Is faster or slower trading better? An examination of order type execution speed and costs

We examine order type execution speed and costs for US equity traders. Marketable orders that execute slower exhibit lower execution costs. Those who remove liquidity faster and pay higher trading costs transact in smaller size, spread trading across more venues, take more liquidity, and are better informed. Nonmarketable limit orders that execute slower exhibit greater adverse selection; and larger, uninformed traders who concentrate their trading in fewer venues submit them. Our findings suggest that slowing down the trading process, when faster options exist, can benefit certain market participants who seek to cross the bid–ask spread.     

Cross-listing and liquidity in emerging market stocks

In this study, we analyze liquidity costs for stocks and ADRs from the four main Latin American markets. The results indicate that international investors are exposed to different trading costs in Latin America, with market location and firm size as important determinants. In the local market, stocks that cross-list internationally do not always present a liquidity cost advantage relative to non-cross-listed stocks. When the ADR and the local stock markets are compared, large firms present lower trading costs in the home market. The opposite occurs for small firms.     

Is market fragmentation harming market quality?

We examine how fragmentation is affecting market quality in US equity markets. We use newly available trade reporting facilities (TRFs) data to measure fragmentation, and we use a variety of empirical approaches to compare execution quality and efficiency of stocks with more and less fragmented trading. We find that fragmentation affects all stocks; more fragmented stocks have lower transactions costs and faster execution speeds; and fragmentation is associated with higher short-term volatility but greater market efficiency, in that prices are closer to being a random walk. Our results that fragmentation does not appear to harm market quality are consistent with US markets being a single virtual market with multiple points of entry.     

The value of the floor

Existing theoretical literature suggests that floor trading has discernable benefits over electronic trading. In particular floor relationships lead to a reduction in asymmetric information and hence lower spreads. The ability of floor brokers to participate in incoming order flow without revealing their supply and demand curves increases total liquidity and dampens liquidity shocks leading to lower volatility. We develop hypotheses and test them on a sample of stocks that switch from floor trading to an electronic system with fairly identical rules and pre-trade transparency. We find strong support for existing theory and our hypotheses. In particular asymmetric information and volatility are significantly higher on the electronic system. This leads to an increase in investor transaction costs which dwarfs the operational cost advantages of the electronic systems. Our results are robust to tests involving samples that control for company specific factors and market wide trends.     

The market liquidity of DIAMONDS,Q's,and their underlying stocks

We investigate the market liquidity effects of the introduction of index-tracking stocks for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIAMONDS) and the NASDAQ 100 index (Q's). Our main finding is liquidity of the underlying DJIA 30 index stocks improves after the introduction of the exchange-traded fund, largely because of a decline in the cost of informed trading. Further, we find the DIAMONDS has significantly lower liquidity costs over the first 50 days of trading as compared to the portfolio of its component stocks, again primarily because of lower adverse selection costs. Finally, we find weaker but qualitatively similar results for the Q's.     

Sources of liquidity for NYSE-listed non-US stocks

We examine the components of displayed (quoted) liquidity and the amount of non-displayed liquidity on the NYSE for a sample of non-US stocks. Consistently with prior work, non-US stocks have less displayed liquidity than similar US stocks. Extending prior research, we find that this is true both in the limit order book and on the floor. As Domowitz et al. [Domowitz, I., Glen, J., Madhavan, A., 1998. International cross-listing and order flow migration: Evidence from and emerging market. Journal of Finance 53, 2001–2027] posit, non-US stocks from transparent/linked home markets have more displayed NYSE liquidity when the home market is open but non-US stocks from opaque/non-linked home markets have more NYSE displayed liquidity when the home market is closed. Non-US and US stocks have similar supplies of non-displayed liquidity, consistent with the idea that the conditional nature of non-displayed liquidity allows NYSE traders to mitigate adverse selection problems inherent in trading non-US stocks. Our results imply that non-US stocks have less total (displayed plus non-displayed) liquidity than US stocks.     

