Analyzing Information and Value Flows in High-Frequency Capital Markets

High-frequency trading has significant influence on today’s capital markets and has received massive attention in the media. This research aims to provide a conceptual understanding of high-frequency capital markets by analysing information and value flows between relevant high-frequency trading market participants. In a first step, market participants including traders, brokers, market platforms, technology providers, information providers, and clearing agencies are introduced. Second, the trading process is described focusing on the three most important phases, namely the information phase, order routing phase, and order matching phase. Furthermore, we review widely adopted high-frequency trading strategies such as market making, arbitrage trading, and pinging. Expert interviews are used to provide practical insights on the perception of high-frequency trading and the necessity for improved regulation. We merge theoretical knowledge and our findings from practice to develop the HFT Value Information Framework visualizing information and value flows between market participants. We discuss the interrelations between market participants in current high-frequency capital markets and describe implications for different stakeholders. Finally, the implications for regulatory bodies are discussed and possible future research opportunities are identified

Towards a Macroprudential Surveillance and Remedial Policy Formulation System for Monitoring Financial Crisis

Several developing economies witnessed a large number of systemic financial and currency crises since the 1980s which resulted in severe economic, social, and political problems. The devastating impact of the 1982 and 1994-95 Mexican crises, the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, the 1998 Russian crisis and the ongoing financial crisis of 2008-2009 suggest that maintaining financial sector stability through reduction of vulnerability is highly crucial. The world is now witnessing an unprecedented systemic financial crisis originated from USA in September 2008 together with a deep worldwide economic recession, particularly in developed countries of Europe and North America. This calls for devising and using on a regular basis an appropriate and effective monitoring and policy formulation system for detecting and addressing vulnerabilities leading to crisis. This paper proposes a macroprudential/financial soundness monitoring, analysis and remedial policy formulation system that can be used by most developing countries with or without crisis experience as well as developed countries with limited data. It also discusses a process for identifying, and compiling a set of leading macroprudential indicators/financial soundness indicators. An empirical illustration using Philippines data is presented.economic and financial vulnerability, macroprudential indicators and financial soundness indicators analysis, macroprudential surveillance and policy, developing countries, financial sector, currency and financial crises, Early Warning Models, Stress Test

Private equity-, stock- and mixed asset-portfolios: a bootstrap approach to determine performance characteristics, diversification benefits and optimal portfolio allocations : [Version: December 2003]

In this article, we investigate risk return characteristics and diversification benefits when private equity is used as a portfolio component. We use a unique dataset describing 642 US-American portfolio companies with 3620 private equity investments. Information about precisely dated cash flows at the company level enables for the first time a cash flow equivalent and simultaneous investment simulation in stocks, as well as the construction of stock portfolios for benchmarking purposes. With respect to the methodology involved, we construct private equity, stock-benchmark and mixed-asset portfolios using bootstrap simulations. For the late 1990s we find a dramatic increase in the extent to which private equity outperforms stock investment. In earlier years private equity was underperforming its stock benchmarks. Within the overall class of private equity, returns on earlier private equity investment categories, like venture capital, show on average higher variations and even higher rates of failure. It is in this category in particular that high average portfolio returns are generated solely by the ability to select a few extremely well performing companies, thus compensating for lost investments. There is a high marginal diversifiable risk reduction of about 80% when the portfolio size is increased to include 15 investments. When the portfolio size is increased from 15 to 200 there are few marginal risk diversification effects on the one hand, but a large increase in managing expenditure on the other, so that an actual average portfolio size between 20 and 28 investments seems to be well balanced. We provide empirical evidence that the non-diversifiable risk that a constrained investor, who is exclusively investing in private equity, has to hold exceeds that of constrained stock investors and also the market risk. From the viewpoint of unconstrained investors with complete investment freedom, risk can be optimally reduced by constructing mixed asset portfolios. According to the various private equity subcategories analyzed, there are big differences in optimal allocations to this asset class for minimizing mixed-asset portfolio variance or maximizing performance ratios. We observe optimal portfolio weightings to be between 3% and 65%

Evidence of Fueling of the 2000 New Economy Bubble by Foreign Capital Inflow: Implications for the Future of the US Economy and its Stock Market

