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.     

Conditional volatility persistence and volatility spillovers in the foreign exchange market

I investigate the magnitudes and determinants of volatility spillovers in the foreign exchange (FX) market, using realized measures of volatility and heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR) models. I confirm both meteor shower effects (i.e., inter-regional volatility spillovers) and heat wave effects (i.e., intra-regional volatility spillovers) in the FX market. Furthermore, I find that conditional volatility persistence is the dominant channel linking the changing market states of each region to future volatility and its spillovers. Market state variables contribute to more than half of the explanatory power in predicting conditional volatility persistence, with the model that calibrates volatility persistence and spillovers conditionally on market states performing statistically and economically better. The utilization of market state variables significantly extends our understanding of the economic mechanisms of volatility persistence and spillovers and sheds new light on econometric techniques for volatility modeling and forecasting.     

Semi‐transparency,dealership market,and foreign exchange market quality

This paper examines the effects of a semi-transparency event, the introduction of the electronic trading system (EBS), on the market quality of a typical dealership market – the FX market. We find that increasing transparency leads to smaller quote disagreement among dealers and higher trading volume, but the beneficial effects are bigger for uninformed dealers than informed dealers. We also find that information efficiency improves overall in the semi-transparent system; however, informed dealers are found to quote less aggressively in the more transparent market. We conclude that semi-transparency raises market quality in general, but that it is the uninformed dealers who benefit more from this increased quality.     

Explaining the accounting disclosure index of stock exchanges by foreign exchange market activity

In this article, researcher-created accounting disclosure index of 23 stock exchanges for the year 1992 and its relationship with variables including foreign exchange turnover, economic and financial indicators were investigated. The accounting disclosure index of global stock exchanges crafted by Adhikari and Tondkar (1992) was regressed on foreign market turnover which was utilized as a proxy for foreign exchange market activity. The OLS results supported that along with the activity of foreign exchange market; GNI per capita, market capitalization, energy and electric consumption, number of listed companies were significantly related with the accounting disclosure index. The foreign market turnover was found to be positively influencing the accounting disclosure index. The models explained about 73% of the variation in the index with an F-ratio of 26.56 indicating the overall significance of the model.     

Market structure and dealers’ quoting behavior in the foreign exchange market

This article examines how differently the same dealer quotes in the inter-dealer and customer foreign exchange markets that have different market structures. The model first predicts that customer spreads are generally wider than inter-dealer ones due to less transparency in the customer market. The model also predicts that since customers are believed to be less informed than dealers, the differential between customer and inter-dealer spreads tends to fall with the rise in order sizes. In addition, the dealer's mid-quotes are shown to be the same in the two markets. Empirical evidence based on data collected from a FX dealer supports these theoretical findings.     

Information and volatility links in the foreign exchange market

We apply the trading model of Fleming et al (1998 ). to a number of currency markets. The model posits that two markets can have common volatility structures as a result of receiving common information and from cross‐hedging activity where a position in one currency is used to hedge risk in a position taken in another. Our results imply that the model is effective in identifying common information flows and volatility spillovers in the currency markets and that some of these effects are lost when simply examining raw correlations. A series of specification tests of the 21 bivariate systems that are examined provides support for the trading model in the foreign exchange context.     

Information shares in a two-tier FX market

Using several measures of information share, we examine price discovery across the inter-dealer and dealer–customer market tiers in the currencies market. In the spot market, the information share of the inter-dealer tier is higher than that of the dealer–customer one for non-financial sector trades and is lower than the dealer–customer tier for foreign investors’ sell trades. In the forward market, the dealer–customer tier generally has the greater information share at the dealer’s buy side. Our results indicate the market where customers’ trades are the most informative and demonstrate how exogenous events affect price discovery across markets and market tiers.     

News announcements and price discovery in foreign exchange spot and futures markets

This paper studies competition in price discovery between spot and futures rates for the EUR–USD and JPY–USD markets around scheduled macroeconomic announcements. Using both the information shares approach and the common factor component weight approach for futures prices from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), as well as deal prices from spot trading on the Electronic Broking Services (EBS), we gauge how foreign exchange spot and futures markets respond to news surprises. The results show that the spot rates provide more price discovery than do the CME futures rates overall; however, the contribution of the futures rates to price discovery increases in the time surrounding macroeconomic announcement releases.     

