The dynamics of dealer markets and trading costs

In this study we examine the temporal dynamics of dealer market share and their ramification for competition and trading costs using a large sample of NASDAQ securities. Our results show that although the total market share of the top five dealers is relatively stable over time, there is significant monthly variation in the composition of the top five dealers. We show that market share turbulence among top dealers is another form of competition that narrows bid–ask spreads, especially for stocks with less competitive market structure.     

Measuring institutional trading costs and the implications for finance research: The case of tick size reductions

Using proprietary institutional trade data, we construct a price impact measure that represents the costs faced by institutional investors. We show that many widely used liquidity measures do not adequately capture institutional trading costs. We then find that institutional trading costs are not dramatically impacted by decimalization, casting doubt on the widely used identification strategy that employs decimalization as an exogenous shock to liquidity, particularly institutional liquidity. Indeed, we find that conclusions from prior research are significantly altered when we measure liquidity using institutional trading data.     

Volume autocorrelation,information, and investor trading

This study investigates whether the widely documented daily correlated trading volume of stocks is driven by individual investor trading, institutional trading, or both. We find that at least 95% of NYSE and AMEX stocks exhibit statistically significant, positive serial correlation. Volume autocorrelation decreases with the level of institutional ownership of a stock. We also show that the rate of arrivals of new information to the market contributes to the clustering of trades. When there is high information flow to the market, institutional trading generates a more pronounced effect on volume autocorrelation than individual investor trading. Our results are broadly consistent with the predictions of trading volume patterns suggested by most theoretical models of stock trading and by empirical research on investor trading.     

Option trading and individual investor performance

This paper examines the impact of option trading on individual investor performance. The results show that most investors incur substantial losses on their option investments, which are much larger than the losses from equity trading. We attribute the detrimental impact of option trading on investor performance to poor market timing that results from overreaction to past stock market returns. High trading costs further contribute to the poor returns on option investments. Gambling and entertainment appear to be the most important motivations for trading options while hedging motives only play a minor role. We also provide strong evidence of performance persistence among option traders.     

Institutional trading,investor sentiment,and lottery-like stock preferences

This paper explores the time-varying institutional investor preference for lottery-like stocks. On average, institutional investor holdings reflect an aversion to lottery-like stocks. However, I find that an institutions’ aversion to lottery-like stocks is reduced when investor sentiment is low. Moreover, I find that during low sentiment periods, institutional investors have abnormally high trading profits in more positively skewed stocks. These results suggest that institutions reduce their aversion toward lottery-like stocks during low sentiment periods to profitably trade in lottery-like stocks.     

A theory of the interday variations in volume, variance, and trading costs in securities markets

In an adverse selection model of a securities market with oneinformed trader and several liquidity traders, we study theimplications of the assumption that the informed trader hasmore information on Monday than on other days. We examine theinterday variations in volume, variance, and adverse selectioncosts, and find that on monday the trading costs and the varianceof price changes are highest, and the volume is lower than onTuesday. These effects are stronger for firms with better publicreporting and for firms with more discretionary liquidity trading.     

High-frequency trading and institutional trading costs

Using data on Canadian bond futures, we examine how high-frequency traders (HFTs) interact with institutions building large positions. In contrast to recent findings, we find HFTs in the data act as small-sized liquidity suppliers, and we reject the hypothesis that they engage in back running, a predatory trading strategy. Using a quasi-experiment in November 2011, in which a number of HFTs started trading the bond future, we run a difference-in-differences event study and find more competition among HFTs improves implementation shortfall, effective spreads, and short-term price impacts for institutional trading in Canadian bond futures.     

Mutual fund portfolio trading and investor flow

I estimate the extent to which mutual fund portfolio trading of securities is triggered by investor flows into and out of the funds, and find that this liquidity-induced portfolio trading activity is smaller than previously estimated by Edelen (1999). I obtain estimates from a much larger and broader sample of funds than Edelen’s (1999) sample. Portfolio managers of international funds trade a smaller fraction of investor flow than do those of domestic funds. Index funds invest a larger fraction. A funds’ usage of futures contracts does not have a statistically significant effect on how it trades in response to investor flows, but the unpredictability of investor flow weakly affects the trading response to flow.     

Idiosyncratic volatility,option-based measures of informed trading,and investor attention

Review of Derivatives Research - We establish a direct link between sophisticated investors in the option market, private stock market investors, and the idiosyncratic volatility (IVol) puzzle. To...     

Retail investor trading and ESG pricing in China

Using the ESG ratings of individual stocks in China from 2009 to 2020, we show that buying high-ESG stocks and selling low-ESG stocks earns positive and significant returns after controlling for the five Fama–French factors. Further, the pricing anomalies based on retail trading intensities can explain the returns. Further analyses show that ESG pricing power decreases as retail trading intensity increases. These findings suggest that when the dominant retail investors ignore ESG-related information, ESG positively impacts stock returns, but when these investors begin to actively trade the information, the impact declines or even turns negative. Our findings support the current ESG pricing theory.     

