In recent years, the number of downgrades in corporate bond ratings has exceeded the number of upgrades. This fact has led some to conclude that the credit quality of U.S. corporate debt has declined. However, declining credit quality is not the only possible explanation. An alternative...

We investigate whether providers of high frequency media analytics affect the stock market. This question is difficult to answer as the response to news analytics usually cannot be distinguished from the reaction to the news itself. We exploit a unique experiment based on differences in news...

In this paper we show that institutional participation in the U.S. stock market in recent decades has played an ever increasing role in explaining cross-sectional variation in stock market illiquidity. We first document trends in the growth of institutional stock ownership using the 13F...

We document that institutional investors, and particularly hedge funds, increased their holdings of smaller stocks from 1980 to 2010 and decreased their holdings of larger stocks. As of 1990 institutions began to underweight, relative to market weights, those stocks that make up the largest 40...

This study explores the integration of the markets for NYSE-listed stocks. Although the NYSE bid or offer is part of the best displayed intermarket quote roughly ninety percent of the time, there is some evidence that non-NYSE markets do on occasion contribute to price discovery. Actual...

The purpose of this paper is to compare execution prices of NYSE-listed stocks on the NYSE and on non-NYSE markets. The first conclusion of this comparison is that most of the time the NYSE had the best quote. This result does not necessarily imply that execution prices on the NYSE are better...

The 1974 Amendments to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 set forth the goal of establishing a National Market System (NMS) in which all equity trades would be integrated into a common computerized trading system. The paper argues that such a system cannot serve the needs of all investors large...

The largest Samp;P 500 indexers replicate the index with tracking errors of just several basis points per year. Maintaining such small errors requires a nearly exact-replication strategy and precludes profiting from trading much before or after index changes. A strategy of trading at the open...

In 1975, Congress directed the SEC to develop a national market system in which all orders to buy or sell equities would interact. A national market system abhors fragmentation and assumes that one market will best serve the needs of all investors. Such an assumption does not capture the...

To minimize tracking error, Samp;P 500 index funds often follow inflexible, nearly exact replication strategies. This inflexibility causes stocks with relatively low floating supply to experience abnormally high negative or positive returns upon addition or deletion on average. Moreover, the...