Applying a technical analysis trading system based on the moving average crossover rule for companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange does not produce significant profits, but leads to consistent excess returns and lower risk versus the benchmark buy and hold strategy for a potential...

I develop a model in which traders receive a stream of private signals, and differ in their information processing speed. In equilibrium, the fast traders (FTs) quickly reveal a large fraction of their information. If a FT is averse to holding inventory, his optimal strategy changes considerably...

In this thesis, I explore various aspects of market liquidity and analyze its effect on asset prices. First, in a model of a limit order market I explain how to define liquidity and derive a price impact function. Second, I show how agents who have price impact generate a liquidity component in...

Speed matters: we show that an investor's optimal trading strategy is significantly different when he observes news faster than others versus when he does not, holding the precision of his signals constant. When the investor has fast access to news, his trades are much more sensitive to news,...

This paper presents a model of an order-driven market where fully strategic, symmetrically informed liquidity traders dynamically choose between limit and market orders, trading off execution price and waiting costs. In equilibrium, the bid and ask prices depend only on the numbers of buy and...

We compare the optimal trading strategy of an informed speculator when he can trade ahead of incoming news (is "fast"), versus when he cannot (is "slow"). We find that speed matters: the fast speculator's trades account for a larger fraction of trading volume, and are more correlated with...

We study both theoretically and empirically option prices on firms undergoing a cash merger offer. To estimate the merger's success probability, we use a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method using a state space representation of our model. Our estimated probability measure has significant...

Does a larger fraction of informed trading generate more illiquidity, as measured by the bid--ask spread? We answer this question in the negative in the context of a dynamic dealer market where the fundamental value follows a random walk, provided we consider the long run (stationary)...

We study the quoting activity of market makers in relation to trading, liquidity, and expected returns. Empirically, we find larger quote-to-trade (QT) ratios in small, illiquid or neglected firms, yet large QT ratios are associated with low expected returns. The last result is driven by quotes,...