Order imbalance and liquidity supply: Evidence from the bubble burst of Nasdaq stocks

In this study we analyze the effect of order imbalance on the quotation behavior of Nasdaq market makers. We find that Nasdaq market makers use both price and quantity quotes when dealing with order imbalances. However, order imbalance affects only price movement, not spreads. We also find that Nasdaq market makers quote more shares and compete more intensively on bid-side (ask-side) when public sells (buys) exceed public buys (sells). These suggest that market makers increase liquidity supply when order imbalances exist. More interestingly, we show that both market conditions and price movements affect investors' trading behavior.     

Quote disclosure and price discovery in multiple-dealer financial markets

We examine the effects of price disclosure on market performancein a continuous experimental multiple-dealer market in whichseven professional market makers trade a single security. Thedealers trade with one another and with computerized informedand liquidity traders. Our key comparison is between fully publicprice queues (pretrade transparent market) and bilateral quoting(pretrade opaque). We find that opening spreads are wider andtrading volume is lower in the opaque markets due to highersearch costs there. More importantly, however, higher searchcosts also induce more aggressive pricing strategies, so thatprice discovery is much faster in the opaque markets.     

Information,sell-side research,and market making

The interaction between an investment bank's research and market making arms may have important implications for the trading of a firm's stock. We investigate the impact that research has on the liquidity provided by the bank's market maker. Utilizing a large sample of Nasdaq firms, we show that market makers whose banks also provide research coverage provide more liquidity and contribute more to price discovery than do market makers without such research coverage. Finally, we show that such “affiliated” market makers are less affected by uncertainty following earnings announcements. Our results provide new evidence on the sources of liquidity improvements for Nasdaq firms, and suggest that the information produced by banks in the sell-side research process is beneficial to their market makers.     

The Impact of Market Maker Competition on Nasdaq Spreads

This study utilizes a comprehensive database containing monthly information on the number of market makers for about 5,288 Nasdaq securities over an eight-year period to investigate the impact of competition on spreads. A variety of models are estimated in order to demonstrate the robustness of the results that include four specific findings: (1) the number of market makers has a negative and highly significant impact on spreads; (2) the relation is nonlinear with a decreasing impact by the marginal market maker; (3) Nasdaq spreads have been declining over time; and (4) structural changes in Nasdaq are associated with significant changes in the relationship between spread and the number of market makers. One improvement over the literature includes allowing endogenous competition through the use of instrumental variables.     

The Quality of ECN and Nasdaq Market Maker Quotes

This paper compares the quality of quotes submitted by electronic communication networks (ECNs) and by traditional market makers to the Nasdaq quote montage. An analysis of the most active Nasdaq stocks shows that ECNs not only post informative quotes, but also, compared to market makers, ECNs post quotes rapidly and are more often at the inside. Additionally, ECN quoted spreads are smaller than dealer quoted spreads. The evidence suggests that the proliferation of alternative trading venues, such as ECNs, may promote quote quality rather than fragmenting markets. Moreover, the results suggest that a more open book contributes to quote quality.     

Intraday Variation in the Bid-Ask Spread: Evidence after the Market Reform

In this article we show that intraday variation in spreads for Nasdaq‐listed stocks has converged to intraday variation in spreads for NYSE‐listed stocks after the implementation of the new order‐handling rules. We attribute this convergence to the Limit Order Display Rule, which requires that limit orders be displayed in Nasdaq best bid and offer when they are better than quotes posted by market makers. Our findings suggest that the different patterns of intraday spreads between NYSE and Nasdaq stocks reported in prior studies can largely be attributed to the different treatment of limit orders between the NYSE and Nasdaq before the market reform.     

Market Making and Trading in Nasdaq Stocks

This paper examines the relations between the number of market makers, trading activity, and price improvement in Nasdaq stocks, using a model motivated by Grossman and Miller (1988). Results indicate a positive relation between the number of market makers and trading frequency, and that competition among market makers reduces effective bid-ask spreads. Results estimated using a simultaneous equations framework support the model predictions of Grossman and Miller. Results also indicate that trading frequency may be more important than trade size in determining the number of market makers.     

Competition on the Nasdaq and the growth of electronic communication networks

This paper examines the growth of electronic communication networks (ECNs) and their competitive impact on the Nasdaq. We find that the development of these alternative trading platforms is associated with tighter quoted, effective, and relative bid–ask spreads, greater depths, and less concentrated markets. Further, our results show that an increase in ECN trading may have caused some traditional market makers (wholesaler and national retail dealers) to exit the market for market making. Overall, our results suggest that ECNs provide a source of competition to traditional Nasdaq dealers.     

The Making of a Dealer Market: From Entry to Equilibrium in the Trading of Nasdaq Stocks

This paper provides an analysis of the nature and evolution of a dealer market for Nasdaq stocks. Despite size differences in sample stocks, there is a surprising consistency to their trading. One dealer tends to dominate trading in a stock. Markets are concentrated and spreads are increasing in the volume and market share of the dominant dealer. Entry and exit are ubiquitous. Exiting dealers are those with very low profits and trading volume. Entering market makers fail to capture a meaningful share of trading or profits. Thus, free entry does little to improve the competitive nature of the market as entering dealers have little impact. We find, however, that for small stocks, the Nasdaq dealer market is being more competitive than the specialist market.     

Price Discovery without Trading: Evidence from the Nasdaq Preopening

This paper studies Nasdaq market makers' activities during the one and one-half hour preopening period. Price discovery during the preopening is conducted via price signaling as opposed to the auction used to open the NYSE or the continuous market used during trading. In the absence of trades, Nasdaq dealers use crossed and locked inside quotes to signal to other market makers which direction the price should move. Furthermore, we find evidence of price leadership among market makers that bears little resemblance to their IPO\SEO lead underwriter participation.     