Spreads, Depths, and Quote Clustering on the NYSE and Nasdaq: Evidence after the 1997 Securities and Exchange Commission Rule Changes

This paper examines liquidity and quote clustering on the NYSE and Nasdaq using data after the two market reforms—the 1997 order–handling rule and minimum tick size changes. We find that Nasdaq–listed stocks exhibit wider spreads and smaller depths than NYSE–listed stocks and stocks with higher proportions of even–eighth and even–sixteenth quotes have wider quoted, effective, and realized spreads on both the NYSE and Nasdaq. This result differs from the findings by Bessembinder (1999, p. 404) that "trade execution costs on Nasdaq in late 1997 are no longer significantly explained by a tendency for liquidity providers to avoid odd–eighth quotations," and "odd–sixteenth avoidance has little relevance for explaining post–reform Nasdaq trading costs."     

City goes dark: Dark trading and adverse selection in aggregate markets

We investigate the impact of dark trading on adverse selection in an aggregate market for trading UK stocks. Dark trading is linked to lower adverse selection risk and improved informational efficiency and liquidity in the aggregate market, even as liquidity declines in the lit market with dark trading. However, there is a trading value-based threshold when dark trading starts to induce adverse selection. We estimate that this threshold varies from around 9% for the most liquid stocks to 25% for the least liquid stocks. The overall average threshold for the 288 FTSE 350 stocks in our sample is 14%.     

Can margin traders predict future stock returns in Japan?

A growing body of literature suggests that investor sentiment affects stock prices both at the firm level and at the market level. This study examines the relationship between investor behavior and stock returns focusing on Japanese margin transactions using weekly data from 1994 to 2003. Margin trading is dominated by individual investors in Japan. In analysis at the firm level, we find a significant cross-sectional relationship between margin buying and stock returns. Both market-level and firm-level analyses show that margin buying traders follow herding behavior. They seem to follow positive feedback trading behavior for small-firm stocks and negative feedback trading behavior for large firm stocks. Our results show that information about margin buying helps predict future stock returns, especially for small-firm stocks at short horizons. The predictive power does not diminish even after controlling for firm size and liquidity.     

The Impact of Information Diffusion on Comparisons among Various Trading Mechanisms

The information environment and investor order strategy are both important determinants when comparing the market performance of trading mechanisms. However, less is known about what happens when trading mechanisms are compared. In this paper, we link the information environment, trading mechanisms, investor order strategy and market performance to form a model of the securities market. The primary goal of this study is to examine the impact of various call markets in an agency market on liquidity, price volatility and market efficiency under various information regimes. The results indicate that an optimal transaction frequency appears at the trade-off of liquidity, volatility and market efficiency.     

IQ,trading behavior,and performance

We analyze whether IQ influences trading behavior, performance, and transaction costs. The analysis combines equity return, trade, and limit order book data with two decades of scores from an intelligence (IQ) test administered to nearly every Finnish male of draft age. Controlling for a variety of factors, we find that high-IQ investors are less subject to the disposition effect, more aggressive about tax-loss trading, and more likely to supply liquidity when stocks experience a one-month high. High-IQ investors also exhibit superior market timing, stock-picking skill, and trade execution.     

Investor Protection and Firm Liquidity

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relation between investor protection and firm liquidity. We posit that less protective environments lead to wider bid-ask spreads and thinner depths because they fail to minimize information asymmetries. The Hong Kong equity market provides a unique opportunity to compare liquidity costs across distinct investor protection environments, but still within a common trading mechanism and currency. Our empirical findings verify that firm liquidity is significantly affected by investor protection. Regression and matched-sample results show that Hong Kong-based equities exhibit narrower spreads and thicker depths than their China-based counterparts.     

Does Noninformative Text Affect Investor Behavior?

This article demonstrates that easily processed texts affect investor trading behavior even in the absence of any informational content. We examine the trading symbols of US firms and find that stocks with clever tickers (those that are actual words in the English language) are more liquid, as measured by higher turnover and trading volume, as well as lower spreads. Furthermore, clever ticker stocks are traded more by uninformed investors and have larger market reactions on earnings announcement days. These results suggest that ticker fluency facilitates trading by improving the firm's visibility among retail investors through attention grabbing and memorization.     

High-frequency trading and stock liquidity: An intraday analysis

This paper studies the impact of high-frequency trading (HFT) on intraday liquidity of CAC40 stocks listed on Euronext. Spreads display an intraday L-shaped pattern, while quoted depth follows an inverse pattern: low at the open and increasing towards the end of the trading day. When liquidity demand is particularly high, there is a high rate of order cancellations attributable to high-frequency traders who use frequent order cancellations to strategically manage their limit orders and close positions near the market close. Using the generalized method of moments estimator, we generate strong evidence that greater intensity of HFT is associated with lower spreads and higher depth. The positive effect of HFT on liquidity is due mainly to decreased adverse selection costs arising from asymmetric information among market participants.     

