How Wise Are Crowds? Insights from Retail Orders and Stock Returns

We analyze the role of retail investors in stock pricing using a database uniquely suited for this purpose. The data allow us to address selection bias concerns and to separately examine aggressive (market) and passive (limit) orders. Both aggressive and passive net buying positively predict firms’ monthly stock returns with no evidence of return reversal. Only aggressive orders correctly predict firm news, including earnings surprises, suggesting they convey novel cash flow information. Only passive net buying follows negative returns, consistent with traders providing liquidity and benefiting from the reversal of transitory price movements. These actions contribute to market efficiency.     

Liquidity provision with limit orders and a strategic specialist

This article presents a microstructure model of liquidity provisionin which a specialist with market power competes against a competitivelimit order book. General solutions, comparative statics andexamples are provided first with un-informative orders and thenwhen order flows are informative. The model is also used toaddress two optimal market design issues. The first is the effectof 'tick' size - for example, eighths versus decimal pricing- on market liquidity. Institutions trading large blocks havea larger optimal tick size than small retail investors, butboth prefer a tick size strictly greater than zero. Second,a hybrid specialist/limit order market (like the NYSE) providesbetter liquidity to small retail and institutional trades, buta pure limit order market (like the Paris Bourse) may offerbetter liquidity on mid-size orders.     

Limit Orders, Depth, and Volatility: Evidence from the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong

We investigate the role of limit orders in the liquidity provision in a pure order-driven market. Results show that market depth rises subsequent to an increase in transitory volatility, and transitory volatility declines subsequent to an increase in market depth. We also examine how transitory volatility affects the mix between limit orders and market orders. When transitory volatility arises from the ask (bid) side, investors will submit more limit sell (buy) orders than market sell (buy) orders. This result is consistent with the existence of limit-order traders who enter the market and place orders when liquidity is needed.     

Individual Investors and Volatility

We show that retail trading activity has a positive effect on the volatility of stock returns, which suggests that retail investors behave as noise traders. To identify this effect, we use a reform of the French stock market that raises the relative cost of speculative trading for retail investors. The daily return volatility of the stocks affected by the reform falls by 20 basis points (a quarter of the sample standard deviation of the return volatility) relative to other stocks. For affected stocks, we also find a significant decrease in the magnitude of return reversals and the price impact of trades.     

Does the media help or hurt retail investors during the IPO quiet period?

We examine how the media influences retail trade and market returns during the “quiet period” that follows a firm's IPO. We find that more media coverage during this period is associated with more purchases by retail investors and that such purchases are attention-driven, rather than information-based. Further, these retail trades are negatively associated with stock returns at the firm's first earnings announcement post-IPO. Our results suggest that media coverage, combined with market frictions that limit price efficiency in the post-IPO period, leads to worse investing outcomes for retail investors.     

International equity funds,performance, and investor flows: Australian evidence

This is the first paper in the Australian literature to examine the investment performance of actively managed international equity funds (domiciled in Australia). Both institutional and retail international equity funds are assessed together with the impacts of investor fund flows on portfolio returns. Performance is also evaluated using conditional measures that account for public information in the global economy, however, despite an improvement in the measurement of risk-adjusted returns, performance remains consistent with an efficient global market. These findings support prior research, which concludes that active management does not provide investors with superior returns to passive indices. When consideration is given to the liquidity service provided by active managers, fund flows are shown to negatively impact on performance.     

Optimal Dynamic Order Submission Strategies in Some Stylized Trading Problems

This study derives optimal dynamic order submission strategies for trading problems faced by three stylized traders: an uninformed liquidity trader, an informed trader and a value-motivated trader. Separate solutions are obtained for quote- and order-driven markets. The results provide practicable rules for how to trade small orders and how to manage traders. Transaction cost measurement methods based on implementation shortfall are proven to dominate other methods.
Since investors demand liquidity when they submit market orders and supply liquidity when they submit limit orders, the results improve our understanding of market liquidity. In particular, the models illustrate the role of time in the search for liquidity by characterizing the demand for and supply of immediacy.     

