Strategic Investor Behaviour and the Volume-Volatility Relation in Equity Markets

We examine the volume-volatility relation using detailed data from a limit order driven equity market. Estimates of the intraday slope of the demand and supply schedules of the order book are found to capture regularities in spreads, trade size and submission strategies which are believed to be related to asymmetric information. On a daily level, the order book slope should also captures differences in dispersion of beliefs about stock values. The relationship between our daily slope measure and the contemporaneous volatility across companies and time supports models where strategic trading and dispersion of beliefs increase both volume and volatility.Market Microstructure; Volume-volatility relation; Equity trading; Asymmetric Information

Why do firms pay for liquidity provision in limit order markets?

In recent years, a number of electronic limit order have reintroduced market makers for some securities (Designated Market Makers). This trend has mainly been initiated by financial intermediaries and listed firms themselves, without any regulatory pressure. In this paper we ask why firms are willing to pay to improve the secondary market liquidity of its shares. We show that a contributing factor in this decision is the likelihood that the firm will interact with the capital markets in the near future, either because they have capital needs, or that they are planning to repurchase shares. We also find some evidence of agency costs, managers desiring good liquidity when they plan insider trades.Market microstructure; Corporate Finance; Designated Market Makers; Insider Trading

The ownership structure of repurchasing firms

This paper provides an examination of the ownership structure in Norwegian firms that announced repurchase plans during the period 1999 through 2001, as well as for groups of these firms conditional on whether they actually executed repurchases or not. By using detailed information on various ownership variables that can be related to corporate governance mechanisms, the paper also examines whether the propensity for firms to announce a repurchase program depends on the ownership composition. Some interesting patterns are found which are consistent with models where firms with potentially the highest agency problems use repurchases to mitigate agency costs. However, a high insider ownership in these firms may also suggest that asymmetric information, shareholder expropriation and entrenchment may also be motivations for why firms repurchase shares.Stock repurchases, ownership structure, corporate governance

The Risk Components of Liquidity

Does liquidity risk differ depending on our choice of liquidity proxy? Unlike literature that considers common liquidity variation, we focus on identifying different components of liquidity, statistically and economically, using more than a decade of US transaction data. We identify three main statistical liquidity factors which are utilized in a linear asset pricing framework. We motivate a correspondence of the statistical factors to traditional dimensions of liquidity as well as the notion of order and trade based liquidity measures. We find evidence of multiple liquidity risk premia, but only a subset of the financial liquidity factors are associated with significant risk premia. These are the factors that we relate to the dimensions of immediacy and resilliency, while the depth dimension does not command a risk premium in any of the models. Our results suggests caution when choosing liquidity variables in asset pricing applications, since liquidity premia may be reflected in only some dimensions of liquidity.Liquidity Risk; Liquidity Factors; Asset Pricing; Market Microstructure

Throttling hyperactive robots – order-to-trade ratios at the Oslo Stock Exchange

This version is made available in accordance with publisher policies. It is the author’s last version of the article after peer-review, usually referred to as postprint or accepted version. Please cite only the published version.We investigate the effects of introducing a fee on excessive order-to-trade ratios (OTRs) on market quality at the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE). We find that traders reacted to the regulation as measured OTRs fell. However, market quality, measured with depth, spreads, and realized volatility, remain largely unaffected. This result differs sharply from the experience in other markets, such as Italy and Canada, where similar regulatory changes have been accompanied by a worsening of liquidity. The unchanged market quality at the OSE is likely due to the different design of the regulation, which is tailored to encourage liquidity supply.acceptedVersio

Trading on Algos

Abstract This paper studies the impact of algorithmic trading (AT) on asset prices. We find that the heterogeneity of algorithmic traders across stocks generates predictable patterns in stock returns. A trading strategy that exploits the AT return predictability generates a monthly risk-adjusted performance between 50-130 basis points for the period 1999 to 2012. We find that stocks with lower AT have higher returns, after controlling for standard market-, size-, book-to-market-, momentum, and liquidity risk factors. This effect survives the inclusion of many cross-sectional return predictors and is statistically and economically significant. Return predictability is stronger among stocks with higher impediments to trade and higher predatory/opportunistic algorithmic traders. Our paper is the first to study and establish a strong link between algorithmic trading and asset prices

The Market Impact and Timing of Open Market Share Repurchases in Norway

This paper examines a detailed dataset on open market repurchase announcements and actual repurchases conducted by Norwegian firms during the period 1998-2001. Firms that announce a repurchase plan experience a positive excess return around the announcement date. However, these firms also experience an abnormal performance after the announcement, suggesting that the market underreacts to the positive signal conveyed through the announcement. When examining the sample of actual repurchases, we find that there is a positive price impact around the execution dates, indicating that the market puts a positive value on the information conveyed through the actual repurchases. In the long run, only announcing firms that do not repurchase experience a significant positive abnormal performance, while a portfolio tracking the repurchasing firms perform according to expectations. In addition, announcing firms that do not repurchase are less liquid than repurchasing firms. One suggested explanation for the finding is that firms by executing repurchases mitigate the undervaluation by confirming their initial signal through actual transactions such that these firms perform as expected in the long run. Due to the lower liquidity of non-repurchasing firms, they are likely to be constrained from exploiting mispricing and unable to signal undervaluation to the market. If this is the case, the price remains too low, and information surprises in later periods contribute to the long term abnormal return drift for these companies.publishedVersio

Strategic Investor Behaviour and the Volume-Volatility Relation in Equity Markets

We examine the volume-volatility relation using detailed data from a limit order driven equity market. Estimates of the intraday slope of the demand and supply schedules of the order book are found to capture regularities in spreads, trade size and submission strategies which are believed to be related to asymmetric information. On a daily level, the order book slope should also captures differences in dispersion of beliefs about stock values. The relationship between our daily slope measure and the contemporaneous volatility across companies and time supports models where strategic trading and dispersion of beliefs increase both volume and volatility.publishedVersio

Is the Market Microstructure of Stock Markets Important?

The market microstructure literature studies how the actual transaction process – i.e. how buyers and sellers find one another and agree on a price – can affect price formation and trading volumes in a market. This article provides an introduction to the concepts, frameworks and most important themes in this literature. The market serves two functions: one is to provide liquidity for buyers and sellers; the other is to ensure that prices reflect relevant information about fundamental value. Microstructure models differ from traditional financial models by recognising that legitimate information about companies’ fundamentals may be unequally distributed between, and differently interpreted by, market participants. We can therefore no longer assume that prices will reflect information immediately even if all participants are rational. The microstructure literature argues that both information risk due to asymmetric information and differences in liquidity over time and between companies impact on long-term equilibrium prices in the market