The Declining Role of NASDAQ Market Makers

We compare the liquidity providing behavior of NASDAQ market makers in 2010 to their behavior in 2004. We examine how frequently market makers are at the inside quote, what market and stock specific factors influence market makers’ behavior, and the relation between market maker participation and intraday bid‐ask spread patterns. We observe a decrease in the percent of the trading day dealers’ quote at the inside, a decline in the number of market makers, and a decrease in the influence market makers have on intraday spread patterns. The results suggest that the role of NASDAQ market makers declines over time.     

PRICE AND QUANTITY QUOTES ON NASDAQ: A STUDY OF DEALER QUOTATION BEHAVIOR

We show that the majority of quotes posted by NASDAQ dealers are noncompetitive and only 19.5% (18.4%) of bid (ask) quotes are at the inside. The percentage of dealer quotes that are at the inside is higher for stocks with wider spreads, fewer market makers, and more frequent trading, and lower for stocks with larger trade sizes and higher return volatility. These results support our conjecture that dealers have greater incentives to be at the inside for stocks with larger market‐making revenues and smaller costs. Dealers post large depths when their quotes are at the inside and frequently quote the minimum required depth when they are not at the inside. The latter quotation behavior leads to the negative intertemporal correlation between dealer spread and depth.     

TRADING COSTS OF NON‐U.S. STOCKS ON THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE: THE EFFECT OF INSTITUTIONAL OWNERSHIP,ANALYST FOLLOWING,AND MARKET REGULATION

We investigate the differences in market microstructure between U.S. and non‐U.S. stocks cross‐listed on the New York Stock Exchange using a sample of 316 pairs of matched stocks. We find that non‐U.S. stocks have wider spreads and larger adverse‐selection costs than U.S. stocks even after controlling for macro‐level institutional differences. Regression analysis shows that spreads and adverse‐selection costs are negatively correlated with institutional ownership and analyst followings. Thus, the higher spreads and adverse‐selection costs for non‐U.S. stocks can be partly explained by the lower institutional ownership and analyst following of non‐U.S. stocks. In addition, we find that although the spreads and adverse‐selection costs for non‐U.S. stocks are significantly higher before the implementation of Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD), the differences become even greater after Regulation FD, suggesting that Regulation FD has improved the information environment for U.S. stocks.     

MARKET STRUCTURE AND TRADING VOLUME

Historically, trading volume reported for NASDAQ stocks has been overstated vis‐à‐vis New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) stocks, both because of the dealer's participation in trades as a market maker and because of interdealer trading. Beginning in 1997, the Securities and Exchange Commission changed order‐handling rules and trade‐reporting rules, which may have reduced or eliminated the overstatement of NASDAQ trading. We examine trading volumes of firms changing from NASDAQ to the NYSE since 1997 and document that reported trading volume for NASDAQ stocks continues to be overstated. Moreover, the degree of overstatement is much larger for firms with high trading volume.     

Emerging from Bankruptcy with When‐Issued Trading

We examine the set of firms that emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and traded on a when‐issued basis before their official return to the regular way in NASDAQ, Amex, or NYSE. We find that this when‐issued market is liquid and price efficient. The when‐issued closing price is a good indicator of the first closing price in the regular way market. Emerging firms that have when‐issued trading experience lower regular way volatility and smaller relative spreads than those without when‐issued trading. Our probit regressions show that firm size is an important determinant of the adoption of when‐issued trading.     

Estimating bid-ask spread components: Specialist versus multiple market maker systems

This paper tests two competing hypotheses concerning the relationship between adverse selection costs on NASDAQ versus specialist-dominated exchanges. We reject the hypothesis that specialist-dominated exchanges have smaller adverse selection costs than exchanges with multiple market makers. We provide direct evidence on the timing differences between closing transactions and quotes as well as evidence on the extent of nontrading on the AMEX and NYSE but cannot reject the hypothesis that adverse selection costs are a function of average transaction size (which is generally larger on the AMEX and NYSE). We also provide insight into institutional differences across exchanges and the ISSM data base.     

TRADING COSTS AND QUOTE CLUSTERING ON THE NYSE AND NASDAQ AFTER DECIMALIZATION

We examine execution costs and quote clustering on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ using 517 matching pairs of stocks after decimalization. We find that the mean spread of NASDAQ stocks is greater than the mean spread of NYSE stocks when spreads are equally weighted across stocks, and the difference is greater for smaller stocks. In contrast, the mean NASDAQ spread is narrower than the mean NYSE spread when spreads are volume weighted, and the difference is statistically significant for large stocks. Both NYSE and NASDAQ stocks exhibit high degrees of quote clustering on nickels and dimes, and quote clustering has a significant effect on spreads in both markets.     

Tiered Information Disclosure: An Empirical Analysis of the Advance Peek into the Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment

This paper studies market microstructure implications of informed high‐frequency traders (HFTs) from two seconds of advance peek into the Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS), provided by Thomson Reuters to its elite customers. Using individual stocks in the NASDAQ data set, we show how HFTs trade around ICS events. We find that liquidity demanders during two seconds of advance peek earn substantive profits, which are consistent with the notion that HFTs’ informational advantages may increase adverse selection costs for other market participants. This evidence elucidates the debate on regulatory oversight and its role in circumventing the potentially adverse effects from an advance peek into ICS.     

