Liquidity Commonality in the London Stock Exchange

Abstract:  A number of events such as the international market crash of October 1987 and the 1997 East Asian crisis show that individual firm liquidity is affected by market-wide factors. However, research in systematic liquidity is still at an embryonic stage and given the gap in the literature, the paper offers first time evidence (to the best of our knowledge) on the presence of systematic liquidity in the UK using FTSE100 and FTSE250 stocks. The unique setting of the London Stock Exchange as regards changes in trading regimes, allows an original answer as to whether changes in the nature of market making from obligatory to non-obligatory, affect commonality in liquidity. Results indicate that commonality is quite strong for FTSE100 stocks at individual and portfolio level, while for the FTSE250 it is strong only at portfolio level. Overall commonality is on average similar across trading regimes, irrespective of the nature of the provision of liquidity.     

Liquidity and Stock Exchange Listing

This study examines the pattern of stock price behavior for a sample of 71 firms that moved from NASDAQ and NASDAQ/NMS to the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) between 1982 and 1987. The study tests the liquidity gains hypothesis, which states that investors expect liquidity gains for the less liquid over-the-counter stocks but not for their more liquid counterparts after their listing on the AMEX. The results support the hypothesis by showing a significant difference between the two groups of stocks on the day the AMEX announced approval of the listing. Thus, companies with low liquidity are the largest beneficiaries of listing. The evidence provides little support for the anomalous negative pattern of returns during the post-listing period reported in previous studies.     

Liquidity skewness

Bid–ask spreads in equities have declined on average but have become increasingly right-skewed. This finding holds across exchanges as well as size, price, and volume quartiles. Higher right-skewness is consistent with more competition among market makers; which may reduce cross-subsidization across periods of high and low asymmetric information, unlike a monopolistic regime that can maintain a relatively constant spread. Confirming this intuition, proportional differences in spreads between earnings announcements and normal periods have increased considerably even as trading costs have declined on average. Skewness also is cross-sectionally related to information proxies such as institutional holdings and analyst following.     

Competition on the London Stock Exchange

This paper investigates the determinants of the level of competition on the order–driven market organised by the London Stock Exchange. In contrast to previous empirical market microstructure studies, we treat the level of competition as an endogenous variable. The statistical nature of the measures of competitive activity used in this paper necessitate use of a count regression model. Using a sample 50 stocks, we find that users of the system tend to follow the lead of other users (termed the 'herding effect') and that competition is greater during the period when the US exchanges are open (termed the 'US effect'). In addition, the level of competition is positively related to the bid–ask spread pertaining to a particular stock (termed the 'spread effect'). The latter result is most likely due to traders following a strategy where trade immediacy is traded off against price advantage. Finally, we find that the magnitude of the herding effect, the spread effect, and the fit of the count regression models (termed the 'fit effect') vary in a predictable manner across the liquidity of stocks.     

Trade Transparency and the London Stock Exchange

On the London Stock Exchange the publication of large trades is delayed to give the market-maker concerned time to unwind the change in their inventory. Using trade and quotations data on 42 stocks for two years, a number of different effects are investigated. These include the association between trade size and the traded bid-ask spread, the inventory control policies of individual market-makers around large trades, the size and speed of the price impact of large trades whose publication is delayed, and the effects of delayed publication on the volume and spreads of the traded equity options market.     

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Transparency and Liquidity: A Study of Block Trades on the London Stock Exchange under Different Publication Rules

This article examines whether reducing a market's transparency, by delaying the publication of prices for block trades, has any impact on liquidity. The analysis uses a sample of 5987 blocks from the London Stock Exchange that cover three different publication regimes: immediate (1987/88), 90 minutes (1991/92), and 24 hours (1989/90). Delaying publication does not affect the time taken by prices to reach a new level, which is rapid under all regimes. Spreads differ across years, but their size relates more closely to market volatility than to speed of publication. There is therefore no gain in liquidity from delayed publication.     

Direct Evidence of Non-trading on the London Stock Exchange

The extent of non-trading is shown to be much greater in the UK than in the more heavily researched US equity markets. Over the period 1975 to 1995 we find that almost 44% of all stocks in our sample failed to trade on the last day of a given month, a figure which is significantly higher than for stocks in the US (see Foerster and Keim, 1993). In this paper we investigate the relationship between the non-trading of UK stocks and the autoregressive and seasonal behaviour of UK stock returns. In addition, we find that stocks are much more likely to be recorded as not having traded on the last day of the month in the period prior to April 1981 than after this date. We trace this result to a reporting requirement change on the London Stock Exchange and investigate whether the change has any real implications for systematic risk estimates over this period. We also find that alternative methods for calculating betas, in the presence of thin trading, are very sensitive to stock size and to non-trading.     

