Bookbuilding vs. fixed price revisited: The effect of aftermarket trading

Investors who possess information about the value of an IPO can participate in the offering as well as trade strategically in the aftermarket. Both the bookbuilding and the fixed price IPO selling methods require more underpricing when aftermarket trading by informed investors is considered. Bookbuilding becomes especially costly, since the potential for profit in the aftermarket adversely affects investors' bidding behavior in the premarket. Unless the underwriter can restrict its bookbuilding effort to a small enough subset of the informed investors, a fixed price strategy that allocates the issue to retail investors produces higher proceeds on average, contrary to the conventional wisdom in the literature. We therefore find a benefit to limiting access to the premarket and, hence, provide an efficiency rationale for the practice by American bankers of marketing IPOs to a select group of investors. We also provide unique policy and empirical implications.     

Information-based trading,price impact of trades,and trade autocorrelation

In this study we show that both the price impact of trades and serial correlation in trade direction are positively and significantly related to the probability of information-based trading (PIN). The positive relation remains significant even after controlling for the effects of stock attributes. Higher trading activity (i.e., shorter intervals between trades) induces both larger price impact and stronger positive serial correlation in trade direction. The effect of time interval between trades on quote revision is stronger for stocks with higher PIN values. These results provide direct empirical support for the information models of trade and quote revision.     

Informed trading and the price impact of block trades: A high frequency trading analysis

Using high frequency data from the London Stock Exchange (LSE), we investigate the relationship between informed trading and the price impact of block trades on intraday and inter-day basis. Price impact of block trades is stronger during the first hour of trading; this is consistent with the hypothesis that information accumulates overnight during non-trading hours. Furthermore, private information is gradually incorporated into prices despite heightened trading frequency. Evidence suggests that informed traders exploit superior information across trading days, and stocks with lower transparency exhibit stronger information diffusion effects when traded in blocks, thus informed block trading facilitates price discovery.     

The effect of sequential information releases on trading volume and price behaviour

This paper examines a two-period setting in which each trader receives a private signal, possibly different, in each period before he trades. The principal objectives are threefold. First, we describe the risky asset demands and price reactions in a noisy rational expectations equilibrium where the time 1 average private signal is not revealed by the price sequence but the time 2 average private signal is. Secondly, we analyse how informed trading volume is affected by the revealed information and supply shocks when pure noise trading volume is uncorrected with observable market variables. Our result indicates that no trade occurs for informed traders when net supply remains fixed across rounds of trade. And, when supply shocks are random, trading volume is induced by the informed and the noise traders, but noise trading is not predictable. Finally, we investigate these properties in the case when pure noise trading volume is correlated with observable market variables. It is shown that no informed trading takes place when there is no supply shock. However, when net supply contains random shocks, trading volume consists of noise and informed trading, both of which can be estimated.     

The effect of public information and competition on trading volume and price volatility

In a one-period model of market making with many exogenouslyinformed traders, we first show that the variance of pricesand expected trading volume depend on the public informationreleased at the start of trading. This is accomplished by representingbeliefs with elliptically contoured distributions, for whichthe form of optimal decision rules does not depend on the specificdistribution used. Second, if the model is altered so that thedecision to become informed is made endogenous, then the decisionrules of the market-maker and informed traders depend on thepublic information. Third, in a multiperiod model with manyinformed traders and long-lived private information, recursionformulas similar to those of Kyle (1985) hold for all ellipticallycontoured distributions, trading volume is autocorrelated and,unless per period liquidity trading is bounded away from zeroas new trading periods are added, informed traders' profitsvanish.     

The price impact of order book events: market orders,limit orders and cancellations

While the long-ranged correlation of market orders and their impact on prices has been relatively well studied in the literature, the corresponding studies of limit orders and cancellations are scarce. We provide here an empirical study of the cross-correlation between all these different events, and their respective impact on future price changes. We define and extract from the data the ‘bare’ impact these events would have if they were to happen in isolation. For large tick stocks, we show that a model where the bare impact of all events is permanent and non-fluctuating is in good agreement with the data. For small tick stocks, however, bare impacts must contain a history-dependent part, reflecting the internal fluctuations of the order book. We show that this effect can be accurately described by an autoregressive model of the past order flow. This framework allows us to decompose the impact of an event into three parts: an instantaneous jump component, the modification of the future rates of the different events, and the modification of the jump sizes of future events. We compare in detail the present formalism with the temporary impact model that was proposed earlier to describe the impact of market orders when other types of events are not observed. Finally, we extend the model to describe the dynamics of the bid–ask spread.     