Regulation Fair Disclosure and the Cost of Adverse Selection

Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD), imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in October 2000, was designed to prohibit disclosure of material private information to selected market participants. The informational advantage such select participants gain is unclear. If multiple “insiders” receive identical information, private information is immediately incorporated in price and each insider has zero expected profit. If, on the other hand, Regulation FD has curtailed the flow of information from firms, private information becomes longer‐lived and more valuable. Hence, market makers will demand increased compensation by widening the adverse selection component of the bid‐ask spread. We identify the cost components of the bid‐ask spread for a sample of NASDAQ stocks surrounding the implementation of Regulation FD. Controlling for other factors affecting the spread, we find that adverse selection costs increase approximately 36% after Regulation FD. We interpret our finding as Regulation FD failing to achieve one of its desired objectives.     

Modeling the bid/ask spread: measuring the inventory-holding premium

The need to understand and measure the determinants of market maker bid/ask spreads is crucial in evaluating the merits of competing market structures and the fairness of market maker rents. This study develops a simple, parsimonious model for the market maker's spread that accounts for the effects of price discreteness induced by minimum tick size, order-processing costs, inventory-holding costs, adverse selection, and competition. The inventory-holding and adverse selection cost components of spread are modeled as an option with a stochastic time to expiration. This inventory-holding premium embedded in the spread represents compensation for the price risk borne by the market maker while the security is held in inventory. The premium is partitioned in such a way that the inventory-holding and adverse selection cost components, as well as the probability of an informed trade, are identified. The model is tested empirically using Nasdaq stocks in three distinct minimum tick size regimes and is shown to perform well both in an absolute sense and relative to competing specifications.     

Why effective spreads on NASDAQ were higher than on the New York stock exchange in the 1990s

Two hypotheses have been advanced to explain why spreads on NASDAQ were substantially higher than those on the NYSE in the 1990s: “collusion” and “preferencing and payment for order flow.” We present data on all actively traded stocks in these markets of relative effective spreads (RES), aggregated monthly over 1987–1999 and advance a third hypothesis: NASDAQ “SOES-day-trading.” We estimate NASDAQ and NYSE informed-trade losses and gains to market makers and other liquidity providers on six trade sizes, and find that losses on trades we ascribe to SOES day traders were substantially greater than those on other trades, offset somewhat by gains from small-trade-size investors. NASDAQ market makers' response to these losses and additional operations costs incurred to reduce the losses resulted in greater RES and increased trading within the best quotes, predominantly on larger trade sizes. The data are consistent with the “SOES-day-trading” hypotheses, but not with the other two. Furthermore, the mandatory SOES “experiment” provides insights into the negative effects of automated trading systems (such as ECNs, which now dominate NASDAQ) when their design does not adequately consider opportunistic traders.     

Dealer Markets Under Stress: The Performance of NASDAQ Market Makers During the November 15, 1991, Market Break

The liquidity of the NASDAQ market was seriously undermined during the crash on October 19, 1987, when bid-ask spreads widened dramatically and dealers reputedly withdrew from market making. This paper studies the liquidity of 36 NASDAQ issues on November 15, 1991, when average prices fell over 4%, representing the first major correction in the post-crash era. We find that bid-ask spreads, the percentage of dealers posting inside quotes, and trading volume remained virtually unaffected. Effective spreads were also largely unaffected, except for trades in excess of 1,000 shares among issues whose market makers avoided odd-eighth quotes. Our evidence implies that, unlike October 1987, the liquidity of the NASDAQ market did not deteriorate appreciably during this episode of unusual market stress.     

‘Hot’ Debt Markets and Capital Structure

This paper examines the motives of debt issuance during hot‐debt market periods and its impact on capital structure over the period 1970–2006. We find that perceived capital market conditions as favourable, an indication of market timing, and adverse selection costs of equity (i.e., information asymmetry) are important frictions that lead certain firms to issue more debt in hot‐ than cold‐debt market periods. Using alternative hot‐debt market issuance measures and controlling for other effects, such as structural shifts in the debt market, industry, book‐to‐market, price‐to‐earnings, size, tax rates, debt market conditions and adjustment costs based on debt credit ratings, we find that firms with high adverse selection costs issue substantially more (less) debt when market conditions are perceived as hot (cold). Moreover, the results indicate that there is a persistent hot‐debt market effect on the capital structure of debt issuers; hot‐debt market issuing firms do not actively rebalance their leverage to stay within an optimal capital structure range.     

LIQUIDITY AND QUOTE CLUSTERING IN A MARKET WITH MULTIPLE TICK SIZES

We analyze market liquidity (i.e., spreads and depths) and quote clustering using data from the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE), where the tick size increases with share price in a stepwise fashion. We find that stocks that are subject to larger mandatory tick sizes have wider spreads and less quote clustering. We also find that liquidity providers on the KLSE do not always quote larger depths for stocks with larger tick sizes. Overall, our results suggest that larger tick sizes for higher priced stocks are detrimental to market liquidity, although the adverse effect of larger tick sizes is mitigated by lower negotiation costs (i.e., less quote clustering).     