Competition among Trading Venues: Information and Trading on Electronic Communications Networks

This paper explores the competition between two trading venues, Electronic Communication Networks (ECNs) and Nasdaq market makers. ECNs offer the advantages of anonymity and speed of execution, which attract informed traders. Thus, trades are more likely to occur on ECNs when information asymmetry is greater and when trading volume and stock‐return volatility are high. ECN trades have greater permanent price impacts and more private information is revealed through ECN trades than though market‐maker trades. However, ECN trades have higher ex ante trading costs because market makers can preference or internalize the less informed trades and offer them better executions.     

Getting Out Early: An Analysis of Market Making Activity at the Recommending Analyst's Firm

This paper examines trading volume for Nasdaq market makers around analyst recommendation changes issued by an analyst at the same firm. Using Nasdaq PostData, we find a disproportionate increase in market making volume associated with the firm's recommendation changes and evidence of elevated sell volume at the recommending analyst's firm in the 2 days preceding a downgrade. The implications are that the information source matters in determining the placement of trades and that the issuing analyst's firm appears to be rewarded for prereleasing information through increased volume. These findings constitute new evidence of compensation for research production through the market making channel.     

RECENT GROWTH IN NASDAQ TRADING VOLUME AND ITS RELATION TO MARKET VOLATILITY

We document a significant increase in Nasdaq trading volume relative to New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and American Stock Exchange (AMEX) trading volumes. Although recent increases in the number of shares traded are reported in the financial press, we also find it present in the percentage of dollar values traded. We then examine correlations between trading volume and several measures of market volatility. Nasdaq volume appears to be more closely correlated with residual variance, while NYSE and AMEX volumes are more closely correlated with overall market variance. We conclude that the type and quantity of information driving trading are different on Nasdaq than on the two exchanges, and that the relative growth in Nasdaq volume cannot be attributed solely to differences in the methods of counting volume in the two market environments.     

Informed trading in hybrid bond markets

I study the impact of pretrade transparency on trading activity in an environment where dealers, informed and uninformed alike, can choose between an electronic limit order book (LOB) and an over-the-counter (OTC) market. By investigating bond dealers' choice in the hybrid Norwegian government bond market, I explore whether they base their trading strategy on the perceived informativeness of their trades. The results imply that bond dealers act strategically to preserve the value of their information by choosing the immediacy of the LOB when trades contain information. This suggests that OTC trades are exposed to a leakage of information to other dealers.     

Transparency and Liquidity: A Comparison of Auction and Dealer Markets with Informed Trading

Trading systems differ in their degree of transparency, here defined as the extent to which market makers can observe the size and direction of the current order flow. We investigate whether greater transparency enhances market liquidity by reducing the opportunities for taking advantage of uninformed participants. We compare the price formation process in several stylized trading systems with different degrees of transparency: various types of auction markets and a stylized dealer market. We find that greater transparency generates lower trading costs for uninformed traders on average, although not necessarily for every size of trade.     

Inferring Public and Private Information from Trades and Quotes

We propose a new model that uses nonsynchronous, ultra‐high frequency data to analyze the sequential impact of trades and quotes on the price process. Private information is related to the impact of trades and public information to the impact of quotes. The model is extended to include various other factors that affect public and private information. For 20 active Nasdaq stocks, private information causes, on average, 9.43% of daily stock price movements. Additionally, quotes are more informative when (1) many dealers set the best price and (2) traditional market makers rather than Electronic Communication Networks set the best price.     

Effect of the Actual Size Rule Under Market Stress

We examine the introduction of the Actual Size Rule (ASR) on Nasdaq during a control period and a period of market stress. We find that market makers in both ASR and Non-ASR stocks reduce quotation sizes and widen spreads when under stress but the reduction of quotation size and increase in spread width are significantly larger for ASR stocks. We also examine October 27, when the market was under the most severe stress. We find ASR and Non-ASR stocks have similar reductions in time-weighted quotation ask size when compared with the control sample but ASR bid sizes are about 10% smaller than Non-ASR bid sizes. Our findings imply that the ASR rule may significantly reduce market quality under times of market stress. JEL Classification: 14, G15, G18     

Short Selling and the Weekend Effect in Nasdaq Stock Returns

We examine daily short selling of Nasdaq stocks to explore whether speculative short selling causes a significant portion of the weekend effect in returns. We identify a weekend effect in speculative short selling whereby it constitutes a larger percentage of trading volume on Mondays versus Fridays. We find an opposite effect in dealer short selling, consistent with market makers adding liquidity and stability. Our main finding is that speculative short selling does not explain an economically meaningful portion of the weekend effect in returns, even among the firms most that are most actively shorted. This finding contradicts some prior studies.     

The next tick on Nasdaq

The Nasdaq stock market provides information about buying and selling interest in its limit order book. Using a vector autoregressive model of trades and returns, I assess the effect of the entire order book on the next tick. I also determine the influence of individual market makers and electronic networks and find evidence that the identity of market participants can be useful information. Finally, I produce a set of dynamic market price responses to buy and sell orders, and I find that these estimates vary with standard measures of liquidity.     

Who makes markets

A dealer needs access to order flow and information to make a market profitably in a Nasdaq stock. Several variables that proxy for the stocks that an individual market maker's brokerage customers trade, including volume, location, underwriting participation and analyst coverage, are significant determinants of market making activity. Informational advantages may also factor in the market making decision as evidenced by dealers specializing in industries. These findings suggest that individual dealers have competitive advantages in making markets in specific stocks, and that potential market making competition comes from the dealers who share those advantages rather than all Nasdaq market makers.