nep-mst New Economics Papers
on Market Microstructure
Issue of 2023‒07‒10
five papers chosen by
Thanos Verousis


  1. Market Making with Deep Reinforcement Learning from Limit Order Books By Hong Guo; Jianwu Lin; Fanlin Huang
  2. Optimal Market Making in the Chinese Stock Market: A Stochastic Control and Scenario Analysis By Shiqi Gong; Shuaiqiang Liu; Danny D. Sun
  3. Automated Market Making and Arbitrage Profits in the Presence of Fees By Jason Milionis; Ciamac C. Moallemi; Tim Roughgarden
  4. The Role of Twitter in Cryptocurrency Pump-and-Dumps By David Ardia; Keven Bluteau
  5. The centralizing effects of private order flow on proposer-builder separation By Tivas Gupta; Mallesh M Pai; Max Resnick

  1. By: Hong Guo; Jianwu Lin; Fanlin Huang
    Abstract: Market making (MM) is an important research topic in quantitative finance, the agent needs to continuously optimize ask and bid quotes to provide liquidity and make profits. The limit order book (LOB) contains information on all active limit orders, which is an essential basis for decision-making. The modeling of evolving, high-dimensional and low signal-to-noise ratio LOB data is a critical challenge. Traditional MM strategy relied on strong assumptions such as price process, order arrival process, etc. Previous reinforcement learning (RL) works handcrafted market features, which is insufficient to represent the market. This paper proposes a RL agent for market making with LOB data. We leverage a neural network with convolutional filters and attention mechanism (Attn-LOB) for feature extraction from LOB. We design a new continuous action space and a hybrid reward function for the MM task. Finally, we conduct comprehensive experiments on latency and interpretability, showing that our agent has good applicability.
    Date: 2023–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2305.15821&r=mst
  2. By: Shiqi Gong; Shuaiqiang Liu; Danny D. Sun
    Abstract: Market making plays a crucial role in providing liquidity and maintaining stability in financial markets, making it an essential component of well-functioning capital markets. Despite its importance, there is limited research on market making in the Chinese stock market, which is one of the largest and most rapidly growing markets globally. To address this gap, we employ an optimal market making framework with an exponential CARA-type (Constant Absolute Risk Aversion) utility function that accounts for various market conditions, such as price drift, volatility, and stamp duty, and is capable of describing 3 major risks (i.e., inventory, execution and adverse selection risks) in market making practice, and provide an in-depth quantitative and scenario analysis of market making in the Chinese stock market. Our numerical experiments explore the impact of volatility on the market maker's inventory. Furthermore, we find that the stamp duty rate is a critical factor in market making, with a negative impact on both the profit of the market maker and the liquidity of the market. Additionally, our analysis emphasizes the significance of accurately estimating stock drift for managing inventory and adverse selection risks effectively and enhancing profit for the market maker. These findings offer valuable insights for both market makers and policymakers in the Chinese stock market and provide directions for further research in designing effective market making strategies and policies.
    Date: 2023–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2306.02764&r=mst
  3. By: Jason Milionis; Ciamac C. Moallemi; Tim Roughgarden
    Abstract: We consider the impact of trading fees on the profits of arbitrageurs trading against an automated marker marker (AMM) or, equivalently, on the adverse selection incurred by liquidity providers due to arbitrage. We extend the model of Milionis et al. [2022] for a general class of two asset AMMs to both introduce fees and discrete Poisson block generation times. In our setting, we are able to compute the expected instantaneous rate of arbitrage profit in closed form. When the fees are low, in the fast block asymptotic regime, the impact of fees takes a particularly simple form: fees simply scale down arbitrage profits by the fraction of time that an arriving arbitrageur finds a profitable trade.
    Date: 2023–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2305.14604&r=mst
  4. By: David Ardia; Keven Bluteau
    Abstract: We examine the influence of Twitter promotion on cryptocurrency pump-and-dump events. By analyzing abnormal returns, trading volume, and tweet activity, we uncover that Twitter effectively garners attention for pump-and-dump schemes, leading to notable effects on abnormal returns before the event. Our results indicate that investors relying on Twitter information exhibit delayed selling behavior during the post-dump phase, resulting in significant losses compared to other participants. These findings shed light on the pivotal role of Twitter promotion in cryptocurrency manipulation, offering valuable insights into participant behavior and market dynamics.
    Date: 2023–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2306.02148&r=mst
  5. By: Tivas Gupta; Mallesh M Pai; Max Resnick
    Abstract: The current Proposer Builder Separation (PBS) equilibrium has several builders with different backgrounds winning blocks consistently. This paper considers how this equilibrium will shift when transactions are sold privately via order flow auctions (OFAs) rather than forwarded directly to the public mempool. We discuss a novel model that highlights the augmented value of private order flow for integrated builder searchers. We show that private order flow is complementary to top-of-block opportunities, and therefore integrated builder-searchers are more likely to participate in OFAs and outbid non integrated builders. They will then parlay access to these private transactions into an advantage in the PBS auction, winning blocks more often and extracting higher profits than non-integrated builders. To validate our main assumptions, we construct a novel dataset pairing post-merge PBS outcomes with realized 12-second volatility on a leading CEX (Binance). Our results show that integrated builder-searchers are more likely to win in the PBS auction when realized volatility is high, suggesting that indeed such builders have an advantage in extracting top-of-block opportunities. Our findings suggest that modifying PBS to disentangle the intertwined dynamics between top-of-block extraction and private order flow would pave the way for a fairer and more decentralized Ethereum.
    Date: 2023–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2305.19150&r=mst

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