How does HFT activity impact market volatility and the bid-ask spread after an exogenous shock? An empirical analysis on S&P 500 ETF

In this paper, we empirically analyse infra-second datasets of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (specifically, the ETF of the S&P 500 exchanged on BATS, named SPY.Z) in order to explain how high-frequency trading (HFT) activities (aggressive and passive) impact market volatility and the bid-ask spread before and after an exogenous shock (i.e., the 2016 US presidential election). Using SPDR S&P 500 ETF datasets as a proxy for the market on regular volume trading days (November 3, 2016) and on high-volume trading days (November 9, 2016), we show that HFT, on average, has a disturbing action mainly on regular volume trading days, whereas on high-volume trading days, it appears to have a stabilizing effect by balancing both the volatility and bid-ask spread. That is, HFT as a whole has a more neutral impact on the market’s volatility and bid-ask spread than the single aggressive and passive components. In fact, aggressive HFT has a consistent negative effect that increases, on average, both the volatility and bid-ask spread, whereas passive HFT displays a positive effect that decreases, on average, the volatility and bid-ask spread.     

Foreign equity flows: Boon or bane to the liquidity of Malaysian stock market?

This paper examines the impact of gross foreign equity inflows on aggregate liquidity of the Malaysian stock market using newly assembled foreign trading data and the best performing bid-ask spread proxy. Employing vector autoregression, we discover a one-way causality from gross inflows to aggregate liquidity, and foreign investors erode liquidity of the Malaysian stock market. Additional analyses reveal that uncertainties in the U.S. markets negatively affect aggregate liquidity through the flows of foreign institutions, whose positive feedback trading destabilizes the local bourse. Despite the shocks, there is sufficient liquidity provision from local state-backed institutional funds and local proprietary day traders.     

Institutional investors' attention to environmental information,trading strategies,and market impacts: Evidence from China

Using a large proprietary database of intraday high‐frequency trading, we investigate the trading strategies of institutional investors in dealing with the negative environmental event disclosure of listed companies and their impact on markets, aiming to reveal the mechanism of the lack of “green efficiency” in China's capital market from the perspective of institutional investors. The results show that institutional investors react to negative environmental events prior to the announcements, indicating premature information leakage in the market; in addition, their trading behaviors mitigate the immediate effect of negative environmental event announcements on stock price. After the event is disclosed, institutional investors engage in short‐term selling and long‐term buy and hold. This trading strategy undermines the irrational selling of individual investors in the event of disclosure, short‐term decline in stock price, and long‐term reversal of market overreaction. In a China context, institutional investors generally take environmental information into consideration. However, they fail to recognize the long‐term value effect of negative environmental events and instead cater to trading strategies towards market volatility.     

Changes in the liquidity of closed-end country funds after the introduction of World Equity Benchmarks

In 1996, the first exchange-traded funds (ETFs) designed to track a subset of the Morgan Stanley Capital International country indices were approved under the name World Equity Benchmarks (acronym “WEBS”™). We examine the impact of early WEBS-trading on the liquidity of corresponding closed-end country funds (CECFs), previously one of the main avenues for retail investors to achieve country-specific equity exposure. We document a decline in both the trading volume and the trading frequency for CECFs, suggesting that some investors migrate to WEBS. At the same time, the market depth for CECFs increases and the bid-ask spread for CECFs decreases following the introduction of WEBS. Our results support the hypothesis that despite the decline in volume and trading frequency, the liquidity of CECFs is favorably affected by the advent of WEBS.     

Retail investors’ trading and stock market liquidity

The paper investigates the relation between retail investors’ participation in trading and aggregate stock market liquidity. The findings show a positive and significant relation between retail investors’ trading and stock market liquidity. Examination of the determinants of retail investors’ trading reveals that, on average, retail investors with more diversified trading activity tend to trade when liquidity is higher, the frequency of their arrival to the market is not affected by the level of liquidity, and retail investors are willing to trade at a lower liquidity level as sellers than as buyers. Moreover, retail investors’ trading does not create price noise at the aggregate market level. Overall, the evidence suggests that retail investors contribute to market quality.     

Learning,information processing and order submission in limit order markets

By introducing a genetic algorithm learning with a classifier system into a limit order market, this paper provides a unified framework of microstructure and agent-based models of limit order markets that allows traders to determine their order submission endogenously according to market conditions. It examines how traders process and learn from market information and how the learning affects limit order markets. It is found that, measured by the average usage of different group of market information, trading rules under the learning become stationary in the long run. Also informed traders pay more attention to the last transaction sign while uninformed traders pay more attention to technical rules. Learning of uninformed traders improves market information efficiency, but not necessarily when informed traders learn. Opposite to the learning of informed traders, learning makes uninformed traders submit less aggressive limit orders and more market orders. Furthermore private values can have significant impact in the short run, but not in the long run. One implication is that the probability of informed trading (PIN) is positively related to the volatility and the bid-ask spread.     

