One size fits all? High frequency trading, tick size changes and the implications for exchanges: market quality and market structure considerations

This paper offers a systematic review of the empirical literature on the implications of tick size changes for exchanges. Our focus is twofold: first, we are concerned with the market quality implications of a change in the minimum tick size. Second, we are interested in the implications of changes in the minimum tick size on market structure. We show that there is a large body of empirical literature that documents a decrease in transaction costs following a decrease in the minimum tick size. However, even though market liquidity increases, the incentive to provide market making activities decreases. We document a strong link between the minimum tick size regulations and the recent increase in high frequency trading activity. A smaller tick enhances the price discovery process. However, the question of how multiple tick size regimes affect market liquidity in a fragmented market remains to be answered. Finally, we identify topics for future research; we discuss the empirical literature on the minimum trade unit and the recent calls for a minimum resting time for quotes

The performance of alternative valuation models in the OTC currency options market

We compare option valuation models based on regime-switching, GARCH, and jump-diffusion processes to a standard "smile" model, in which Black and Scholes (1973) implied volatilities are allowed to vary across strike prices. The regime-switching, GARCH, and jump-diffusion models provide significant improvement over a fixed smile model in fitting GBP and JPY option prices both in-sample and out-of-sample. The jump-diffusion model achieves the tightest fit. A time-varying smile model, however, provides hedging performance that is comparable to the other models for the GBP options. This result suggests that standard option valuation techniques may provide a reasonable basis for trading and hedging strategies. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved