Market microstructure

It is assumed that a collection of market agents can be treated as a statistical ensemble. Their market activities are depicted as the stochastic generation of market orders according to a Poisson process. The objective is to effectively describe the ‘temporal microstructure’, or moment-to-moment trading activities in asset markets. Two basic models, ‘dealership’ vs. ‘auction’ markets (and their variants) are put forth. Implications are drawn from each model. The implications include several testable hypotheses regarding the aggregate behavior of markets and market-makers as well as some qualitative insight into the transaction-to-transaction nature of realistic exchange processes.