Liquidity provisions by individual investor trading prior to dividend announcements: Evidence from Taiwan

This paper investigates the role of liquidity provisions played by individual investors prior to dividend announcements in Taiwan. We first document a positive relationship between aggregate individual trading before dividend announcements and abnormal stock returns in the one month after the events. We find that this positive relationship varies with liquidity. We then decompose the abnormal returns following the event into information and liquidity provision components. The information component is not significant at all, but the liquidity component is positively significant, which shows that it is individual investors’ provisions of liquidity to institutional investors prior to dividend announcements that drives the positive relationship between pre-event individual trading and post-event returns.     

When do retail investors pay attention to their trading platforms?

Buying and selling securities through online trading platforms has become increasingly popular among U.S. households in recent years. This study tracks U.S. households' attention to their online trading platforms using daily data for 2004 to August 2017. The analysis covers the 10 most popular online trading platforms among U.S. investors. The findings indicate that market shocks, captured by several proxies, as well as macroeconomic announcements attract investors' attention to trading platforms. We also document that the ostrich effect weakens when considering greater changes in the VIX. Our findings do not support the avoidance of information theory, but do support the theoretical argument that risk-averse agents engage in more information gathering when uncertainty prevails in hopes of reducing their risks.     

成交量、持仓量对我国大豆类期货价差波动影响的实证分析

采用GARCH(1,1)模型就成交量、持仓量对大豆类期货价差波动率的影响进行实证分析,结果显示：当期成交量、持仓量对大豆期货价差波动的整体影响是显著的;滞后成交量、持仓量对大豆期货价差波动的整体影响也是显著的;当成交量、持仓量同时进入条件方差方程时,它们对大豆类期货价差波动的影响整体上也是显著的。这一结论揭示了我国大豆期货市场信息传递过程,验证了我国大豆期货市场的信息非有效性,对期货市场投资者以及期货市场监管者具有一定的借鉴意义。     

上证180指数流动性效应的实证研究

本文从实证的角度探讨了上证180指数创立事件对其成份股流动性的影响以及进一步改善的方法。上证180指数的成立事件一方面促进了成份股价差水平和交易信息对称程度的改善,另一方面又促使交易深度水平和交易活跃性的降低。这些流动性效应是由于机构投资者对180成份股偏好所造成的:机构投资者增加了180成份股的需求同时减少了供给,就导致了交易深度和活跃性的降低;机构投资者作为相对知情交易者,它们的偏好增加了市场的需求竞争程度,从而降低了交易者之间的信息不对称程度以及改善了市场价差水平。根据国外的经验,ETF可以有效地增强市场交易深度,因此本文建议创立上证180指数ETF弥补180指数对深度方面的负面影响。     

Do real estate investors trade on momentum?

Real estate markets are known to be less-than-efficient for many reasons, but what roles short-term trading plays are unclear. Do short-term investors bring additional risk to the market and cause prices to deviate from fundamental values? Based on an extensive dataset of property transactions and a policy shock that substantially raised the cost of short-term trading in Hong Kong, we estimate ‘real estate risk’ with and without short-term trading based on return predictability, return volatility, and price dispersion. Our results show that as short-term investors exit the market, market returns are less predictable and less volatile, while prices are less dispersed cross-sectionally. Consistent with herding models in behavioral finance, the findings suggest that short-term investors are momentum traders who do not enhance price efficiency.     

Large price movements and short-lived changes in spreads,volume, and selling pressure

In this paper we examine changes in dollar and relative bid-ask spreads of stocks following large price movements. We investigate large increases and decreases separately and link our results to current market microstructure theories on trading activities and spreads. We also look at changes in volume and selling pressure to interpret the changes in trading activity. Our results show that the market reacts differently to price increases and decreases. For large price decreases, trading increases on the sell side even when spreads have increased. For large price increases, trading increases on the buy side during a period of higher spreads. However, the increases in dollar spreads and price pressure are most pronounced at the end of trading day. Our results are consistent with microstructure models that link trading activities and costs to the level of asymmetric information.     

Day trading and stock price volatility

When an investor buys and sells the same stock on the same day, he is said to have made a day trade. Using the trading records of Finnish traders, this paper examines whether day trading is related to volatility of stock prices. I find a strong positive time-series relation between the number of day trades by individual investors and intraday volatility among heavily day traded stocks. This effect is robust after controlling for a previously documented volume–volatility relation. The result suggests that the joint hypothesis of price pressure and volatility induced day trading dominates the liquidity effects of day trading.     

Influence of institutional investors' participation on flipping activity of Malaysian IPOs

This paper examines the influence of institutional investors’ participation on flipping activity of Malaysian IPOs. Measured as the percentage of trading volume on the first trading day against the total number of shares offered, flipping is the quickest way to gain huge profits from IPOs. However, excessive flipping activity has significant potential to create artificial downward pressure on the price of IPOs. One way to reduce such an adverse effect is by strategically allocating a larger proportion of new shares to institutional investors. This is because institutional investors are normally assumed to be long-term investors. As such, they are less likely to flip their allocated IPOs in the immediate aftermarket. The long-term investment argument is consistent with institutional investors’ preference for a steady income stream in the form of dividends. Drawing upon this argument, the greater participation of institutional investors during an IPO is expected to be an effective strategy to control aggressive flipping activity. The Malaysian IPO market offers an excellent opportunity to examine this hypothesis because data regarding the allocation of new shares to institutional investors can be traced conveniently through a type of IPO referred to as “private placement”. Based upon an examination of 248 IPOs listed on Bursa Malaysia between January 2000 and December 2012, this study finds a negative relationship between institutional investors’ participation and flipping activity. This result lends strong support to the argument concerning the effectiveness of institutional investors’ participation in controlling flipping activity in the Malaysian IPO market.     