Can Brokers Have It All? On the Relation between Make‐Take Fees and Limit Order Execution Quality

We identify retail brokers that seemingly route orders to maximize order flow payments, by selling market orders and sending limit orders to venues paying large liquidity rebates. Angel, Harris, and Spatt argue that such routing may not always be in customers’ best interests. For both proprietary limit order data and a broad sample of trades from TAQ, we document a negative relation between several measures of limit order execution quality and rebate/fee level. This finding suggests that order routing designed to maximize liquidity rebates does not maximize limit order execution quality and thus brokers cannot have it all.     

流动性、风险收益与B股市场境外投资者行为

通过对B股市场的流动性、风险及国外投资者的投资动机进行了研究和度量后发现,B股市场对内开放的确加强了它的流动性,但是B股市场波动风险依然高于A股市场,且国外投资者投资B股市场受流动性变化影响不大,因为其他们投资的主要目的不是分散风险而是获取超额预期回报率。因而,在B股市场存废问题在短期内不能解决的情况下,加强B股市场管理,改善市场结构,对国外投资者的投资行为进行合理的监督和引导是完善B股市场的非常重要的举措。     

Price limit performance: New evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China's ChiNext market

This study examines the impact of daily price limits on market performance and trading activity by using a quasi-natural experiment in China. It focuses on the case of the ChiNext market, where the daily price limits of stocks increased from 10% to 20% in 2020. The results show that, initially, the stock prices and occurrences of 10% price limit hits increase, but then decline after the new price limits have been implemented. The level of trading liquidity and volatility increases significantly, with a greater impact on the short term than the long term. These price limit performances are more pronounced for stocks with additional retail interest. The analysis of detailed trading data reveals that institutional investors initially purchase ChiNext stocks in large quantities, followed by retail investors who purchase smaller quantities. In the long run, institutional investors tend to increase their holdings, while retail investors tend to sell their holdings. Additionally, there is a temporary increase in investor attention, price synchronicity, and stock risks, followed by a decline. The findings suggest that wider price limits increase trading volumes and enhance long-term market efficiency, but encourage immediate price manipulation, causing short-term overreactions and long-term reversals. This study provides valuable insights for building an effective price limit system.     

Do Fund Flow‐Return Relations Depend on the Type of Investor? A Research Note

This study investigates whether the relation between aggregate fund flow and market returns differs between retail and institutional funds. For the retail fund sample, we document a contemporaneous relation between flow and market returns and also find evidence of feedback trading. In contrast, there is little evidence of a relation between flow and market returns for the institutional fund sample. Consequently, it appears that retail and institutional fund investors use different investment strategies, with retail investors following a more naive strategy. We find no evidence of flow inducing price pressure for either type of fund.     

Contracts for dummies? The performance of investors in contracts for difference

Investors widely use contracts for difference (CFDs) to leverage and short sell underlying financial assets. We investigate the after cost performance of investors in Australian Securities Exchange listed share CFDs, and find that market order CFD trades earn small positive returns at the daily horizon, with negative returns reported for one month to one year horizons due to financing costs. Market orders also net sell positions, which suggests that investors use CFDs for shorting opportunities. Overall, we find that liquidity demanders in CFDs obtain favourable execution, which is inconsistent with the view that CFDs are used by naive individuals.     

The dark side of financial innovation: A case study of the pricing of a retail financial product

The offering prices of 64 issues of a popular retail structured equity product were, on average, almost 8% greater than estimates of the products' fair market values obtained using option pricing methods. Under reasonable assumptions about the underlying stocks' expected returns, the mean expected return estimate on the structured products is slightly below zero. The products do not provide tax, liquidity, or other benefits, and it is difficult to rationalize their purchase by informed rational investors. Our findings are, however, consistent with the recent hypothesis that issuing firms might shroud some aspects of innovative securities or introduce complexity to exploit uninformed investors.     