Reported and secret interventions in the foreign exchange markets

Using a new approach relying on news wire reports, we estimate the proportion of secret interventions (i.e., unreported official interventions) in the foreign exchange markets that have been conducted by the three major central banks since 1985. We therefore revisit the estimation of conditional probabilities of secret operations and compute them by both central bank and operation type. The proportion of secret interventions is found to be lower for concerted operations and to display a great deal of variability over time as well as across the three major central banks. Our analysis reveals that the Bank of Japan has recently adopted an intervention policy more based on secret operations.     

The price discovery role of day traders in futures market: Evidence from different types of day traders

Using proprietary account-level transaction data in the futures market where day traders are self-declared ex ante, this study investigates whether day traders enhance price discovery at the market level. From a natural classification of day traders, we find that heterogeneous day traders have differential effects on price discovery. Self-declared day traders, who benefit from low margin requirement, do not improve price discovery measured by information share. In contrast, non-declared traders, who are not self-declared as day traders, improve price discovery. Their positive impacts on price discovery are particularly significant during periods of high volatility and arrival of new information. Overall, a margin stimulating policy may encourage more day trading, but may also attract overconfident investors, especially inexperienced ones, and who do not enhance price discovery.     

Heterogeneous real-time trading strategies in the foreign exchange market

The foreign exchange (FX) market is worldwide, but the dealers differ in their geographical locations (time zones), working hours, time horizons, home currencies, access to information,transaction costs, and other institutional constraints. The variety of time horizones is large: from intra-day dealers, who close their positions every evening, to long-term investors and central banks. Depending on the constraints, the different market participats need different strategies to reach their goal, which is usually maximizing the profit, or rather a utility function including risk. Different intra-day trading strategies can be studied only if high-density data are available. Oslen & Associates (O & A) has collected and analysed large amounts of FX quotes by market makers around the clock (up to 5000 non-equally spaced prices per day for the German mark against US$). Based on these data, a set of real-time intra-day trading models has been developed. These models give explicit trading recommendations under realistic constraints. They are allowed to trade only during the opening hours of a market, depending on the time zone and local holidays. The models have been running real-time for more than three years, thus leading to an ex ante test. The test results, obtained with a risk-sensitive performance measure, are presented. All these trading models are profitable, but they differ in their risk behaviour and dealing frequency. If a certain profitable intra-day algorithm is tested with different working hours, its success can considerably change. A systematic study shows that the best choice of working hours is usually when the most important markets for the particular FX rate are active. All the results demonstrate that the assumption of a homogeneous 24-hour FX market with identical dealers, following an identical ‘rational expectation’, is far from reality. To explain the market dynamics, a heterogeneous model of the market with different types of dealers is more appropriate.     

The day-of-the-week effect in foreign exchange markets: multi-currency evidence

To investigate to what extent transaction mechanism matters, we examine the daily returns of 29 foreign exchange rates in the New York market. This paper finds that the day-of-the-week effect existed in the 1980s for some, not all, currencies. The fact that the day-of-the-week effect existed for only some currencies suggests that the US transaction mechanism alone cannot explain the anomaly. Furthermore, this paper finds that the day-of-the-week effect disappears for almost all currencies in the 1990s. This latter result is consistent with previous studies on anomalies in the stock markets.     

European foreign exchange market efficiency: Evidence based on crisis and noncrisis periods

This study investigates the impact on foreign exchange market efficiency of the 1992 European financial market crisis by studying precrisis, crisis, and postcrisis periods. Long-term relationships among European currency values are identified during the three periods, although the relationships are not stable during the precrisis and the postcrisis periods. These results may be due to one or more of the following: (1) market inefficiency, (2) a risk premium, or (3) common policy guidelines for European monetary system (EMS) members. Evidence of market inefficiency is strong. Forecasting results demonstrate better performance by an error correction model (ECM) than by a random walk model (RWM) for the British pound and German mark, while results for the French franc and Italian lira are mixed. Dominance tests using Granger causality indicate only weak German mark dominance both in the short and long run.     

Informed and uninformed trading on the Australian dollar

Using a high-frequency data set of the spot Australian/US dollar, this study examines the distribution of quotes, spreads, and returns across the trading day. By identifying the direction of trade and the subsequent quote returns from contributing banks, the segmented nature of the market into market-makers and informed and uninformed traders is investigated. The results suggest that the economic gain possible from private information is maximised over 2 to 5 quotes and is rapidly eroded by 20 quotes (about 2 min later during busy trading times) as other new information enters the market. Also, the analysis is revealing of discontinuities in trading and the volatility of pricing across the trading day.     