Previous analyses of a large ensemble of stock markets have demonstrated that a log-periodic power law (LPPL) behavior of the prices constitutes a qualifying signature of speculative bubbles that often land with a crash. We detect such a LPPL signature in the foreign capital inflow during the bubble on the US markets culminating in March 2000. We detect a weak synchronization and lag with the NASDAQ 100 LPPL pattern. We propose to rationalize these observations by the existence of positive feedback loops between market-appreciation / increased-spending / increased-deficit-of-balance-of-payment / larger-foreign-surplus / increased-foreign-capital-inflows and so on. Our analysis suggests that foreign capital inflow have been following rather than causing the bubble. We then combine a macroeconomic analysis of feedback processes occurring between the economy and the stock market with a technical analysis of more than two hundred years of the DJIA to investigate possible scenarios for the future, three years after the end of the bubble and deep into a bearish regime. We also detect a LPPL accelerating bubble on the EURO against the US dollar and the Japanese Yen. In sum, our analyses is in line with our previous work on the LPPL ``anti-bubble'' representing the bearish market that started in 2000.Comment: 41 Latex pages including 14 eps figure

Private equity-, stock- and mixed asset-portfolios: A bootstrap approach to determine performance characteristics, diversification benefits and optimal portfolio allocations

In this article, we investigate risk return characteristics and diversification benefits when private equity is used as a portfolio component. We use a unique dataset describing 642 US-American portfolio companies with 3620 private equity investments. Information about precisely dated cash flows at the company level enables for the first time a cash flow equivalent and simultaneous investment simulation in stocks, as well as the construction of stock portfolios for benchmarking purposes. With respect to the methodology involved, we construct private equity, stock-benchmark and mixed-asset portfolios using bootstrap simulations. For the late 1990s we find a dramatic increase in the extent to which private equity outperforms stock investment. In earlier years private equity was underperforming its stock benchmarks. Within the overall class of private equity, returns on earlier private equity investment categories, like venture capital, show on average higher variations and even higher rates of failure. It is in this category in particular that high average portfolio returns are generated solely by the ability to select a few extremely well performing companies, thus compensating for lost investments. There is a high marginal diversifiable risk reduction of about 80% when the portfolio size is increased to include 15 investments. When the portfolio size is increased from 15 to 200 there are few marginal risk diversification effects on the one hand, but a large increase in managing expenditure on the other, so that an actual average portfolio size between 20 and 28 investments seems to be well balanced. We provide empirical evidence that the non-diversifiable risk that a constrained investor, who is exclusively investing in private equity, has to hold exceeds that of constrained stock investors and also the market risk. From the viewpoint of unconstrained investors with complete investment freedom, risk can be optimally reduced by constructing mixed asset portfolios. According to the various private equity subcategories analyzed, there are big differences in optimal allocations to this asset class for minimizing mixed-asset portfolio variance or maximizing performance ratios. We observe optimal portfolio weightings to be between 3% and 65%.Venture Capital, Private Equity, Performance, Return, Risk, Portfolio, Fund, Diversification, Efficient Frontier, Allocation

Behavior and Effects of Equity Foreign Investors on Emerging Markets

This paper analyzes empirically the behavior of foreign investors on emerging equity markets in a cross-country setting, including 14 emerging markets from the year 2000 to 2005. We could find little evidence that these investors have brought problems to local emerging markets. Foreign investors seem to build and unwind their positions on emerging stock markets slowly enough to avoid problems as price pressure or volatility and kurtosis upswings on the stock market. Also, no negative effects on the foreign exchange market could be found. Regarding feedback trading, we support two hypotheses: positive feedback trading by hedged investors and negative feedback trading by unhedged investors. The latter has stronger statistical evidence and is more likely to occur in the real world. We conclude that there is no reason to impose long-term restrictions to foreign flows.

Regulating capital flows in emerging markets: The IMF and the global financial crisis

In the wake of the financial crisis the International Monetary Fund (IMF) began to publicly express support for what have traditionally been referred to as ‘capital controls’. This paper empirically examines the extent to which the change in IMF discourse on these matters has resulted in significant changes in actual IMF policy advice. By creating and analyzing a database of IMF Article IV reports, we examine whether the financial crisis had an independent impact on IMF support for capital controls. We find that the IMF’s level of support for capital controls has increased as a result of the crisis and as the vulnerabilities associated with capital flows accentuate

A survey of announcement effects on foreign exchange returns

Researchers have long studied the reaction of foreign exchange returns to macroeconomic announcements in order to infer changes in policy reaction functions and foreign exchange micro­structure, including the speed of market reaction to news and how order flow helps impound public and private information into prices. These studies have often been disconnected, however; and this article critically reviews and evaluates the literature on announcement effects on foreign exchange returns.Foreign exchange