High-frequency Trading and its Role in Fragmented Markets

The financial services industry is among the leading industries in IT-spending. Still, little research exists which investigates how IT influences the financial services sector. Against this background, we study how a technology which emerged within the last years affects securities trading: High-Frequency Trading (HFT). Hereby, we focus on HFT and its impact on market efficiency. On the basis of a long-term analysis, we find that HFT decreases price dispersion among two distant markets. Analyzing the introduction of the German HFT Act, we further observe that the price dispersion between two leading trading venues for German blue chip securities increased. We conclude that HFT increases market efficiency in the European market landscape by transmitting information between distant markets

The Impact of IT-Based Trading on Securities Markets

The emergence of IT-based trading activities like algorithmic trading or high-frequency trading alters the traditional trading environment within financial markets. Thus, the question arises whether this technological arms race positively affects market quality or represents a risk related to market integrity. Within this study, we evaluate the order-to-trade-ratio for measuring overall IT-based trading activity. Furthermore, in a longitudinal study, we assess the impact of the order-to-trade-ratio on market quality. We find strong indications that price uncertainty has decreased with an increased order-to-trade-ratio and therefore has a positive impact on financial markets. However, the mere upgrade of the trading systems does not relate into increased market liquidity

The Impact of High-Frequency Trading on Modern Securities Markets

High-frequency traders account for a significant part of overall price formation and liquidity provision in modern securities markets. In order to react within microseconds, high-frequency traders depend on specialized low latency infrastructure and fast connections to exchanges, which require significant IT investments. The paper investigates a technical failure of this infrastructure at a major exchange that prevents high-frequency traders from trading at low latency. This event provides a unique opportunity to analyze the impact of high-frequency trading on securities markets. The analysis clearly shows that although the impact on trading volume and the number of trades is marginal, the effects on liquidity and to a lesser extent on price volatility are substantial when high-frequency trading is interrupted. Thus, investments in high-frequency trading technology provide positive economic spillovers to the overall market since they reduce transaction costs not only for those who invest in this technology but for all market participants by enhancing the quality of securities markets

EU Energy derivatives markets: structure and risks

Artículo de revistaLos mercados de derivados energéticos se vieron sumidos en turbulencias tras la invasión de Ucrania por parte de Rusia, ya que los precios del gas natural y de la electricidad se dispararon, en un contexto de volatilidad elevada y de deterioro significativo de la liquidez en los mercados. Los precios aumentaron de manera acusada en marzo de 2022, descendieron en la primavera y, posteriormente, repuntaron, hasta alcanzar máximos históricos al final de agosto de ese año. Las pronunciadas subidas de los precios dieron lugar a ajustes sustanciales de los márgenes de garantía de las posiciones en derivados, lo que generó tensiones de liquidez para algunas empresas que utilizan estos instrumentos como cobertura frente a bajadas de los precios, sobre todo empresas energéticas. La demanda de liquidez era tan elevada que varios países de la Unión Europea (UE) introdujeron mecanismos de apoyo público en forma de préstamos y avales públicos, y algunas empresas energéticas tuvieron que ser rescatadas. Por tanto, es fundamental entender la estructura y el funcionamiento de los mercados de derivados energéticos. En este artículo se describen los mercados de derivados energéticos de la UE y se analizan los riesgos que plantean para la estabilidad financiera. A diferencia de otros mercados financieros, en los mercados energéticos las empresas no financieras desempeñan un papel clave al negociar con derivados en mercados regulados y en mercados over the counter (OTC). El mercado se caracteriza por un alto grado de concentración de las actividades de compensación y de negociación, como muestra el análisis de redes, y algunas empresas energéticas tienen posiciones relativamente significativas en el mercado. En este contexto, los riesgos de liquidez y de concentración se encuentran entre las principales vulnerabilidades detectadas, junto con la fragmentación de los datos y las lagunas de datos. La reciente migración de parte de la actividad en derivados de los mercados regulados a los mercados OTC hace que su limitada transparencia y unas exigencias menos homogéneas de ajustes de los márgenes y de activos de garantía sean motivo de preocupación

Stickstoffmonitoring sächsischer Böden

Mit der vorliegenden Broschüre werden die Ergebnisse des Sächsischen Landesamtes für Umwelt, Landwirtschaft und Geologie, des Staatsbetriebes Sachsenforst und der Staatlichen Betriebsgesellschaft für Umwelt und Landwirtschaft gemeinsam vorgestellt. Aus mehrjährigen acker- und pflanzenbaulichen sowie forstlichen Untersuchungen liegen umfangreiche Ergebnisse zu Stickstoffdüngung, -aufnahme, -bilanz und -dynamik unter sächsischen Bedingungen vor. Die zusammenfassende Darstellung der Ergebnisse zeigt, dass regelmäßige Auswertungen der in den verschiedenen Messnetzen erhobenen Parameter und Messreihen die Plattform für ein integriertes und ressortübergreifendes Stickstoffmonitoring bilden können. Die Broschüre liefert einen Beitrag zur Bewertung der Stickstoffbelastung und enthält Handlungsempfehlungen für Flächenbewirtschafter sowie für die Verwaltung

Methodik

Die vegetationskundliche und strukturelle Zuordnung der Lebensraumtypen erfolgt nach der vorrangig von Braun-Blanquet entwickelten Vegetationsklassifizierung, einer hierarchischen Gliederung der Vegetationstypen (Syntaxonomie), die die Ebenen der Assoziation, des Verbandes, der Ordnung und der Klasse umfasst. Hierbei ist die Assoziation die grundlegende Einheit, in der die Pflanzengesellschaften zusammengefasst werden, die sich durch gleiche charakteristische Arten(gruppen)kombinationen auszeichnen. Der Verband vereinigt ähnliche Assoziationen. Das sind bereits umfassendere, jedoch standörtlich noch recht einheitliche Vegetationseinheiten. In Ordnungen werden ähnliche Verbände zusammengefasst. Die Klasse vereinigt ähnliche Ordnungen

Assessing the financial transaction tax in France

THE FINANCIAL TRANSACTION TAX (FTT) IMPLEMENTATION IN FRANCE IN MID 2012 IS CONSIDERED A LANDMARK DEVELOPMENT WITHIN SECURITIES MARKETS REGULATION. HOWEVER, UNTIL TODAY, THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT POSSIBLE DRAWBACKS AND PRACTICAL APPLICABILITY HAS NOT REACHED A CONCLUSION AND CONSEQUENCES FOR MARKET QUALITY ARE YET TO BE THOROUGHLY ASSESSED. IN THIS LIGHT, A RIGOROUS EVALUATION OF THE FTT’S EFFECT ON MARKET QUALITY IS HIGHLY DESIRABLE

SELF-PRESENTATION IN ONLINE DATING – AN ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOURAL DIVERSITY

Human communication experiences a major shift towards virtual interactions and social networks. These virtual environments enable users to present themselves to a virtual audience. In this paper we analyze a unique online dating data set from a mobile application, which allows observing the user’s diversity in terms of gender and sexual orientation and their individual and environmental influences. Based on the research streams on impression management, online dating, diversity of gender and sexual orientation we derive hypotheses on similarity and differences in the group behavior. We also analyze how deviations from the group mean behaviors affect the level of self-presentation. Our re-sults give indication that gender research requires a more diverse perspective when analyzing male and female behavior. We find first evidence that deviations from group behavior is emotionally related to the user’s self-presentation, contrary to this the information content shared with other users seems not to be affected. Our results further indicate that individual and environmental influences have an effect on the amount of shared information as well as the emotional level of self-presentation