Corporate governance, investor protection, and performance in emerging markets

We use recent data on firm-level corporate governance (CG) rankings across 14 emerging markets and find that there is wide variation in firm-level governance in our sample and that the average firm-level governance is lower in countries with weaker legal systems. We explore the determinants of firm-level governance and find that governance is correlated with the extent of the asymmetric information and contracting imperfections that firms face. We also find that better corporate governance is highly correlated with better operating performance and market valuation. Finally, we provide evidence that firm-level corporate governance provisions matter more in countries with weak legal environments.     

Anonymous markets and monetary trading

We study infinite-horizon monetary economies characterized by trading frictions that originate from random pairwise meetings, and commitment and enforcement limitations. We prove that introducing occasional trade in ‘centralized markets’ opens the door to an informal enforcement scheme that sustains a non-monetary efficient allocation. All is required is that trading partners be patient and their actions be observable. We then present a matching environment in which trade may occur in large markets and yet agents’ trading paths cross at most once. This allows the construction of models in which infinitely lived agents trade in competitive markets where money plays an essential role.     

Structural transmissions among investor attention,stock market volatility and trading volumes

We employ data-based approaches to identify the transmissions of structural shocks among investor attention measured by Google search queries, realised volatilities and trading volumes in the United States, the United Kingdom and the German stock market. The two identification approaches adopted for the structural vector autoregressive analysis are based on independent component analysis and the informational content of disproportional variance changes. Our results show robust evidence that investors' attention affects both volatilities and trading volumes contemporaneously, whereas the latter two variables lack immediate impacts on investors' attention. Some movements in investors' attention can be traced back to market sentiment.     

Speculative trading,prospect theory and transaction costs

A speculative agent with prospect theory preference chooses the optimal time to purchase and then to sell an indivisible risky asset to maximise the expected utility of the round-trip profit net of transaction costs. The optimisation problem is formulated as a sequential optimal stopping problem, and we provide a complete characterisation of the solution. Depending on the preference and market parameters, the optimal strategy can be “buy and hold”, “buy low, sell high”, “buy high, sell higher” or “no trading”. Behavioural preference and market friction interact in a subtle way which yields surprising implications on the agent’s trading patterns. For example, increasing the market entry fee does not necessarily curb speculative trading, but instead may induce a higher reference point under which the agent becomes more risk-seeking and in turn is more likely to trade.

     

Complete markets,informed trading and equity option introductions

This paper proposes and tests a new hypothesis concerning the price impact of option introductions on the underlying asset. We argue that the leverage properties of options induce a higher level of informed trading in the aggregate market (underlying plus derivative), resulting in excess listing-day price movements in the newly optioned equity. Using an alternative dataset, our results suggest that this may be an explanation for the observed positive than negative excess listing-day returns of US optioned stocks over the past thirty years.     

Speculative trading preferences of retail investor birth cohorts

This study examines the effect of investor birth cohorts on speculative investment preferences. Using retail trading and portfolio data from Finland over two decades, we find that individuals who have experienced desirable macro-economic and social conditions during adolescence, such as high gross domestic product (GDP) growth and low divorce rates, are more likely to invest in speculative stocks. A positive relation is found between the proportion of speculative-prone cohorts in the stock market and returns of stocks of lottery nature. We provide new evidence on the adverse effect of speculative investments, finding that cohorts with higher speculative investment weights on their portfolios achieve lower absolute and risk-adjusted returns. We also provide support for earlier research that identifies a positive association between recent portfolio performance and the propensity to invest in speculative stocks.     

Insiders' profits,costs of trading,and market efficiency

This study investigates the anomalous findings of the previous insider trading studies that any investor can earn abnormal profits by reading the Official Summary. Availability of abnormal profits to insiders, availability of abnormal profits to outsiders who imitate insiders, determinants of insiders' predictive ability, and effect of insider trading on costs of trading for other investors are examined by using approximately 60,000 insider sale and purchase transactions from 1975 to 1981. Implications for market efficiency and evaluation of abnormal profits to active trading strategies are discussed.     

Transaction costs, trading volume, and the liquidity premium

In a market with one safe and one risky asset, an investor with a long horizon, constant investment opportunities and constant relative risk aversion trades with small proportional transaction costs. We derive explicit formulas for the optimal investment policy, its implied welfare, liquidity premium, and trading volume. At the first order, the liquidity premium equals the spread, times share turnover, times a universal constant. The results are robust to consumption and finite horizons. We exploit the equivalence of the transaction cost market to another frictionless market, with a shadow risky asset, in which investment opportunities are stochastic. The shadow price is also found explicitly.     

Returns,volatility and investor sentiment: Evidence from European stock markets

In this study, we show that patterns in returns behave as if investors, influenced by their level of optimism, selected stocks according to their volatility. Our goal is to confirm the contribution of behavioral finance while showing that investor sentiment can be profitably used by practitioners. We incorporate volatility in the relationship between investor sentiment and future returns, this is the main originality of our approach. Our methodology consists in comparing returns, volatility and higher-order moments of portfolios managed with investor sentiment against those obtained either with passive (buy and hold) portfolio management or with a minimum variance portfolio. Portfolios managed with investor sentiment have better returns and involve less risk under certain conditions.