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A tale of one exchange and two order books : effects of fragmentation in the absence of competition
(2018)
Exchanges nowadays routinely operate multiple, almost identically structured limit order markets for the same security. We study the effects of such fragmentation on market performance using a dynamic model where agents trade strategically across two identically-organized limit order books. We show that fragmented markets, in equilibrium, offer higher welfare to intermediaries at the expense of investors with intrinsic trading motives, and lower liquidity than consolidated markets. Consistent with our theory, we document improvements in liquidity and lower profits for liquidity providers when Euronext, in 2009, consolidated its order ow for stocks traded across two country-specific and identically-organized order books into a single order book. Our results suggest that competition in market design, not fragmentation, drives previously documented improvements in market quality when new trading venues emerge; in the absence of such competition, market fragmentation is harmful.
Advances in technology and several regulatory initiatives have led to the emergence of a competitive but fragmented equity trading landscape in the US and Europe. While these changes have brought about several benefits like reduced transaction costs, regulators and market participants have also raised concerns about the potential adverse effects associated with increased execution complexity and the impact on market quality of new types of venues like dark pools. In this article we review the theoretical and empirical literature examining the economic arguments and motivations underlying market fragmentation, as well as the resulting implications for investors' welfare. We start with the literature that views exchanges as natural monopolies due to presence of network externalities, and then examine studies which challenge this view by focusing on trader heterogeneity and other aspects of the microstructure of equity markets.
Coordination of circuit breakers? Volume migration and volatility spillover in fragmented markets
(2018)
We study circuit breakers in a fragmented, multi-market environment and investigate whether a coordination of circuit breakers is necessary to ensure their effectiveness. In doing so, we analyze 2,337 volatility interruptions on Deutsche Boerse and research whether a volume migration and an accompanying volatility spillover to alternative venues that continue trading can be observed. Different to prevailing theoretical rationale, trading volume on alternative venues significantly decreases during circuit breakers on the main market and we do not find any evidence for volatility spillover. Moreover, we show that the market share of the main market increases sharply during a circuit breaker. Surprisingly, this is amplified with increasing levels of fragmentation. We identify high-frequency trading as a major reason for the vanishing trading activity on the alternative venues and give empirical evidence that a coordination of circuit breakers is not essential for their effectiveness as long as market participants shift to the dominant venue during market stress.
The recent financial crisis has highlighted the limits of the “originate to distribute” model of banking, but its nexus with the macroeconomy and monetary policy remains unexplored. I build a DSGE model with banks (along the lines of Holmström and Tirole [28] and Parlour and Plantin [39] and examine its properties with and without active secondary markets for credit risk transfer. The possibility of transferring credit reduces the impact of liquidity shocks on bank balance sheets, but also reduces the bank incentive to monitor. As a result, secondary markets allow to release bank capital and exacerbate the effect of productivity and other macroeconomic shocks on output and inflation. By offering a possibility of capital recycling and by reducing bank monitoring, secondary credit markets in general equilibrium allow banks to take on more risk. Keywords: Credit Risk Transfer , Dual Moral Hazard , Monetary Policy , Liquidity , Welfare JEL Classification: E3, E5, G3 First Draft: December 2009, This Draft: September 2010
The recent financial crisis has led to a major debate about fair-value accounting. Many critics have argued that fair-value accounting, often also called mark-to-market accounting, has significantly contributed to the financial crisis or, at least, exacerbated its severity. In this paper, we assess these arguments and examine the role of fair-value accounting in the financial crisis using descriptive data and empirical evidence. Based on our analysis, it is unlikely that fair-value accounting added to the severity of the current financial crisis in a major way. While there may have been downward spirals or asset-fire sales in certain markets, we find little evidence that these effects are the result of fair-value accounting. We also find little support for claims that fair-value accounting leads to excessive write-downs of banks’ assets. If anything, empirical evidence to date points in the opposite direction, that is, towards overvaluation of bank assets.
Algorithmic trading has sharply increased over the past decade. Equity market liquidity has improved as well. Are the two trends related? For a recent five-year panel of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) stocks, we use a normalized measure of electronic message traffic (order submissions, cancellations, and executions) as a proxy for algorithmic trading, and we trace the associations between liquidity and message traffic. Based on within-stock variation, we find that algorithmic trading and liquidity are positively related. To sort out causality, we use the start of autoquoting on the NYSE as an exogenous instrument for algorithmic trading. Previously, specialists were responsible for manually disseminating the inside quote. As stocks were phased in gradually during early 2003, the manual quote was replaced by a new automated quote whenever there was a change to the NYSE limit order book. This market structure change provides quicker feedback to traders and algorithms and results in more message traffic. For large-cap stocks in particular, quoted and effective spreads narrow under autoquote and adverse selection declines, indicating that algorithmic trading does causally improve liquidity.
Venture capital (VC) funds backed by large multi-fund families tend to perform substantially better due to cross-fund cash flows (CFCFs), a liquidity support mechanism provided by matching distributions and capital calls within a VC fund family. The dynamics of this mechanism coincide with the sensitivity of different stage projects owing to market liquidity conditions. We find that the early-stage funds demand relatively more intra-family CFCFs than later-stage funds during liquidity stress periods. We show that the liquidity improvement based on the timing of CFCF allocation reflects how fund families arrange internal liquidity provision and explains a large part of their outperformance.
We study the impact of transparency on liquidity in OTC markets. We do so by providing an analysis of liquidity in a corporate bond market without trade transparency (Germany), and comparing our findings to a market with full post-trade disclosure (the U.S.). We employ a unique regulatory dataset of transactions of German financial institutions from 2008 until 2014 to find that: First, overall trading activity is much lower in the German market than in the U.S. Second, similar to the U.S., the determinants of German corporate bond liquidity are in line with search theories of OTC markets. Third, surprisingly, frequently traded German bonds have transaction costs that are 39-61 bp lower than a matched sample of bonds in the U.S. Our results support the notion that, while market liquidity is generally higher in transparent markets, a sub-set of bonds could be more liquid in more opaque markets because of investors "crowding" their demand into a small number of more actively traded securities.
We study the introduction of single-market liquidity provider incentives in fragmented securities markets. Specifically, we investigate whether fee rebates for liquidity providers enhance liquidity on the introducing market and thereby increase its competitiveness and market share. Further, we analyze whether single-market liquidity provider incentives increase overall market liquidity available for market participants. Therefore, we measure the specific liquidity contribution of individual markets to the aggregate liquidity in the fragmented market environment. While liquidity and market share of the venue introducing incentives increase, we find no significant effect for turnover and liquidity of the whole market.
We investigate different designs of circuit breakers implemented on European trading venues and examine their effectiveness to manage excess volatility and to preserve liquidity. Specifically, we empirically analyze volatility and liquidity around volatility interruptions implemented on the German and Spanish stock market which differ regarding specific design parameters. We find that volatility interruptions in general significantly decrease volatility in the post interruption phase. Unfortunately, this decrease in volatility comes at the cost of decreased liquidity. Regarding design parameters, we find tighter price ranges and shorter durations to support volatility interruptions in achieving their goals.