We analyze the trading activity in an Internet chat room with approximately 1,300 participants. Traders make posts in real time about their activities. We find these traders are more skilled than retail investors analyzed in other studies. 55% make profits after transaction costs, and they earn...

We provide new compelling evidence that hedge funds possess investment skill. Using the longest-in-literature unbiased sample of hedge funds, we show that large holdings of past winners earn 7% annual benchmark-adjusted return. This remarkable performance is consistent with the notion that large...

We jointly model investors' allocation of order flow among over-the-counter dealers and dealers' acquisition of expertise that increases their ability to take advantage of investors across transactions. Investors choose dealers based on their level of expertise and the liquidity they are...

We measure speculation in the CDS market and investigate its determinants. The CDS volume on a firm that exceeds its outstanding debt (= naked CDS) indicates speculation since hedging can be ruled out. Using weekly CDS trading volume data for actively traded U.S. firms during 2008-2012, we...

In 1936, regulators unexpectedly banned banks from purchasing “speculative” bonds. This announcement caused a sudden persistent rise in speculative bond yields, even comparing securities within the same firm. In contrast to prior evidence during credit booms, I document a substantial decline...

We use the introduction and subsequent removal of the flash order functionality from NASDAQ as a natural experiment to investigate the impact of voluntary disclosure of trading intent on market quality. We find that flash orders significantly improve liquidity in NASDAQ. Furthermore, overall...

The use of computers to execute trades, often with very low latency, has increased over time, resulting in a variety of computer algorithms executing electronically targeted trading strategies at high speed. We describe the evolution of increasingly fast automated trading over the past decade...