We study the effects that the ban on short sales of shares in financial firms introduced in late 2008 and removed early 2009 had on the microstructure and the quality of UK equity markets. We show that the ban did nothing to affect order flows: financial stocks were being more aggressively sold...

We explore the information content of counterparty identities and how their disclosure can be exploited by other investors in a post-trade transparent market. Using data from the Helsinki Stock Exchange, we form dynamic mean-variance strategies with daily rebalancing which condition on the net...

In textbook models of exchange rate determination, the news contained in public information announcements is directly impounded into prices with there being no role for trading in this process of information assimilation. This paper directly tests this theoretical result using transaction level...

We study the relation between limit order flow, market order flow and returns. We develop a model where market-makers face inventory risk and adverse selection and show how prices depend on market and limit order flows. In the model, market-makers receive information through trade with customers...

We investigate the source of information advantage in inter-dealer FX trading using data on trades and counterparty identities. In liquid dollar exchange rates, information is concentrated among dealers that trade most frequently and specialize their activity in a particular rate. In...

Higher moments of long-horizon returns are important for asset pricing but are hard to measure accurately using standard techniques. We provide theory showing that short-horizon (e.g. daily) returns can be used to construct precise estimates of long-horizon (e.g. annual) moments without making...

We study the relation between limit order flow, market order flow and returns. We develop a model where market-makers face inventory risk and adverse selection and show how prices depend on market and limit order flows. In the model, market-makers receive information through trade with customers...

This paper studies the intraday relationship between ultra-fast machine-driven activity (UFA) and market quality in automated equity markets. We find that higher UFA is associated with lower intraday market quality (greater quoted and effective spreads and lower depth). This effect is...

We use transactional data from the USD and EUR segments of the plain vanilla interest rate swap market to assess the impact of the Dodd-Frank mandate that US persons must trade certain swap contracts on Swap Execution Facilities (SEFs). We find that, as a result of SEF trading, activity...

We measure the extent to which consolidated liquidity in modern fragmented equity markets overstates true liquidity due to a phenomenon that we call Ghost Liquidity (GL). GL exists when traders place duplicate limit orders on competing venues, intending for only one of the orders to execute, and...