Trading frequency and the efficiency of price discovery in a non-dealer market

The increasing popularity of non-dealer security markets that offer automated, computer-based, continuous trading reflects a presumption that institutionally-set trading sessions are economically obsolete. This theoretical paper investigates the effect of the trading frequency, a key feature of the trading mechanism, on the efficiency of price discovery in a non-dealer market. By tracing the market pricing error to the correlation structures of arriving information and pricing errors of individual traders, the effect of diverging expectations on error-based and overall return volatility is isolated. The analysis reveals that, due to a portfolio effect, an increase in the trading time interval has contradictory effects on the portion of return volatility stemming from pricing errors. The greater accumulation of information increases error-based return volatility, but the greater volume and number of traders per session have the opposite effect. The net effect on overall return volatility can go either way. It is found that the return volatility of heavily traded securities is likely to be minimized under continuous trading, but that of thinly traded securities may be minimized under discrete trading at moderate time intervals. The latter is more likely to occur the greater is the divergence of expectations among traders. These findings challenge the presumption that automated continuous trading in a non-dealer market is more efficient than discrete trading for all securities, regardless of trading volume. The findings are applicable to all economies, but have special importance for developing countries where typically a single market is dominated by small issues and a low volume of trade. As a by-product of the analysis, it is shown how to correct the biased estimate of inter-session price volatility when observations are less frequent than the trading sessions themselves.     

Price discovery and trade fragmentation in a multi-market environment: Evidence from the MTS system

This paper proposes new metrics for the process of price discovery on the main electronic trading platform for euro-denominated government securities. Analysing price data on daily transactions for 107 bonds over a period of 27 months, we find a greater degree of price leadership of the dominant market when our measures (as opposed to the traditional price discovery metrics) are used. We also present unambiguous evidence that a market’s contribution to price discovery is crucially affected by the level of trading activity. The implications of these empirical findings are discussed in the light of the debate about the possible restructuring of the regulatory framework for the Treasury bond market in Europe.     

Price Formation and Liquidity in the U.S. Treasury Market: The Response to Public Information

The arrival of public information in the U.S. Treasury market sets off a two-stage adjustment process for prices, trading volume, and bid-ask spreads. In a brief first stage, the release of a major macroeconomic announcement induces a sharp and nearly instantaneous price change with a reduction in trading volume, demonstrating that price reactions to public information do not require trading. The spread widens dramatically at announcement, evidently driven by inventory control concerns. In a prolonged second stage, trading volume surges, price volatility persists, and spreads remain moderately wide as investors trade to reconcile residual differences in their private views.     

Information Risk in TIPS Market: An Analysis of Nominal and Real Interest Rates

This study investigates the presence of information risk in two closely linked interest rate securities traded in separate markets: the nominal interest rate observed in the Treasury bond market and the real interest rate observed in the relatively new Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) market. We find that information flows unilaterally from the Treasury bond market to the TIPS market with a one-day lag. The information risk arising from asymmetric information flows may cause less informed traders to demand a higher rate of return (OHara, 2003). Our study provides an empirical explanation of why the TIPS yield has been relatively high throughout its nascent trading history.     

Money Funds or Markets? Valuing Intermediary Services

Recent market developments, such as on-line trading of Treasury securities and the reduction of the minimum Treasury bill denomination to $1,000, facilitate creation of a viable alternative to U.S. Treasury money funds for investors. Comparison of a direct investment in Treasury bills to U.S. Treasury money funds shows that money fund intermediary services such as check writing, telephone exchange privileges, payroll and automatic transfers, retirement plans, and minimum initial and subsequent purchases are worth an estimated 43 basis points per year, and investors pay an additional 11 basis points for active portfolio management. An analysis of fund net cash flows shows evidence consistent with arbitrage activity between money funds and the direct investment in Treasury bills, especially for investors with few ties to the money fund manager.     

引入国债期货合约能否发挥现货市场稳定效应?——基于中国金融周期的研究视角

我国国债期货市场能否发挥稳定现货市场功能,金融周期风险是否会改变国债期货市场对现货市场波动的影响,是投资者实施风险管理和监管部门构建市场稳定机制的重要依据。本文通过信息传递机制和交易者行为两个维度探析国债期货市场发挥稳定功能的微观机理,分析金融周期风险对衍生工具稳定功能的影响,解析引入国债期货合约能否缓解金融周期波动对国债市场冲击,同时关注我国国债期货交易机制改进与现券波动关系。研究发现:(1)我国国债期货市场已实现抑制现货市场波动的功能,金融周期风险会引发现货价格波动,国债期货市场能够降低金融周期的波动冲击;(2)改善现货市场深度和套保交易是国债期货市场发挥稳定功能的微观路径,国债期货市场增进国债预期交易量流动性、减弱非预期交易量干扰,金融周期低波动区间套保交易稳定作用受到抑制;(3)国债期货投机交易和波动溢出效应助长现货市场波动,正负期现基差对国债波动影响具有非对称特征。     

