Information diffusion, trading speed and their potential impact on price efficiency : literature review

The continuous debate and research related to High Frequency Trading emphasises the importance of performing analysis on topics associated with the interaction of traders with different trading speeds, and the effects of this interaction on price efficiency and market quality. The aim of this paper is directly related to the analysis on how information diffusion may affect order submission decisions of traders, with different trading speeds and how these may affect price efficiency or market quality. The incorporation of information in submitted orders evidently affects prices, but it may also affect market quality for different reasons e.g., the use of low-quality information, or the fact that slower traders may be considering information that has already been incorporated in the market prices by faster traders, hence leading to the mispricing of the fair value. This paper provides findings on the above-mentioned topics, based on a literature review - both theoretical or of empirical studies (which are scarcely available) and leads to the conclusion that High Frequency Traders could be treated as natural “insider traders” leading to significant price efficiency, as understood by the Efficient Market Hypothesis.