Options trading volume and stock price response to earnings announcements

We examine the effect of options trading volume on the stock price response to earnings announcements over the period 1996–2007. Contrary to previous studies, we find no significant difference in the immediate stock price response to earnings information announcements in samples split between firms with listed options and firms without listed options. However, within the sample of firms with listed options stratified by options volume, we find that higher options trading volume reduces the immediate stock price response to earnings announcements. This conforms with evidence that stock prices of high options trading volume firms have anticipated and pre-empted some earnings information in the pre-announcement period. We also find that higher abnormal options trading volume around earnings announcements hastens the stock price adjustment to earnings news and reduces post-earnings announcement drift.     

Liquidity,information, strategic trading in an electronic order book: New insights from the European carbon markets

The electronic limit order book (LOB hereafter) has rapidly become the primary way of trading European carbon assets over the 4 years of the EU ETS programme (2008–2012). In this first attempt of examining the informational content of an electronic order book, we evidence that order flow imbalances have a moderate capacity to predict short term price changes. However, we find that both LOB slope and immediacy costs help to forecast quote improvements and volatility in the next 30 min. Further, we explain why informed trading is highly influential and show that it consists in mixing order splitting strategies and posting fleeting orders once the asymmetric information is reduced (Rosu, 2009). Overall, the consolidated status of the order book mirrors a high level of market uncertainty and a low degree of informational efficiency. In this way, strategic trading can in itself explain some of order book properties, independently of the degree of traders’ sophistication and market competition.     

Quote setting and price formation in an order driven market

This paper models quote setting and price formation in a non-intermediated, order driven market where trading occurs because investors differ in their share valuations and the advent of news that is not common knowledge, and tests the model using transaction data on individual stocks in the ParisBourse CAC40 index. As an extension of Foucault (1999), we show that the size of the spread is a function of the differences in valuation among investors and of adverse selection. Both GMM estimation of the model parameters and empirical evidence on spread behavior as the relative proportion of buyers and sellers in the market changes, provide strong support for the model. Our analysis yields further insight into the dynamic process of price formation and into the market clearing process in an order driven market.     

Abnormal trading volume,news and market efficiency: Evidence from the Jamaica Stock Exchange

This paper investigates market efficiency of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE). Together, weak and semi-strong form efficiency claim that historical and newly released public information do not predict future stock price movement. We test both forms of market efficiency by analyzing stock price behavior during times of abnormal trading volume and around the release dates of earnings information. Abnormal trading volume may be driven by liquidity demand or reflect new or private information flow to the market. Using JSE data over the period 2000 to 2021, we find price dynamics consistent with price pressure as firms experience negative abnormal returns on the day of abnormal trading activity but offsetting positive abnormal stock returns on the following day. Further findings show post earnings announcement drift on the JSE. Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests violations of market efficiency and has implications for capital allocation in this emerging market.     

The impact of transaction duration,volume and direction on price dynamics and volatility

We explore the role of trade volume, trade direction, and the duration between trades in explaining price dynamics and volatility using an Asymmetric Autoregressive Conditional Duration model applied to intraday transactions data. Our results suggest that volume, direction and duration are important determinants of price dynamics, while duration is also an important determinant of volatility. However, the impact of volume and direction on volatility is marginal after controlling for duration, and the impact of volume on volatility appears to be confined to periods of infrequent trading.     

The impact of multilateral trading facilities on price discovery: Further evidence from the European markets

This study examines relative price discovery for three major European indices, FTSE, CAC, and DAX, their futures and exchange traded funds (ETFs) using the data on 5‐minute intraday transaction prices over a four‐year period. We computed both Hasbrouck (1995) information share with error bounds and Gonzalo and Granger's (1995) common factor weights approach. Gonzalo and Granger's (1995) common factor weights suggest the index futures contracts play a dominant role in price discovery in the CAC market: the CAC 40 index futures lead the price discovery and Lyxor CAC 40 ETFs serving the second resort for information transmission. This could be due to the less frequent trading of ETFs. More importantly, CAC40 under the Gonzalo & Granger (1995) test shows upper and lower error bounds in good range may be the main reason to drive for the meaningful results. In contrast, the upper and lower bounds estimated from the Hasbrouck (1995) are far distant for most cases. Finally, FTSE and DAX markets offer compelling evidence to show that ETFs lead price discovery and spots and futures follows.     