Adverse selection costs for NASDAQ and NYSE after decimalization

NYSE and NASDAQ completed their decimalization on January 29, 2001 and on April 9, 2001 respectively. In this paper, we compare adverse selection component of the bid–ask spread for NASDAQ and NYSE stocks after decimalization using the data from May 2001 and July 2001. We find that the adverse selection component of the bid–ask spread is significantly lower on NASDAQ than on NYSE, and these differences cannot be attributed to the differences in the characteristics of the stocks traded in the two markets. In addition, we find that the adverse selection costs increase with trade size on NYSE, however there is no monotonic pattern observed for NASDAQ stocks. Lastly, we report that although the order flows arrived in the two markets are significantly different, they can at best explain a small portion of the observed differences in adverse selection costs.     

Local market makers, liquidity and market quality

We examine the role of geographically proximate (local) market makers in providing liquidity and improving the quality of a dealer market. Firms with active participation of local dealers enjoy lower quoted and effective spreads, as well as more informative prices. The beneficial effects from local market makers are not confined to a few “top” local dealers and they cannot be attributed to their participation in the firm's IPO syndicate or industry specialization. Further, we find that days with aggressive bidding from local market makers relative to their non-local counterparts are associated with significant positive abnormal returns, consistent with local market makers possessing information advantages. In summary, our results suggest that the information advantages of local market makers may be a contributing factor to the reduction in the cost of trading.     

Price impact and bursts in liquidity provision

This paper analyses brief episodes of high-intensity quote turnover and revision—‘bursts’ in quotes—in the US equity market. Such events occur very frequently, several hundred times a day for actively traded stocks. We find significant price impact associated with these market maker initiated events, about five times higher than during non-burst periods. Bursts in quotes are concurrent with short-lived structural breaks in the informational relationship between market makers and market takers. During bursts, market makers no longer passively impound information from order flow into quotes—a departure from the traditional market microstructure paradigm. Rather, market makers significantly impact prices during bursts in quotes. Further analysis shows that there is asymmetry in adverse selection between the bid and ask sides of the limit order book and only a sub-population of market makers enjoys an informational advantage during bursts. Market makers on the side opposite the burst suffer elevated adverse selection costs, while market makers on the side of the burst realize positive spread, irrespective of the order flow direction. Our results call attention to the need for a new microstructure perspective in understanding modern high-frequency limit order book markets and the quote manipulation strategies at the disposal of the fast market makers.     

PIP Transactions,Price Improvement,Informed Trades and Order Execution Quality

This study focuses on innovations in order execution processes within the context of the Boston Option Exchange (BOX). More specifically, it examines the impact of the Price Improvement Process (PIP) on options quoted, effective and realised proportional spreads. We consider the PIP as a mechanism that allows the market maker to ‘internalise’ the transaction. We show that PIP transactions are associated with wider bid/ask proportional quoted spreads than non‐PIP transactions, in spite of the temporary narrowing of the effective proportional spread during PIP. We identify informed traders by focusing on the direction of trade. Using an original data set, we show that PIP transactions follow signals in the form of buy/sell orders by informed traders. We also show that PIP is a mechanism that allows the market maker to internalise a position in the same direction as that of the informed trader. We conclude that PIP does not improve the efficiency of the market but simply allows the market maker to benefit at the expense of uninformed traders.     

Financial intermediation and the role of price discrimination in the foreign exchange market

Foreign exchange trading is performed in opaque and decentralized markets. The two-tier market structure consisting of a customer segment and an interdealer segment to which only market makers have access gives rise to the possibility of price discrimination. We develop a theoretical pricing model that accounts for market-power considerations and analyze a database of the trades of a foreign exchange market maker. We find that the market maker generally exerts low bargaining power vis-á-vis customers. The dealer earns lower average spreads on trades with financial customers than commercial customers, even though the former are perceived to convey exchange-rate-relevant information.     

THE CHOICE OF TRADING VENUE AND RELATIVE PRICE IMPACT OF INSTITUTIONAL TRADING: ADRs VERSUS THE UNDERLYING SECURITIES IN THEIR LOCAL MARKETS

We address two important themes associated with institutions’ trading in foreign markets: (1) the choice of trading venues (between a company's listing in its home market and that in the United States as an American Depositary Receipt [ADR]) and (2) the comparison of trading costs across the two venues. We identify institutional trading in both venues using proprietary institutional trading data. Overall, our research underscores the intuition that the choice of institutional trading in a stock's local market or as an ADR is a complex process that embodies variables that measure the relative adverse selection and liquidity at order, stock, and country levels. Institutions route a higher percentage of trades to more liquid markets, and these trades are associated with higher cumulative abnormal returns. We also find that institutional trading costs are generally lower for trading cross‐listed stocks on home exchanges even after controlling for selection bias.