lebesgue measure zero). These arbitrage opportunities occur naturally in markets where a large trader supports the price of some asset or commodity, for example corporate stock repurchase plans, government interest rate or foreign currency intervention, and price support by investment banks in IPOs. We also illustrate immediate arbitrage opportunities generated by usual market activity at specific points in time, for example the issuance date of an IPO or the inclusion date of a new stock in the S&P 500 index.     

Trading behavior in S&P 500 index futures

This article examines the determinants of trading decisions and the performance of trader types, in the context of the E-Mini S&;P 500 futures and S&;P 500 futures markets. Speculators and small traders tend to follow positive feedback strategies while hedgers dynamically adjust positions in response to market returns. Such strategies apparently reverse during the 2008–09 financial crisis. Investor sentiment and market volatility play an important role in determining the net trading position of traders across the sample period. While all trader types are better at foreseeing market upturns, an out-of-sample test suggests that speculators and small traders have some predictive ability for short-term market returns.     

Long-Lived Private Information and Imperfect Competition

We develop a multi-period auction model in which multiple privately informed agents strategically exploit their long-lived information. We show that such traders compete aggressively and cause most of their common private information to be revealed very rapidly. In the limit as the interval between auctions approaches zero, market depth becomes infinite and all private information is revealed immediately. These results are in contrast to those of Kyle (1985) in which the monopolistic informed trader causes his information to be incorporated into prices gradually, and, when the interval between auctions is vanishingly small, market depth is constant over time.     

Information, Trading Demand, and Futures Price Volatility

We examine the relation between futures price volatility and trading demand by type of trader in the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500-stock index futures market. We find that volatility covaries negatively with signed speculative demand shocks but is positively related to signed hedging demand shocks. No significant relation between volatility and demand shocks for small traders is found. Our results suggest that changes in positions of large hedgers destabilize the market, whereas changes in positions of large speculators stabilize volatility. Consistent with models with asymmetrically informed traders, we find that large speculators are likely to possess superior forecasting ability, large hedgers behave like positive feedback traders, and small traders are liquidity traders.     

Imperfect Competition among Informed Traders

We analyze competition among informed traders in the continuous-time Kyle(1985) model, as Foster and Viswanathan (1996) do in discrete time. We explicitly describe the unique linear equilibrium when signals are imperfectly correlated and confirm the conjecture of Holden and Subrahmanyam (1992) that there is no linear equilibrium when signals are perfectly correlated. One result is that at some date, and at all dates thereafter, the market would have been more informationally efficient had there been a monopolist informed trader instead of competing traders. The relatively large amount of private information remaining near the end of trading causes the market to approach complete illiquidity.     

Financial Markets Where Traders Neglect the Informational Content of Prices

We model a financial market where some traders of a risky asset do not fully appreciate what prices convey about others' private information. Markets comprising solely such “cursed” traders generate more trade than those comprising solely rationals. Because rationals arbitrage away distortions caused by cursed traders, mixed markets can generate even more trade. Per‐trader volume in cursed markets increases with market size; volume may instead disappear when traders infer others' information from prices, even when they dismiss it as noisier than their own. Making private information public raises rational and “dismissive” volume, but reduces cursed volume given moderate noninformational trading motives.     

Competitive entry and endogenous risk in the foreign exchange market

Recent evidence shows that higher trader participation increasesexchange rate volatility. To explore this linkage, we developa dynamic model of endogenous entry of traders subject to heterogenousexpectational errors. Entry of a marginal trader into the markethas two effects: it increases the capacity of the market toabsorb exogenous supply risk, and at the same time it adds noiseand endogenous trading risk. The competitive entry equilibriumis characterized by excessive market entry and excessively volatileprices. A positive tax on entrants can decrease trader participationand volatility while increasing market efficiency.     

Speculative attacks in a two-peg model

We present a two-country model of speculative attacks where the two countries peg their currency to the U.S. dollar and a continuum of investors can either attack or defend one or the two pegs. The main objective of the paper is to show how extending a single-peg model of speculative attacks with the presence of a second country pegging its currency changes the range of parameters for which a currency is attacked. The model suggests that the presence of another country fixing its exchange rate changes dramatically the range of parameters for which a currency is attacked or defended. For example, the model indicates that a peg with a relatively high probability of collapse could survive if the other peg is not very likely to be abandoned, so investors prefer instead to defend the second peg. Finally, under complete information, when the level of fundamentals in both economies is neither weak nor strong the stronger peg may collapse while the weaker peg may survive, so in principle any peg could be successfully attacked.     

Stock market dynamics with rational liquidity traders

In the Kyle (1985) finite horizon model of stock market dynamics with a trader who holds long-lived information, informed trading intensities rise with time, and the slopes of the equilibrium price schedules fall. This paper shows that this result depends crucially on the irrational liquidity trader assumption. We replace the irrational noise traders with a sequence of rational, risk averse, liquidity traders who receive endowment shocks to their holdings of the risky asset. We demonstrate that unless liquidity traders are sufficiently risk averse, the slope of equilibrium price schedule rises over time, while informed trading intensities fall. In particular, Kyle's result holds only when liquidity traders are so risk averse that they ‘over-rebalance’ their portfolio's holdings of the risky asset, so that their final holdings of the risky asset have the opposite sign of their initial position.     

Whose trades convey information? Evidence from a cross-section of traders

This paper contributes empirically to our understanding of informed traders. It analyzes traders’ characteristics in a foreign exchange electronic limit order market via anonymous trader identities. We use six indicators of informed trading in a cross-sectional multivariate approach to identify traders with high price impact. More information is conveyed by those traders’ trades which—simultaneously—use medium-sized orders (practice stealth trading), have large trading volume, are located in a financial center, trade early in the trading session, at times of wide spreads and when the order book is thin.