On the microstructure of price determination and information aggregation with sequential and asymmetric information arrival in an experimental asset market

Summary. Experiments were conducted on an asset with the structure of an option. The information of any individual is limited, as if only the direction of movement of the option value known for a single period without information of the value from when movement was initiated. However, if all information of all insiders were pooled, the value of the option would be known with certainty. The results are the following: (1) Information becomes aggregated in the prices as if fully informative rational expectations operated; and (2) The mechanism through which information gets into the market is captured by a path dependent process that we term The Fundamental Coordination Principle of Information Transfer in Competitive Markets. The early contracts tend to be initiated by insiders who tender limit orders. The emergence of bubbles and mirages in the markets are coincident with failures and circumstances that prevent the operation of the Fundamental Principle.The financial support of the national science foundation and the Caltech Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Political Science are gratefully acknowledged. The authors have benefited from helpful comments of David Grether, Kerry Back, Ivana Komunjer and Pete Kyle.     

Determinants of commonality in liquidity: Evidence from an order-driven emerging market

Using an extensive, time-series, cross-sectional data-set of actively traded Indian stocks with up to 1.75 million firm-day observations, we discern the key determinants of commonality in liquidity among emerging markets. The paper shows evidence for both supply-side and demand-side factors contributing to liquidity commonality. However, the results are more supportive towards supply-side rationale for liquidity commonality among the firms where regulators and banks play an important source of commonality in liquidity, especially during market turmoil. Results are partially driven by the fact that the Indian stick exchange is an order-driven market. Economic activities like cheap exports and undervalued currency, rather than correlated trading by the institutional investors determine the demand for liquidity. These findings endorse the effect of high firm value, market return, liquidity, volatility, turnover, and alternate proxies of commonality in liquidity estimation.     

Estimating the structural credit risk model when equity prices are contaminated by trading noises

The transformed-data maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) method for structural credit risk models developed by Duan [Duan, J.-C., 1994. Maximum likelihood estimation using price data of the derivative contract. Mathematical Finance 4, 155–167] is extended to account for the fact that observed equity prices may have been contaminated by trading noises. With the presence of trading noises, the likelihood function based on the observed equity prices can only be evaluated via some nonlinear filtering scheme. We devise a particle filtering algorithm that is practical for conducting the MLE estimation of the structural credit risk model of Merton [Merton, R.C., 1974. On the pricing of corporate debt: The risk structure of interest rates. Journal of Finance 29, 449–470]. We implement the method on the Dow Jones 30 firms and on 100 randomly selected firms, and find that ignoring trading noises can lead to significantly over-estimating the firm’s asset volatility. The estimated magnitude of trading noise is in line with the direction that a firm’s liquidity will predict based on three common liquidity proxies. A simulation study is then conducted to ascertain the performance of the estimation method.     

When and Where Are Informed Traders? What Is Their Relationship with Analysts in the Price Discovery Process?

The authors' aim was to analyze the influence of analysts' recommendations on the activity of informed and uninformed traders and whether such influence produces changes in the price discovery process. The analysis was carried out in the Spanish market, considered to be an ideal market given its characteristics. The authors' results indicate that although investors as a whole react to new information from analysts and their activity increases, this reaction is not independent of the type of stock. Informed traders do not increase their activity with small stocks to the same extent as uninformed investors do. Furthermore, the influence of these movements on price discovery is not significant. The results suggest that the interpretation role of analysts is more important for less accessible firms in terms of assessing their growth opportunities. This role may enhance the herding behavior of uninformed agents trading in those small titles for which they would otherwise need to invest extra time and extra money for taking profitable decisions.     

市场微观结构视角的公司财务研究前沿综述

以往一直处于平行发展状态的市场微观结构理论和公司财务学近来出现了交叉融合的趋势,且这一视角的研究将随着我国股权分置改革的完成而变得日趋重要。文章系统回顾了市场微观结构中的两个重要研究主题股票流动性和信息不对称对公司财务行为影响的学术前沿动态,具体包括股票流动性和信息不对称对资产定价、融资决策、投资决策和公司治理等方面影响的文献。文章在对这些文献做出回顾与评述的基础上进一步指出了未来的研究方向。     

The Information Environment,Informed Trading,and Volatility

The relation between informed trading and volatility is analyzed using the change in the proportion of informed transactions calculated through the probability of informed trading variable. The analysis relates to the Spanish market during 1997–2010, given that the Spanish market covers a very diverse range of listed companies. Some companies are comparable to companies listed on U.S. markets while others are smaller in size and have a lower trading volume and inferior quality of information. The methodology is based on a modification of the model proposed by Avramov, Chordia, and Goyal [2006 Avramov, D., T. Chordia, and A. Goyal. “The Impact of Trades on Daily Volatility.” Review of Financial Studies, 19, (2006), pp. 1241–1277.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]]. The authors’ proposal incorporates the change in the proportion of informed transactions, calculated with intraday data, into the volatility model. The results are also presented using a conditional volatility model in which the change in the proportion of informed transactions is incorporated. These results attest to the influence of informed trading as a price-stabilizing factor in heavily traded and highly capitalized stocks (familiar stocks). Informed trading leads to a marked decrease in volatility for these particular stocks both in periods of calm and crisis.     

噪声交易与股票流动性关系的行为金融学解释

行为金融学研究的进展为传统的金融市场微观结构理论的发展提供一种新的思路。文章根据噪声交易者模型,考虑了噪声交易者的认知偏差和反应不足,构建了一种新的价格冲击模型,对于噪声交易和股票流动的关系给出了一种新的行为金融学解释,并且通过设定参数进行模拟,具体描绘了噪     

Liquidity biases in asset pricing tests

Microstructure noise in security prices biases the results of empirical asset pricing specifications, particularly when security-level explanatory variables are cross-sectionally correlated with the amount of noise. We focus on tests of whether measures of illiquidity, which are likely to be correlated with the noise, are priced in the cross-section of stock returns, and show a significant upward bias in estimated return premiums for an array of illiquidity measures in Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) monthly return data. The upward bias is larger when illiquid securities are included in the sample, but persists even for NYSE/Amex stocks after decimalization. We introduce a methodological correction to eliminate the biases that simply involves weighted least squares (WLS) rather than ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation, and find evidence of smaller, but still significant, return premiums for illiquidity after implementing the correction.     

Trading mechanisms and trading preferences on a 24-hour futures market: A case study of the Floor/GLOBEX switch on MATIF

MATIF is the only major exchange offering a 24-hour non-interrupted trading cycle accommodating two distinct non-overlapping trading mechanisms. We find that trading volume on the floor is significantly higher than that on GLOBEX around the switch of trading mechanism. GLOBEX is mainly used by institutions to hedge their cash positions. The higher trading volume on the floor may be attributed to several factors: trade immediacy vs. transaction cost, liquidity trading by locals, inertia to trade under a new mechanism, and transparency vs. anonymity. In addition, the floor's open is unique with large interday return volatility.     

Order flow and central bank intervention: An empirical analysis of recent Bank of Japan actions in the foreign exchange market

This paper examines the behaviour of end-user order flows in the foreign exchange market around periods of intense and large-scale intervention activity by the Bank of Japan. First, we find very limited evidence that corporate customers are more than usually likely to be net sellers of yen on days when the Bank of Japan is intervening to sell yen. However, there is somewhat stronger evidence that financial customers are more likely to be net buyers of yen on the same days. Second, we find very clear evidence that intervention matters in a microstructure analysis. The strong contemporaneous correlation between order flows and exchange rate changes essentially disappears on days in which the Bank of Japan intervenes.