Liquidity Changes around Seasoned Equity Issuance: Public Offerings versus Private Placements

I investigate whether firms that issue equity, in public offerings or private placements, have improved on liquidity in the secondary market. Transaction costs, price impacts, and trading activity are examined. Results show that public offering stocks become considerably more liquid in all three dimensions. For private placement stocks, there is some evidence that trading volume increases, but effective spread and temporary price impact decline less than market‐wide changes. Furthermore, I study the behaviors of participants in the newly issued equity market. Analyses indicate that underwriters, analysts, and market makers all contribute to liquidity changes, but in different aspects.     

Reputation Effects in Trading on the New York Stock Exchange

Theory suggests that reputations allow nonanonymous markets to attenuate adverse selection in trading. We identify instances in which New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) stocks experience trading floor relocations. Although specialists follow the stocks to their new locations, most brokers do not. We find a discernable increase in liquidity costs around a stock's relocation that is larger for stocks with higher adverse selection and greater broker turnover. We also find that floor brokers relocating with the stock obtain lower trading costs than brokers not moving and brokers beginning trading post‐move. Our results suggest that reputation plays an important role in the NYSE's liquidity provision process.     

Analyst Disagreement,Mispricing, and Liquidity*

This paper documents a close link between mispricing and liquidity by investigating stocks with high analyst disagreement. Previous research finds that these stocks tend to be overpriced, but that prices correct downwards as uncertainty about earnings is resolved. Our analysis suggests that one reason mispricing has persisted through the years is that analyst disagreement coincides with high trading costs. We also show that in the cross‐section, the less liquid stocks tend to be more severely overpriced. Additionally, increases in aggregate market liquidity accelerate the convergence of prices to fundamentals. As a result, returns of the initially overpriced stocks are negatively correlated with the time series of innovations in aggregate market liquidity.     

Liquidity in auction and specialist market structures: Evidence from the Italian bourse

Several studies find that bid-ask spreads for stocks listed on the NYSE are lower than for stocks listed on NASDAQ. While this suggests that specialist market structures provide greater liquidity than competing dealer markets, the nature of trading on the NYSE, which comprises a specialist competing with limit order flow, obfuscates the comparison. In 2001, a structural change was implemented on the Italian Bourse. Many stocks that traded in an auction market switched to a specialist market, where the specialist controls order flow. Results confirm that liquidity is significantly improved when stocks commence trading in the specialist market. Analysis of the components of the bid-ask spread reveal that the adverse selection component of the spread is significantly reduced. This evidence suggests that specialist market structures provide greater liquidity to market participants.     

Intraday time and order execution quality dimensions

We examine intraday execution quality patterns on Nasdaq stocks using proprietary order-level data from a US broker dealer. Orders submitted midday execute slower than orders submitted around the open and close. However, midday orders have lower execution costs. Our results indicate that execution speed and execution cost exhibit offsetting intraday time-dependent patterns and these patterns appear to be induced by variations in informed trading levels. While some traders concentrate their trading activity around the open and close, others prefer to trade midday. Traders have varying preferences for when to trade, and offsetting patterns exist between speed and cost. These factors highlight the complexity in defining an optimal trading time, which, among other things, is dependent on the dimensional preferences of individual traders.     

The impact of mandatory IFRS reporting on institutional trading costs: Evidence from Australia

This study examines the impact of mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the market quality of the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) 200 constituent stocks. Using traditional metrics that are consistent with prior literature (i.e., bid‐ask spreads), the first stage analysis confirms that stock liquidity has improved. However, when the analysis is extended to consider the trading costs incurred by market participants (i.e., execution shortfall), results suggest liquidity has not changed significantly. The paper utilizes rich unique datasets that contain detailed trade information, and findings are robust after controlling for trade difficulty and market conditions. In the era of High Frequency Trading (HFT) and occurrences of ‘fleeting’ liquidity, this paper provides some evidence that while IFRS may have enhanced ‘visible’ bid‐ask spreads, tangible liquidity for market participants, particularly global institutional investors, has not improved significantly.