THE HIGH-FREQUENCY TRADING ARMS RACE: FREQUENT BATCH AUCTIONS AS A MARKET DESIGN RESPONSE.
The high-frequency trading arms race is a symptom of flawed market design. Instead of the continuous limit order book market design that is currently predominant, we argue that financial exchanges should use frequent batch auctions: uniform price double auctions conducted, for example, every tenth o...
| Publicado en: | Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 130; no. 4; pp. 1547 - 1622 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Nov2015
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=110538976&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 110538976 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00335533 QJE jtl: Quarterly Journal of Economics issn: 00335533 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Nov2015 vid: 130 iid: 4 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 110538976 10.1093/qje/qjv027 ppf: 1547 ppct: 75 formats: tig: atl: THE HIGH-FREQUENCY TRADING ARMS RACE: FREQUENT BATCH AUCTIONS AS A MARKET DESIGN RESPONSE. aug: au: BUDISH, ERIC CRAMTON, PETER SHIM, JOHN affil: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND su: Industrial organization (Economic theory) Markets Auctions Market design & structure (Economics) Finance sug: subj: Industrial organization (Economic theory) Markets Auctions Market design & structure (Economics) Finance ab: The high-frequency trading arms race is a symptom of flawed market design. Instead of the continuous limit order book market design that is currently predominant, we argue that financial exchanges should use frequent batch auctions: uniform price double auctions conducted, for example, every tenth of a second. That is, time should be treated as discrete instead of continuous, and orders should be processed in a batch auction instead of serially. Our argument has three parts. First, we use millisecond-level direct-feed data from exchanges to document a series of stylized facts about how the continuous market works at high-frequency time horizons: (i) correlations completely break down; which (ii) leads to obvious mechanical arbitrage opportunities; and (iii) competition has not affected the size or frequency of the arbitrage opportunities, it has only raised the bar for how fast one has to be to capture them. Second, we introduce a simple theory model which is motivated by and helps explain the empirical facts. The key insight is that obvious mechanical arbitrage opportunities, like those observed in the data, are built into the market design--continuous-time serial processing implies that even symmetrically observed public information creates arbitrage rents. These rents harm liquidity provision and induce a never-ending socially wasteful arms race for speed. Last, we show that frequent batch auctions directly address the flaws of the continuous limit order book. Discrete time reduces the value of tiny speed advantages, and the auction transforms competition on speed into competition on price. Consequently, frequent batch auctions eliminate the mechanical arbitrage rents, enhance liquidity for investors, and stop the high-frequency trading arms race. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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