Trading the foreign exchange market with technical analysis and Bayesian Statistics

In this study, the profitability of technical analysis and Bayesian Statistics in trading the EUR/USD, GBP/USD, and USD/JPY exchange rates are examined. For this purpose, seven thousand eight hundred forty-six technical rules are generated, and their profitability is assessed through a data snooping procedure. Then, the most promising rules are combined with a Naïve Bayes, a Relevance Vector Machine, a Dynamic Model Averaging, a Dynamic Model Selection and a Bayesian regularized Neural Network model. The findings show that technical analysis has value in foreign exchange trading, but the profit margins are small. On the other hand, Bayesian Statistics seems to increase the profitability of technical rules up to five times.     

Tick test accuracy in foreign exchange ECN markets

Recent computer quoting activity has increased the allure of the tick test because the quote rule and its variants require matching asynchronous trade and quote records. We find tick test accuracy of 1.2 million forex trades is about 67% which falls to 63% for zerotick trades (half the sample). Accuracy declines as quoted spreads decrease and as time to the previous trade increases. We observe extreme asymmetry for midquote changes, where buyer accuracy is 96% (27%) for up (down) changes, respectively. The quote rule is about 77% accurate. The group tick test is superior to the bulk volume classification method.     

Corporate cash flow and stock price exposures to foreign exchange rate risk

This paper estimates the foreign exchange rate exposure of 6917 U.S. nonfinancial firms on the basis of stock prices and corporate cash flows. The results show that several firms are significantly exposed to at least one of the foreign exchange rates Canadian Dollar, Japanese Yen and Euro, and significant exposures are more frequent at longer horizons. The percentage of firms for which stock price and earnings exposures are significantly different is relatively low, though it increases with time horizon. Overall, the impact of exchange rate risk on stock prices and cash flows is similar and determined by a related set of economic factors.     

Private information flow and price discovery in the U.S. treasury market

Using intraday data, we identify the intensity of private information flow in the U.S. Treasury market. Our results show that the intensity of private information flow is highly correlated with public information shocks and higher for longer maturity bonds. More importantly, we find that bond price changes associated with high intensity of private information flow tend to be persistent, whereas those associated with low intensity of private information flow are more likely reversed. While public information and private information are the main determinants of bond price variations on days with news announcements, private information and liquidity shocks are important determinants of bond price variations on days with no significant events. Finally, we show that the depth of limit order book is inversely related to the intensity of private information flow. Nevertheless, informed dealers do not seem to use hidden orders to disguise their trading intentions.     

Information content of earnings announcements in the New Zealand equity market,a longitudinal analysis

We compute abnormal return variance and abnormal trading volume in the 3‐day window surrounding earnings announcements to examine the information content of earnings announcements in the New Zealand equity market over the past 16 years. We find that the information content of earnings announcements has increased significantly over time, and this finding holds true for both interim and preliminary earnings announcements. We find evidence that earnings announcements with June year‐ends exhibit a higher level of information content and experience a more pronounced rising trend as compared to earnings announcements with non‐June year‐ends. Several firm characteristics appear to relate to the level of the information content of earnings announcements as well as to compound the trend over time. We document an important finding that the information content of earnings announcements increases remarkably in the period after the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).     

Asymmetric volatility in the foreign exchange markets

We examine the presence or absence of asymmetric volatility in the exchange rates of Australian dollar (AUD), Euro (EUR), British pound (GBP) and Japanese yen (JPY), all against US dollar. Our investigation is based on a variant of the heterogeneous autoregressive realized volatility model, using daily realized variance and return series from 1996 to 2004. We find that a depreciation against USD leads to significantly greater volatility than an appreciation for AUD and GBP, whereas the opposite is true for JPY. Relative to volatility on days following a positive one-standard-deviation return, volatility on days following a negative one-standard-deviation return is higher by 6.6% for AUD, 6.1% for GBP, and 21.2% for JPY. The realized volatility of EUR appears to be symmetric. These results are robust to the removal of jump component from realized volatility and the sub-samplings defined by structural-changes. The asymmetry in AUD, GBP and JPY appears to be embedded in the continuous component of realized volatility rather than the jump component.