Corporate governance and market segmentation: evidence from the price difference between Chinese A and H shares

This paper empirically examines whether the price difference between Chinese A shares, which are traded in the domestic market, and their matching H shares, which are traded in the Hong Kong market, can be explained by firms’ corporate governance characteristics. We find that the A- to H-share price premiums are higher for firms in which the controlling shareholders and corporate insiders have greater potential to expropriate wealth from outside investors. This result is robust when we use a variety of corporate governance variables specific to listed Chinese companies to explain the A-share price premiums and when we control for differences between domestic and foreign investors in required returns, degree of speculative trading, liquidity, information, and demand elasticity. Our findings highlight the important role of corporate governance in explaining the price difference in segmented stock markets.     

Locals,foreigners, and multi-market trading of equities: Intraday evidence from Thailand

We study stock market orders and trades in a developing country, Thailand, where foreign ownership limits partially segment local and foreign investors into two distinct markets. Some foreigners forgo voting rights and distributions to trade on the “local board”, while some locals forgo such benefits and pay a price premium to trade on the “foreign board”. Regardless of nationality, these cross-market traders typically submit orders when liquidity is high, fill orders at relatively beneficial prices, exploit patterns in stock prices across markets, display profitable holding-period returns, and enhance price discovery. This suggests that skilled, informed trading that affects market quality does not depend on trader nationality.     

Locals, foreigners, and multi-market trading of equities: Intraday evidence from Thailand

We study stock market orders and trades in a developing country, Thailand, where foreign ownership limits partially segment local and foreign investors into two distinct markets. Some foreigners forgo voting rights and distributions to trade on the “local board”, while some locals forgo such benefits and pay a price premium to trade on the “foreign board”. Regardless of nationality, these cross-market traders typically submit orders when liquidity is high, fill orders at relatively beneficial prices, exploit patterns in stock prices across markets, display profitable holding-period returns, and enhance price discovery. This suggests that skilled, informed trading that affects market quality does not depend on trader nationality.     

Do Proprietary Algorithmic Traders Withdraw Liquidity during Market Stress?

We investigate the role of proprietary algorithmic traders in facilitating liquidity in a limit order market. Using order‐level data from the National Stock Exchange of India, we find that proprietary algorithmic traders increase limit order supply following periods of both high short‐term stock‐specific volatility and extreme stock price movement. Even following periods of high marketwide volatility, they do not decrease their supply of liquidity. We define orders from high‐frequency traders as a subclass of orders from proprietary algorithmic traders that are revised in less than three milliseconds. The behavior of high‐frequency trading mimics the behavior of its parent class. This is inconsistent with the theory that fast traders leave the market when stress situations arise, although their limit‐order‐supplying behavior becomes weaker when the increase in short‐term volatility is more informational than transitory. Agency algorithmic traders and nonalgorithmic traders behave opposite to proprietary algorithmic traders by reducing the supply of liquidity during stress situations. The presence of faster traders in the market possibly instills the fear of adverse selection in them. We document that the order imbalance of agency algorithmic traders is positively related to future short‐term returns, whereas the order imbalance of proprietary algorithmic traders is negatively related to future short‐term returns.     

Primacy in stock market participation: the effect of initial returns on market re-entry decisions

We examine whether initial returns influence investors’ decisions to return to the stock market following withdrawal. Using a survival analysis technique to estimate Finnish retail investors’ likelihood of stock market re-entry reveals that investors who experience lower initial returns are less likely to return, even after controlling for returns in the last month and average monthly returns for the duration of investing. This primacy effect is robust to accounting for endogeneity in investors’ exit decisions, and other behavioural biases such as recency and saliency of investment experience. Individual investors appear to be subject to primacy bias and tend to put a significant weight on initial experiences in re-entry decisions.     

The Price of Immediacy

This paper models transaction costs as the rents that a monopolistic market maker extracts from impatient investors who trade via limit orders. We show that limit orders are American options. The limit prices inducing immediate execution of the order are functionally equivalent to bid and ask prices and can be solved for various transaction sizes to characterize the market maker's entire supply curve. We find considerable empirical support for the model's predictions in the cross-section of NYSE firms. The model produces unbiased, out-of-sample forecasts of abnormal returns for firms added to the S&P 500 index.