nep-mst New Economics Papers
on Market Microstructure
Issue of 2016‒07‒09
four papers chosen by
Thanos Verousis


  1. Spread, volatility, and volume relationship in financial markets and market making profit optimization By Jack Sarkissian
  2. Limit order trading with a mean reverting reference price By Saran Ahuja; George Papanicolaou; Weiluo Ren; Tzu-Wei Yang
  3. A multilayer approach for price dynamics in financial markets By Alessio Emanuele Biondo; Alessandro Pluchino; Andrea Rapisarda
  4. Mixed-frequency multivariate GARCH By Geert Dhaene; Jianbin Wu

  1. By: Jack Sarkissian
    Abstract: We study the relationship between price spread, volatility and trading volume. We find that spread forms as a result of interplay between order liquidity and order impact. When trading volume is small adding more liquidity helps improve price accuracy and reduce spread, but after some point additional liquidity begins to deteriorate price. The model allows to connect the bid-ask spread and high-low bars to measurable microstructural parameters and express their dependence on trading volume, volatility and time horizon. Using the established relations, we address the operating spread optimization problem to maximize market-making profit.
    Date: 2016–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1606.07381&r=mst
  2. By: Saran Ahuja; George Papanicolaou; Weiluo Ren; Tzu-Wei Yang
    Abstract: Optimal control models for limit order trading often assume that the underlying asset price is a Brownian motion since they deal with relatively short time scales. The resulting optimal bid and ask limit order prices tend to track the underlying price as one might expect. This is indeed the case with the model of Avellaneda and Stoikov (2008), which has been studied extensively. We consider here this model under the condition when the underlying price is mean reverting. Our main result is that when time is far from the terminal, the optimal price for bid and ask limit orders is constant, which means that it does not track the underlying price. Numerical simulations confirm this behavior. When the underlying price is mean reverting, then for times sufficiently far from terminal, it is more advantageous to focus on the mean price and ignore fluctuations around it. Mean reversion suggests that limit orders will be executed with some regularity, and this is why they are optimal. We also explore intermediate time regimes where limit order prices are influenced by the inventory of outstanding orders. The duration of this intermediate regime depends on the liquidity of the market as measured by specific parameters in the model.
    Date: 2016–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1607.00454&r=mst
  3. By: Alessio Emanuele Biondo; Alessandro Pluchino; Andrea Rapisarda
    Abstract: We introduce a new Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) model for simulating price evolution in an artificial financial market, based on a multilayer network of traders. The model also implements, in a quite realistic way with respect to previous studies, the order book dy- namics, by considering two assets with variable fundamental prices. Fat tails in the probability distributions of normalized returns are observed, together with other features of real financial markets.
    Date: 2016–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1606.09194&r=mst
  4. By: Geert Dhaene; Jianbin Wu
    Abstract: We introduce and evaluate mixed-frequency multivariate GARCH models for forecasting low-frequency (weekly or monthly) multivariate volatility based on high-frequency intra-day returns (at five-minute intervals) and on the overnight returns. The low-frequency conditional volatility matrix is modelled as a weighted sum of an intra-day and an overnight component, driven by the intra-day and the overnight returns, respectively. The components are specified as multivariate GARCH (1,1) models of the BEKK type, adapted to the mixed-frequency data setting. For the intra-day component, the squared high-frequency returns enter the GARCH model through a parametrically specified mixed-data sampling (MIDAS) weight function or through the sum of the intra-day realized volatilities. For the overnight component, the squared overnight returns enter the model with equal weights. Alternatively, the low-frequency conditional volatility matrix may be modelled as a single-component BEKK-GARCH model where the overnight returns and the high-frequency returns enter through the weekly realized volatility (defined as the unweighted sum of squares of overnight and high-frequency returns), or where the overnight returns are simply ignored. All model variants may further be extended by allowing for a non-parametrically estimated slowly-varying long-run volatility matrix. The proposed models are evaluated using five-minute and overnight return data on four DJIA stocks (AXP, GE, HD, and IBM) from January 1988 to November 2014. The focus is on forecasting weekly volatilities (defined as the low frequency). The mixed-frequency GARCH models are found to systematically dominate the low-frequency GARCH model in terms of in-sample fit and out-of-sample forecasting accuracy. They also exhibit much lower low-frequency volatility persistence than the low-frequency GARCH model. Among the mixed-frequency models, the low-frequency persistence estimates decrease as the data frequency increases from daily to five-minute frequency, and as overnight returns are included. That is, ignoring the available high-frequency information leads to spuriously high volatility persistence. Among the other findings are that the single-component model variants perform worse than the two-component variants; that the overnight volatility component exhibits more persistence than the intra-day component; and that MIDAS weighting performs better than not weighting at all (i.e., than realized volatility).
    Date: 2016–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ete:ceswps:544330&r=mst

This nep-mst issue is ©2016 by Thanos Verousis. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at https://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.