Volatility and dark trading: Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic

We study the effect(s) of volatility on the share of trading in dark pools by exploiting the exogenous shock of the Covid-19 pandemic on financial markets and regulatory restrictions on dark trading. We find that high levels of volatility in lit exchanges is linked to an economically significant loss of market share by dark pools to lit exchanges. In line with the theory, the loss appears to be driven by informed traders’ migration from lit to dark markets during high volatility periods. The market quality implications of the trading dynamics are mixed: while it tempers liquidity decline in the lit market, it exacerbates the loss of informational efficiency.     

Two shades of opacity: Hidden orders and dark trading

Regulators are concerned that large volumes of trading outside lit venues (i.e., dark trading) harms the functioning of financial markets. In contrast, regulators are neutral about hidden-order trading as these occur on lit venues and are associated with positive effects on market quality. An unanswered economic question concerns the interrelation between these two types of opaque trading, i.e., hidden orders and dark trading. Employing two different empirical methodologies we find that dark and hidden-order trading are substitutes. We also show that both types of opaque trading increase when markets are volatile and fewer algorithmic trading occurs. Smart order routing increases dark trading but reduces hidden-order activity.     

Why do traders choose dark markets?

We examine U.S. equity trader use of dark and lit markets. Marketable orders executed in the dark have lower information content and smaller fill rates. Dark orders take longer to execute, but they execute at more favorable prices. Traders are more likely to go dark when the bid-ask spread is wider and those with higher dark participation are more sophisticated. Although market regulators have expressed concern over the rise in dark trading, our results indicate that dark markets provide important benefits to traders that lit markets do not.     

Locals,foreigners, and multi-market trading of equities: Intraday evidence from Thailand

We study stock market orders and trades in a developing country, Thailand, where foreign ownership limits partially segment local and foreign investors into two distinct markets. Some foreigners forgo voting rights and distributions to trade on the “local board”, while some locals forgo such benefits and pay a price premium to trade on the “foreign board”. Regardless of nationality, these cross-market traders typically submit orders when liquidity is high, fill orders at relatively beneficial prices, exploit patterns in stock prices across markets, display profitable holding-period returns, and enhance price discovery. This suggests that skilled, informed trading that affects market quality does not depend on trader nationality.     

Multi-party computation mechanism for anonymous equity block trading: A secure implementation of turquoise plato uncross

Dark pools are financial trading venues where orders are entered and matched in secret so that no order information is leaked. By preventing information leakage, dark pools offer the opportunity for large volume block traders to avoid the costly effects of market impact. However, dark pool operators have been known to abuse their privileged access to order information. To address this issue, we introduce a provably secure multi-party computation mechanism that prevents an operator from accessing and misusing order information. Specifically, we implement a secure emulation of Turquoise Plato Uncross, Europe's largest dark pool trading mechanism, and demonstrate that it can handle real world trading throughput, with guaranteed information integrity.     

Locals, foreigners, and multi-market trading of equities: Intraday evidence from Thailand

We study stock market orders and trades in a developing country, Thailand, where foreign ownership limits partially segment local and foreign investors into two distinct markets. Some foreigners forgo voting rights and distributions to trade on the “local board”, while some locals forgo such benefits and pay a price premium to trade on the “foreign board”. Regardless of nationality, these cross-market traders typically submit orders when liquidity is high, fill orders at relatively beneficial prices, exploit patterns in stock prices across markets, display profitable holding-period returns, and enhance price discovery. This suggests that skilled, informed trading that affects market quality does not depend on trader nationality.     

中国利率市场的价格发现——对国债现货、期货以及利率互换市场的研究

本文采用信息份额模型和基于向量自回归(VAR)模型的格兰杰因果检验,研究了国债现货、国债期货和利率互换三个市场之间的价格发现机制。信息份额模型表明,从整体来看利率互换相对于国债期货和国债现货都具有信息优势,而国债期货相对于国债现货具有信息优势。另外,国债期货的价格发现能力相对于另外两个市场都在随时间增强。格兰杰因果检验结果显示,利率互换在价格发现中单向引领国债期货以及国债现货,国债期货单向引领国债现货。所有结果一致表明, 利率互换和国债期货这两种利率衍生产品在引导中国利率市场价格发现中发挥了重要作用。     

Ripples through markets: Inter-market impacts generated by large trades

This paper uses a sample of large trades executed on the London Stock Exchange's SEAQ-I market for European cross-traded firms to investigate their impact on home market prices when parallel markets suffer from information frictions. I find that (a) large London trades produce price impacts in home markets even though no timely information is published, (b) market makers appear to pre- and post-position their inventories by splitting orders across markets, and (c) the price discovery process across markets changes significantly around large trades with the foreign market making a significantly bigger contribution to price discovery at this time, even though information opaqueness exists.     