Liquidity Dynamics Around Jumps: The Evidence from the Warsaw Stock Exchange

The aim of our study is to examine the dynamics of trading volume and the number of trades around jumps detected in intraday stock returns. We detect jumps in equally spaced 10-minute returns for most liquid stocks quoted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange within one-year sample period. We match jumps with macroeconomic and firm specific news. We find that only the minority of jumps is associated with public information releases, whereas the majority of them is motivated by liquidity shocks observed in the spreads, volume, and the number of trades. Our findings show that jumps are related to the inability of the market to absorb new and big orders. Liquidity shocks in volatility, volume, and quoted spread are the key drivers accompanying the occurrence of the jumps. Finally, the introduction of a faster and more efficient trading system improves the liquidity by increasing the depth of the market.     

Trading and Liquidity on the Tokyo Stock Exchange: A Bird's Eye View

The trading mechanism for equities on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) stands in sharp contrast to the primary mechanisms used to trade stocks in the United States. In the United States, exchange-designated specialists have affirmative obligations to provide continuous liquidity to the market. Specialists offer simultaneous and tight quotes to both buy and sell and supply sufficient liquidity to limit the magnitude of price changes between consecutive transactions. In contradistinction, the TSE has no exchange-designated liquidity suppliers. Instead, liquidity is provided through a public limit order book, and liquidity is organized through restrictions on maximum price changes between trades that serve to slow down trading. In this article, we examine the efficacy of the TSE's trading mechanisms at providing liquidity. Our analysis is based on a complete record of transactions and best-bid and best-offer quotes for most stocks in the First Section of the TSE over a period of 26 months. We study the size of the bid-ask spread and its cross-sectional and intertemporal stability; intertemporal patterns in returns, volatility, volume, trade size, and the frequency of trades; and market depth based on the response of quotes to trades and the frequency of trading halts and warning quotes.     

Higher co-moments and asset pricing on London Stock Exchange

This study examines the asset pricing implications of preferences over the higher moments of returns’ distributions. We show that in a market populated by risk-averse, prudent and temperate investors, firms whose returns exhibit negative coskewness or positive cokurtosis should yield higher premia relative to counterpart firms with positive coskewness and negative cokurtosis respectively. These theoretical predictions are empirically tested using a comprehensive dataset of shares listed on the London Stock Exchange during the period 1986-2008. Our empirical results confirm that coskewness and cokurtosis premia are genuinely priced in the UK market, over and above what covariance risk, size, value and momentum factors can explain. We also show that a theoretically motivated, higher co-moment asset pricing model has significant explanatory ability over the cross-section of coskewness and cokurtosis portfolio returns.     

Reactions of the London Stock Exchange to Company Trading Statement Announcements

Using event study methodology, we examine market reactions to nearly 2,000 trading statements during the period 1995‐2001. We find that profit warnings outnumber upgrades by 50%, and, in line with previous US studies, we find that market reaction to the actual announcements is considerably greater for profit warnings than for upgrades.Sub-samples demonstrate significant market reaction to profit warnings for all sizecontrolled portfolios, but that reaction to the announcements is greatest for small companies.Examination of pre- and post-announcement CARs shows no pre-announcement market anticipation of the announcements.Post-announcement there is a significant positive abnormal return on the day after the announcement of bad news for the small company subsample.Other post-announcement results are small and insignificant.Trading volume results are consistent with this picture. Finally, when the trading statements are examined for news on turnover and margin changes, we find that the market reaction to margin changes is greater than market reaction to turnover changes.     

Risk disclosures on the second tier markets of the London Stock Exchange

The identification, management and disclosure of risks have been the subject of recent legislation, directives and reporting standards issued across a number of international jurisdictions. To inform the disclosure debate, this paper provides a detailed analysis of the risk warning disclosures of initial public offering (IPO) companies and the factors that drive such disclosures. We find that risk disclosures of IPO companies contain a greater proportion of forward‐looking information but a lower proportion of information on internal controls and risk management than the disclosures of listed companies. We find evidence that such disclosure has increased across time but that larger directors’ shareholdings are associated with a reduction in risk disclosure.     

Warrants on the London Stock Exchange: Pricing Biases and Investor Confusion

This study of warrants on the London Stock Exchange examines whether they display particular pricing biases and whether investors understand how to value them at the time of issue. In a sample of 72 warrants on closed-end funds (investment trusts) over the 1985--94 period, more than one third of the 12,673 prices are anomalously low. The other two thirds behave like stock options, with lower volatility when they are in-the-money or have a long time until maturity. Despite their frequent undervaluation, it is rational to add warrants to a new equity issue: an examination of 127 new equity issues (95 with warrants) reveals that attaching warrants significantly increases market value. The reason for this appears to be investor confusion: they do not seem to understand that the more the warrants are worth, the less the value of the ordinary shares.     

