The market quality effects of sub-second frequent batch auctions:Evidence from dark trading restrictions

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Volatility, dark trading and market quality: evidence from the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic-driven market volatility

We exploit the exogenous shock of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial markets and regulatory restrictions on dark trading to investigate how volatility drives dark market share and trader venue selection. We find that, consistent with theory, excessive volatility on lit exchanges is linked with an economically significant loss of market share by dark pools to lit exchanges. The dynamics of market share loss are driven by the cross-migration of informed and uninformed traders between lit and dark venues. Informed traders migrate from lit venues to dark venues when lit venues' volatility becomes excessive, while uninformed traders, wary of the presence of informed traders in dark pools, shift their trading to lit exchanges rather than delay trading in a volatile market environment. The market quality implications of the cross-migration are mixed: while it improves liquidity on the lit exchange, it results in a loss of informational efficiency

Carbon Futures Liquidity Effects: Evidence from the European Energy Exchange (EEX)

The study examines liquidity effects after the onset of trading in phase II of the EU-ETS for EUA futures contracts. Using the orthodox market model and liquidity proxies, evidence of long-term improvement in liquidity of the EEX EUA December 2008 futures contract after the commencement of trading in phase II is obtained. Results suggest the application of a new regime of trading rules in phase II led to the improvements in liquidity

More heat than light:Investor attention and bitcoin price discovery

We investigate how increased attention affects bitcoin’s price discovery process. We first decompose bitcoin price into efficient and noise components and then show that the noise element of bitcoin pricing is driven by high levels of attention. This implies that high levels of attention are linked with an increase in uninformed trading activity in the market for bitcoin, while informed trading activity is driven by arbitrage rather than attention