Equity market liberalization and corporate governance

Equity market liberalizations open up domestic stock markets to foreign investors. A puzzle in the literature is why developing countries exhibit relatively small financial impacts associated with liberalizations. We use cross-firm variation in corporate governance at the time of the official liberalization of the equity market in Korea to test whether governance can explain the extent to which firms benefit when countries liberalize. The results show that better-governed firms experience significantly greater stock price increases upon equity market liberalization. Following the liberalization in Korea, foreign ownership in firms with strong corporate governance was significantly higher than that in firms with weak governance. Better-governed firms also exhibit higher rates of physical capital accumulation after liberalization.     

Stock price synchronicities and speculative trading in emerging markets

The literature suggests that the strong price synchronicity observed in emerging markets is driven by the lack of firm-specific information acquisition. This paper extends previous studies by focusing on the question of whether investors’ speculative trading behavior or market conditions make the synchronicity in emerging markets more pronounced. Our results indicate that the propensity to engage in speculative trades and a low level of linkage with the world market lead to greater stock price synchronicity. These results are consistent with the hypotheses that it is difficult to price firm-level fundamentals in a speculative market where noise trades prevail, and that less weight is attached to firm-specific fundamentals in pricing stocks in a more segmented market. The price synchronicities are largely found to be stronger in bearish markets, a finding consistent with the hypothesis that investors have increased loss aversion during bear markets, which further limits informed arbitrage.     

Optimal liquidation in dark pools

We consider a large trader liquidating a portfolio using a transparent trading venue with price impact and a dark pool with execution uncertainty. The optimal execution strategy uses both venues continuously, with dark pool orders over-/underrepresenting the portfolio size depending on return correlations; trading at the traditional venue is delayed depending on dark liquidity. Pushing up prices at the traditional venue while selling in the dark pool might generate profits. If future returns depend on historical dark pool liquidity, then sending orders to the dark pool can be worthwhile simply to gather information.     

信息不对称、过度自信与股价变动

信息传导的非同步和投资者情绪变化是股票市场的两个典型特征,前者会引发投资者之间出现信息不对称问题,后者主要体现为投资者过度自信,两者共同作用影响股票价格变动。本文将信息不对称和投资者过度自信情绪置于同一个分析框架,建立两阶段动态序贯定价理论模型研究现实市场上信息传导过程中股价变动的内在机制。结果表明:(1)面临新信息的进入,投资者对股票收益预期的调整与均衡价格之间具有正相关关系;(2)面临有利消息时,过度自信投资者比例越大,股票的均衡价格越高,投资收益将越低;面临不利消息时则相反;(3)随着过度自信投资者比例以及过度自信程度升高,市场风险溢价将下降;(4)投资者群体在信息传导过程中出现分化,对股价变动形成异质信念,未获取信息和获取信息但未出现过度自信的投资者认为股价被高估,获取信息且出现过度自信的投资者认为价格被低估,促使更多的交易,引发市场成交量和股价变动;(5)过度自信投资者比例与过度自信程度提高均会对市场效率产生正向影响,而对市场深度具有负向效应。最后,基于理论结果对非对称性和持续性等典型的市场波动性特征进行解释。     

Brokered versus dealer markets: Impact of proprietary trading with transaction fees

In this study, we consider a one-period financial market with a dealer/broker and an infinite number of investors. While the dealer who trades on his own account (with proprietary trading) simultaneously sets both the transaction fee and the asset price, the broker who brings investors' orders to the market (with no proprietary trading) sets only the transaction fee, given that the price is determined according to the market-clearing condition among investors. We analyze the impact of proprietary trading on the asset price, transaction fee, trading volume, and the welfare of investors. We find that the bid and ask prices set by the dealer who can engage in proprietary trading are more favorable to average investors. As a result, both the trading volume and the transaction fee increase, and social welfare improves.     

流动性冲击、货币政策失误与金融危机——对美国金融危机的反思

本文认为:(1)流动性冲击主要通过资产负债表渠道和资产价格渠道来影响金融市场,正是这两种渠道才使得流动性在金融危机爆发及传导的过程中扮演了重要角色。借款人的资产负债表效应导致损失螺旋和保证金螺旋的产生,造成资产的折价销售,推动了资产价格的下跌和进一步的银根紧缩;(2)房地产泡沫的形成与美联储的货币政策失误、金融市场结构变化、新布雷顿森林体系以及投资者的羊群行为等有关,房地产泡沫破灭是美国金融危机的导火索;(3)金融危机爆发后,美联储通过调整中央银行的资产负债表,推出各种形式的金融创新工具,向金融市场注入流动性,有效地降低了金融市场崩溃的概率。论文最后从流动性管理的角度,对美国金融危机进行了反思。     

The effect of price limits on intraday volatility and information asymmetry

We investigate the effect of price limits on intra-day volatility and information asymmetry using transactions data from the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Proponents of price limits argue that they provide an opportunity for investors to reevaluate market information and make more rational trading decisions. We identify three different limit hits – closing, single, and consecutive – and hypothesize that only the consecutive limit hits are likely to provide such an opportunity, namely, to counter investor overreaction (volatility hypothesis) and to enhance information revelation (information asymmetry hypothesis). Our empirical evidence supports the volatility hypothesis. Our findings generate important policy implications for stock markets that have price limits.     

Do foreigners facilitate information transmission in emerging markets?

Using the degree of accessibility of foreign investors to emerging stock markets, or investibility, as a proxy for the extent of foreign investments, we assess whether investibility has a significant influence on the diffusion of global market information across stocks in emerging markets. We show that greater investibility reduces price delay to global market information. We also find that returns of highly investible stocks lead those of noninvestible stocks because they incorporate global information more quickly. These results are consistent with the idea that financial liberalization in the form of greater investibility yields informationally more efficient stock prices in emerging markets.     

Financial contagion in the laboratory: The cross-market rebalancing channel

We present the results of the first experimental study of financial markets contagion. We develop a model of financial contagion amenable to be tested in the laboratory. In the model, contagion happens because of cross-market rebalancing, a channel for transmission of shocks across markets first studied by Kodres and Pritsker (2002). Theory predicts that, because of portfolio rebalancing, a negative shock in one market transmits itself to the others, as investors adjust their portfolio allocations. The theory is supported by the experimental results. The price observed in the laboratory is close to that predicted by theory, and strong contagion effects are observed. The results are robust across different market structures. Moreover, as theory predicts, lower asymmetric information in a (“developed”) financial market increases the contagion effects in (“emerging”) markets.     

US and Domestic Market Gains and Asian Investors’ Overconfident Trading Behavior

We find that subsequent to both US and domestic market gains, both Asian individual and institutional investors increase their trading and that this effect is more pronounced in bull markets, in periods of relatively favorable investor sentiment, in periods of extremely high market returns, and in markets with short‐sale constraints. We also find that individual investors trade more in response to market gains than institutional investors. Moreover, we find that further integration of Asian stock markets with US stock markets after the Asian financial crisis in 1998 is an important reason for Asian investors’ response to US market gains.     

An evolutionary CAPM under heterogeneous beliefs

Heterogeneity and evolutionary behaviour of investors are two of the most important characteristics of financial markets. This paper incorporates the adaptive behaviour of agents with heterogeneous beliefs and establishes an evolutionary capital asset pricing model (ECAPM) within the mean-variance framework. We show that the rational behaviour of agents switching to better-performing trading strategies can cause large deviations of the market price from the fundamental value of one asset to spill over to other assets. Also, this spill-over effect is associated with high trading volumes and persistent volatility characterized by significantly decaying autocorrelations of, and positive correlation between, price volatility and trading volume.     

Economic evaluation of asymmetric and price range information in gold and general financial markets

Gold is widely perceived as a good diversification or safe haven tool for general financial markets, especially in market turmoil. To fully understand the potential, this study constructs an asymmetric multivariate range-based volatility model to investigate the dependence and volatility structures of gold, stock, and bond markets and further to compare the difference between the financial crisis and post-financial crisis periods. We find a striking explanatory ability to volatility structures provided by the price range information and significant evidence of asymmetric dependence across gold, stock, and bond markets. We implement an asset-allocation strategy incorporating asymmetric dependence and price range information to explore their economic importance. The out-of-sample results show that between 35 and 517 basis points and between 90 and 1111 basis points are earned annually when acknowledging asymmetric dependence and price range information, respectively. These economic benefits are inversely related to the level of investors’ risk aversion and are particularly significant in the period of the global financial crisis.