Stock liquidity premium with stochastic price impact and exogenous trading strategy

This paper provides a model which helps explain the variability of stock liquidity premium. Liquidity is modelled as a time-varying price impact and includes both permanent as well as temporary price impacts. Liquidity premium is defined as an additional expected return that stock should yield to compensate an investor for the potential loss of wealth utility caused by price impact costs. The numerical results presented show that liquidity premium varies with expected net stock return, return volatility and, to a lesser extent, with returns on risk-free bonds. Liquidity premium is a growing and convex function of liquidity costs, and temporary price impact has a more severe effect on liquidity premium than the permanent one.     

The impact of trading halts on liquidity and price volatility: Evidence from the Australian Stock Exchange

This study examines market behaviour around trading halts associated with information releases on the Australian Stock Exchange, which operates an open electronic limit order book. Using the Lee, Ready and Seguin (1994) pseudo-halt methodology, we find trading halts increase both volume and price volatility. Trading halts also increase bid-ask spreads and reduce market depth at the best-quotes in the immediate post-halt period. The results of this study imply that trading halts impair rather than improve market quality in markets that operate open electronic limit order books.     

The impact of macroeconomic news on quote adjustments, noise, and informational volatility

We study the impact of the arrival of macroeconomic news on the informational and noise-driven components in high-frequency quote processes and their conditional variances. We decompose bid and ask returns into a common (“efficient return”) factor and two market-side-specific components capturing market microstructure effects. The corresponding variance components reflect information-driven and noise-induced volatilities. We find that all volatility components reveal distinct dynamics and are positively influenced by news. The proportion of noise-induced variances is highest before announcements and significantly declines thereafter. Moreover, news-affected responses in all volatility components are influenced by order flow imbalances.     

Market-wide impact of the disposition effect: evidence from IPO trading volume

I study empirically the market-wide importance of investors’ reluctance to realize losses by investigating IPO trading volume. In IPOs all initial investors have a common purchase price, and the disposition effect should thus be at its strongest. Turnover is significantly lower for negative initial return IPOs when the stock trades below the offer price, and increases significantly on the day the price surpasses the offer price for the first time. The increase in volume lasts for two weeks. On a daily level, attaining new maximum and minimum stock prices also produces strong increase in volume. These results suggest that reference price effects play a role in aggregate stock market activity.     

Behavioral explanations of trading volume and short-horizon price patterns: An investigation of seven Asia-Pacific markets

We investigate whether behavioral postulations offer any implicit explanation of the country-varying relation between trading volume and price pattern among short-horizon winners/losers in seven Pacific-Basin markets during the period 1990 to 2000. Our findings lend credence to the Lee and Swaminathan [Lee, C. and Swaminathan, B., 2000. Price momentum and trading volume, Journal of Finance 55, 2017–2069.] Momentum Life Cycle explanation that high (low) volume winners (losers) are more likely to experience price reversals, whereas high (low) volume losers (winners), price momentum, in the subsequent period. This observation is especially pronounced in Hong Kong. Other models such as those based on an information diffusion process and overconfidence in glamour stocks offer limited explanation for the relation.     

Informed trading,information uncertainty,and price momentum

In this paper we investigate the effects of informed trading (PIN) and information uncertainty in determining price momentum. We find that trading strategies based on buying high-uncertainty good-news stocks and shorting high-uncertainty bad-news stocks work well when limited to high-PIN stocks, while stocks with low-PIN do not exhibit price continuations, even when the uncertainty level of those stocks is high. In contrast, momentum returns are always significant for high-PIN stocks, irrespective of information uncertainty. Overall, we show that the informed trading effect is both independent of and stronger than that of information uncertainty in determining price momentum.     

Liquidity risk,price impacts and the replication problem

We extend a linear version of the liquidity risk model of Çetin et al. (Finance Stoch. 8:311–341, 2004) to allow for price impacts. We show that the impact of a market order on prices depends on the size of the transaction and the level of liquidity. We obtain a simple characterization of self-financing trading strategies and a sufficient condition for no arbitrage. We consider a stochastic volatility model in which the volatility is partly correlated with the liquidity process and show that, with the use of variance swaps, contingent claims whose payoffs depend on the value of the asset can be approximately replicated in this setting. The replicating costs of such payoffs are obtained from the solutions of BSDEs with quadratic growth, and analytical properties of these solutions are investigated.     

Yield Spread and Term to Maturity: Default vs. Liquidity

The aim of this paper is the analysis of the yield spreads between Treasury and non–Treasury Spanish fixed income assets and its relationship with the term to maturity. We find a downward sloping term structure of yield spreads for investment–grade bonds that seems to be contrary to the 'crisis at maturity' theory. However, we claim that this outcome is caused mainly by the effect of liquidity on yield spreads. Once the effect of liquidity and other factors are removed we find that there is a positive relationship between default premiums and term to maturity. That result is now consistent with the existing literature.