On the different impacts of fixed versus floating bid-ask spreads on an automated intraday stock trading

Trading or transaction costs are one of the most important attributes of any trading system and can be divided into two major groups: explicit (visible) and implicit (hidden). In this paper, we investigate the impact of the bid-ask spreads, a form of hidden cost, on the results of backtesting (and, therefore, the potential impact on real-time trading) of an automated trading system based on genetic programming. We concentrate on the nature (fixed or floating) of bid-ask spreads (hereafter ‘spread’) and demonstrate that the effectiveness of an automated trading system more significantly degrades in the case of floating spreads compared to fixed spreads. We investigate four fixed spreads (one, two, five and ten pips) and a floating spread with a median value of two pips and demonstrate that the floating spread with a mean value of 0.02 USD results in significantly worse performance than a fixed spread of 0.1 USD. ‘Floating spreads’ in this paper is a term used for market-determined continuously changing bid-ask spreads.     

Information asymmetry,sentiment interactions,and asset price

We develop an asset pricing model with sentiment interactions between institutional and individual investors under the condition of information asymmetry. Our model considers private information and investor sentiment, two imperfections in securities markets, and integrates them into a theoretical model to investigate the role of the interaction between information asymmetry and investor sentiment in asset pricing. We show that the joint effect of private information and investor sentiment deviate the price of risky assets and efficiently explains anomalies in the stock market. Investor sentiment changes the effect of information on the equilibrium price relative to a world where all investors are completely rational. Private information changes the effect of investor sentiment on the equilibrium price in comparison with a scenario with symmetric market information. In addition, the individual investors’ learning and the disclosure of information both allow private information to be better integrated into the price and simultaneously changes the effect of investor sentiment on the equilibrium price.     

Causes of cross-autocorrelation in security returns: Transaction costs versus information quality

We examine empirically the role of transaction costs and information quality as causes of cross-autocorrelations in security returns. Nonsynchronous trading influences are addressed by forming weekly returns based on averages of closing inside bid and ask quotations for NMS securities. Stock return volatility scaled by the bid-ask spread is employed as a proxy for transaction costs and trading volume is used as a measure of information quality. We find evidence that both transaction costs and information quality may contribute to cross-autocorrelations, but that information quality dominates transaction costs in explaining cross-autocorrelations after controlling for autocorrelation influences.     

我国沪深证券市场流动性实证研究

流动性是一个市场的生命力所在。一个流动性好的市场才能很好的满足投资者的交易需求,减少投资者流动性风险是市场应该提供的功能之一。随着我国资本市场的逐步发展和成熟,投资者越来越注意到市场流动性的重要性。如何准确的界定流动性,如何用一系列的指标体系,来衡量一个市场的流动性,是理论界和市场投资者都很关注的问题。国内外对流动性的研究也很多,本文在借鉴前人研究成果的基础上,提出了自己对于流动性测量的一种观点,通过建立一个基于收益率和相对交易量基础之上的模型,来探讨关于市场流动性的问题。     

<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">Mad Money</Emphasis> stock recommendations: market reaction and performance

We examine the stock recommendations of Jim Cramer televised on CNBC’s Mad Money, and document significant market reactions (i.e., announcement returns and volume) to Cramer’s recommendations, particularly for small capitalization stocks. The following findings indicate that the announcement returns are primarily due to price pressure from uninformed trading as opposed to the recommendations providing new value related information: announcement returns reverse following buy recommendations; bid-ask spreads temporarily decline; and there is no evidence of positive longer-term abnormal returns. One implication, when considered in combination with other works, is that investors should be cautious in following stock recommendations announced in the mass-media.     

Do voluntary disclosures of bad news improve liquidity?

Can managers improve market liquidity and lower the cost of capital by providing voluntary earnings guidance? This study examines the impact of profit warnings on market liquidity and finds that voluntary disclosure of bad news actually improves market liquidity. By conducting an empirical study over the period 1995–2010 on NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX listed firms, we find that firms that issue profit warnings show enhanced market liquidity during the post-announcement period. We show that profit warnings reduce information asymmetry and lower bid-ask spreads and increase trading volumes. These results are invariant to daily (short run) and monthly (long run) data after controlling for firm specific attributes. The results have major corporate policy implications. By voluntarily disclosing negative earnings guidance by managers, firms will experience significant improvement in market liquidity, thereby lowering the cost of capital. Our results are even more profound for firms that release bad news with extremely negative stock market impact. In other words, voluntary disclosure of bad news is good for market liquidity.