Warrants on the London Stock Exchange: Pricing Biases and Investor Confusion

This study of warrants on the London Stock Exchange examineswhether they display particular pricing biases and whether investorsunderstand how to value them at the time of issue. In a sampleof 72 warrants on closed-end funds (investment trusts) overthe 1985–94 period, more than one third of the 12,673prices are anomalously low. The other two thirds behave likestock options, with lower volatility when they are in-the-moneyor have a long time until maturity. Despite their frequent undervaluation,it is rational to add warrants to a new equity issue: an examinationof 127 new equity issues (95 with warrants) reveals that attachingwarrants significantly increases market value. The reason forthis appears to be investor confusion: they do not seem to understandthat the more the warrants are worth, the less the value ofthe ordinary shares.     

Dividend signaling under economic adversity: Evidence from the London Stock Exchange

The signaling or information content hypothesis is amongst the most prominent theories attempting to explain dividend policy decisions. However, no research has, to date, examined the information content of dividends in conjunction with generalized economic adversity. With the majority of the western economies facing the tough reality of the economic recession since late 2007–early 2008, we focus on the possibility of asymmetrical dividend signaling effects between periods of stability and economic adversity. Using data from the London Stock Exchange (LSE), where earnings and dividend news are released simultaneously, we test the dividend signaling hypothesis and the interaction of earnings and dividends under both steady and adverse economic conditions. We document positive and significant average abnormal stock price returns around the dividend/earnings announcements. We also find a significant interaction between economic conditions and the information content of dividends. After testing the dividend signaling hypothesis under both stable and recessionary economic conditions we find that dividends have less information content than earnings in periods of growth and stability, but more in periods of economic adversity.     

Asset Liquidity and Stock Liquidity: International Evidence

This study examines the relationship between asset liquidity and stock liquidity across 47 countries. In support of the valuation uncertainty hypothesis, we find that firms with greater asset liquidity on average have higher stock liquidity. More importantly, our study shows that asset liquidity plays a more significant role in resolving valuation uncertainty in countries with poor information environment. For example, we find that the asset–stock liquidity relationship is stronger in countries with poor accounting standards. We further find evidence that after the adoption of IFRS, the improved accounting information environment results in a weaker asset–stock liquidity relation, but only in countries with a strong legal regime. Finally, our study shows that the positive asset–stock liquidity relationship may be attributed to transparency and/or liquidity reasons.     

Short-run Returns around the Trades of Corporate Insiders on the London Stock Exchange

Previous work examined the long-run profitability of strategies mimicking the trades company directors in the shares of their own company, as a way of testing for market efficiency. The current paper examines patterns in abnormal returns in the days around these trades on the London Stock Exchange.
We find movements in returns that are consistent with directors engaging in short-term market timing. We also report that some types of trades have superior predictive content over future returns. In particular, medium-sized trades are more informative for short-term returns than large ones, consistent with Barclay and Warner's (1993) 'stealth trading' hypothesis whereby informed traders avoid trading in blocks.
Another contribution of this study is to properly adjust the abnormal return estimates for microstructure (spread) transactions costs using daily bid-ask spread data. On a net basis, we find that abnormal returns all but disappear.     

Trade size clustering and the cost of trading at the London Stock Exchange

For the London Stock Exchange, this paper investigates differences in trading costs between market maker (off-book) and order book trades, in the context of clustering in trade sizes and prices. We report several substantial findings. Even after controlling for differences in trade size, the realised spread measure is lower for off-book trades. For the order book, trade size clustering is not associated with differences in transaction costs nor with differences in the information content of trades. For the off-book market, trades in clustered (popular) sizes carry significantly more information than non-clustered trades. Despite the significant differences in the price impact estimates between the order book and off-book, we show that traders placing large orders off-book are still better off than trading via the order book as they benefit from a large discount from the current midpoint price. Additionally, we highlight that price and size clustering tend to occur simultaneously rather than being substitutes in this market setting.     

Cognitive biases in investors' behaviour under stress: Evidence from the London Stock Exchange

The paper examines the implications arising from the effect of two cognitive biases, representativeness and conservatism, for securities price behaviour on the London Stock Exchange. In a single- and multi-factor framework of abnormal returns, the aspects of trend and consistency in the performance ratios of UK companies are examined on the base of behavioural finance theories with respect to cognitive biases. The findings obtained by the multi-factor model confirm the existence of two cognitive biases and trends that investors observe in financial performance over the long-term horizon, which is not the case for the single-factor model.