Limit order book,anonymity and market liquidity: evidence from the Sydney Futures Exchange

This study examines the impact of the removal of broker mnemonics on the Sydney Futures Exchange. Early research finds that a decrease in transparency reduces liquidity in the market, whereas more recent research finds that reduced transparency improves market quality. Results of the present study indicate an improvement in liquidity after the removal of broker mnemonics. There is a significant increase in quoted depth and trading volume, and a significant decrease in quoted spreads in the 90 day Bank Accepted Bill, 3 year Treasury Bond and 10 year Treasury Bond Futures. This improvement in liquidity is robust to the length of the event window around the structural change and trading in a control market.     

Interim Reporting Frequency and Financial Analysts' Expenditures

This paper relates interim financial reporting frequency in a multiperiod Kyle framework to securities prices, trading volume, market liquidity, and analysts' information acquisition expenditures. The model supports conventional wisdom that more frequent interim reporting improves the information content of securities prices, reduces reporting day price volatility and trading volume, and enhances market liquidity. However , the model suggests that more frequent financial reporting induces analysts to increase their redundant information acquisition expenditures, which may be socially wasteful.     

Trading volume and short-horizon contrarian profits: Evidence from the Malaysian market

We provide evidence on short-term predictability of stock returns on the Malaysian stock market. We examine the relation between return predictability and the level of trading activity. This is particularly relevant in emerging stock markets, where thin trading is more pervasive. We find that the returns from a contrarian portfolio strategy are positively related to the level of trading activity in the securities. Specifically, the contrarian profits on actively and frequently traded securities are significantly higher than that generated from the low trading activity securities. We find that the differential behavior of high- and low-volume securities is not subsumed by the size effect, although for the small firms, the volume–predictability relation is most pronounced. We also suggest that the price patterns may be related to the institutional arrangement in the Malaysian stock market.     

Intraday patterns in London listed Exchange Traded Funds

In this paper we examine the intraday trading patterns of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) listed on the London Stock Exchange. ETFs have been shown to be characterised by much lower bid–ask spread costs and by lower levels of information asymmetry than individual securities. One possible explanation for intraday trading patterns is that concentration of trading arises at the start of the trading day because informed traders have private information that quickly diminishes in value as trading progresses. Since ETFs have lower trading costs and lower levels of information asymmetry we would expect these securities to display less pronounced intraday patterns than individual securities. We fail to find that ETFs are characterised by concentrated trading bouts during the day and therefore find support for the argument that information asymmetry is the cause of intraday volume patterns in stock markets. We find that ETF bid–ask spreads and volatility are elevated at the open but not at the close. This lends support to the “accumulation of information” explanation that sees high spreads and volatility at the open as a consequence of information accumulating during a market closure and impacting on the market when it next opens.     

Did the repeated debt ceiling controversies embed default risk in US Treasury securities?

We examine whether the financial market charged a default risk premium to US Treasury securities when the US Federal government repeatedly reached the legally binding debt limits between 2002 and 2006. We show that for the first two of the four recurrences since the first episode in 1996, the financial market charged a small default risk premium to the Treasury securities. However, we find no significant evidence of a pricing effect in the last two recurrences. The results suggest that the financial market gradually perceived the budget standoffs as the boy who cried wolf.     

交易型操纵行为影响证券价格的微观机制研究--以连续交易、虚假申报、对倒操纵典型案例为切入点

中国证监会行政处罚的典型案例显示,交易型操纵行为包括建仓持仓、通过不正当交易行为影响证券价格、反向交易获利或谋取其他利益等三个步骤。在连续交易操纵中,行为人大量以高于市场卖一价的价格申报并高比例成交,影响证券交易价格。虚假申报操纵是通过不以成交为目的频繁或大额申报、撤单,制造买盘汹涌的假象,误导市场投资者跟风交易,从而影响证券交易价格。对倒操纵是利用资金优势或持股优势,通过自买自卖放大证券交易量并拉抬证券价格。因此,交易型操纵实质上是通过不正当交易行为,在特定期间内制造虚假证券供求关系,从而扭曲证券市场价格。     

Competitive inventory management in Treasury markets

We decompose US Treasury bid-ask spreads into inventory, adverse selection and order processing costs by using the fact that inventory trades have different effects on spreads than do proprietary trades. We exploit this asymmetry and develop a technique to identify the three components of the spread in order to test three hypotheses: dealers make larger changes to inventory (1) following macroeconomic announcements (2) at the start and toward the end of the New York trading hours, and (3) when transaction sizes are relatively large. We test these predictions using GovPX data for on-the-run 2-year and 10-year Treasury Notes. All three predictions are supported. We also assess how primary dealers react to the Federal Reserve’s open market operations (OMOs). Our findings reveal interesting intraday patterns in the inventory component for both securities.     

On the Perils of Financial Intermediaries Setting Security Prices: The Mutual Fund Wild Card Option

Economic distortions can arise when financial claims trade at prices set by an intermediary rather than direct negotiation between principals. We demonstrate the problem in a specific context, the exchange of open-end mutual fund shares. Mutual funds typically set fund share price (NAV) using an algorithm that fails to account for nonsynchronous trading in the fund's underlying securities. This results in predictable changes in NAV, which lead to exploitable trading opportunities. A modification to the pricing algorithm that corrects for nonsynchronous trading eliminates much of the predictability. However, there are many other potential sources of distortion when intermediaries set prices.     

The Evolution of Security Designs

We consider a competitive and perfect financial market in which agents have heterogeneous cash flow valuations. Instead of assuming that agents are endowed with rational expectations, we model their behavior as the product of adaptive learning. Our results demonstrate that adaptive learning affects security design profoundly, with securities mispriced even in the long run and optimal designs trading off underpricing against intrinsic value maximization. The evolutionary dominant security design calls for issuing securities that engender large losses with a small but positive probability, but that otherwise produce stable payoffs, almost the exact opposite of the pure state claims that are optimal in the rational expectations framework.     

转融通基本问题研究

转融通实质上就是证券金融公司对证券公司的融资融券。证券金融公司是转融通业务的唯一主体,具有一定的垄断地位,但证券金融公司在开展转融通业务时,与证券公司是交易对手,处于平等的民事主体地位,证券金融公司不应定位为交易的中央对手方或者市场组织者。在《转融通业务监督管理试行办法》规定的框架下,证券金融公司可以根据实际情况和需要设计出不同的业务操作模式,但效率与安全应当是考虑设计转融通操作模式的两大基本出发点。从长远看,比照现有的融资融券业务操作模式构建证券金融公司的转融通业务操作模式,是一种可取的选择,值得作进一步的思考。     

Understanding commonality in liquidity around the world

We examine how commonality in liquidity varies across countries and over time in ways related to supply determinants (funding liquidity of financial intermediaries) and demand determinants (correlated trading behavior of international and institutional investors, incentives to trade individual securities, and investor sentiment) of liquidity. Commonality in liquidity is greater in countries with and during times of high market volatility (especially, large market declines), greater presence of international investors, and more correlated trading activity. Our evidence is more reliably consistent with demand-side explanations and challenges the ability of the funding liquidity hypothesis to help us understand important aspects of financial market liquidity around the world, even during the recent financial crisis.     

The Price of Future Liquidity: Time-Varying Liquidity in the U.S. Treasury Market

This paper examines the price differences between very liquid on-the-run U.S. Treasury securities and less liquid off-the-run securities over the on/off cycle. Comparing pairs of securities in time-series regressions allows us to disregard any fixed cross-sectional differences between securities. Also, since the liquidity of Treasury notes varies predictably over time, we can distinguish between current and future liquidity.We compare a variety of (microstructure-based) direct measures of liquidity to compare their effects on prices.We show that the liquidity premium depends primarily on the amount of remaining future liquidity.     

提高存款准备金率对国债市场影响的实证分析

本文使用干预分析模型，研究了2004年4月25日央行上调存款准备金率这一干预事件对我国国债市场的影响。文中将干预事件的发生时刻设定为政策公布日2004年4月12日。研究结果显示，上调存款准备金率政策公布后，负面影响逐渐上升。4月29日负面影响累计达到最大，此时交易所国债指数也跌到最低点。中国的国债市场仍然尚未达到半强势有效市场。     

MARKET STRUCTURE AND REPORTED TRADING VOLUME: NASDAQ VERSUS THE NYSE

Trading volume for common stocks is of interest to financial economists, investors, and securities lawyers. NASDAQ is a dealer market where trades with dealers are included in reported trading volume. This procedure does not accurately measure the trading volume by public buyers and sellers. Trading volume reported on the NYSE, which is primarily an auction market, provides a much closer measure of trades by public investors. We examine a sample of firms whose stock traded on the NASDAQ/NMS and subsequently on the NYSE. When trading switches to the NYSE, the firms' trading volume drops to about 50 percent of the volume previously reported on NASDAQ. A control group of firms that switched from the AMEX to the NYSE shows a small, but statistically insignificant, increase in trading volume.