IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v270y2018i1p375-385.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investment in high-frequency trading technology: A real options approach

Author

Listed:
  • Delaney, Laura

Abstract

This paper derives an optimal timing strategy for a regular slow trader considering investing in a high-frequency trading (HFT) technology. The market is fragmented, and slow traders compete with fast traders for trade execution. Given this optimal timing rule, I then characterise the equilibrium level of fast trading in the market as well as the welfare-maximising socially optimal level. I show that there is always a unique cost of investment such that the equilibrium level of fast trading and the socially optimal level coincide. Finally I discuss potential policy responses to addressing equilibrium and social optimality misalignment in HFT.

Suggested Citation

  • Delaney, Laura, 2018. "Investment in high-frequency trading technology: A real options approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 270(1), pages 375-385.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:270:y:2018:i:1:p:375-385
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.03.025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221718302534
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2018.03.025?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anna Battauz & Marzia De Donno & Alessandro Sbuelz, 2015. "Real Options and American Derivatives: The Double Continuation Region," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(5), pages 1094-1107, May.
    2. Biais, Bruno & Foucault, Thierry & Moinas, Sophie, 2015. "Equilibrium fast trading," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 292-313.
    3. Hendershott, Terrence & Riordan, Ryan, 2013. "Algorithmic Trading and the Market for Liquidity," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(4), pages 1001-1024, August.
    4. Frédéric Abergel & Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Thierry Foucault & Mathieu Rosenbaum & Charles-Albert Lehalle, 2012. "Market microstructure: confronting many viewpoints," Post-Print hal-00872398, HAL.
    5. Vincent Glode & Richard C. Green & Richard Lowery, 2012. "Financial Expertise as an Arms Race," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(5), pages 1723-1759, October.
    6. Glosten, Lawrence R. & Milgrom, Paul R., 1985. "Bid, ask and transaction prices in a specialist market with heterogeneously informed traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-100, March.
    7. Menkveld, Albert J., 2013. "High frequency trading and the new market makers," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 712-740.
    8. Eric Budish & Peter Cramton & John Shim, 2015. "Editor's Choice The High-Frequency Trading Arms Race: Frequent Batch Auctions as a Market Design Response," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(4), pages 1547-1621.
    9. O'Hara, Maureen & Ye, Mao, 2011. "Is market fragmentation harming market quality?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 459-474, June.
    10. Jonathan Brogaard & Terrence Hendershott & Ryan Riordan, 2014. "High-Frequency Trading and Price Discovery," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(8), pages 2267-2306.
    11. Banerjee, Shantanu & Güçbilmez, Ufuk & Pawlina, Grzegorz, 2014. "Optimal exercise of jointly held real options: A Nash bargaining approach with value diversion," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 239(2), pages 565-578.
    12. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    13. J. Muñoz & J. Contreras & J. Caamaño & P. Correia, 2011. "A decision-making tool for project investments based on real options: the case of wind power generation," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 186(1), pages 465-490, June.
    14. Terrence Hendershott & Charles M. Jones & Albert J. Menkveld, 2011. "Does Algorithmic Trading Improve Liquidity?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 1-33, February.
    15. Hasbrouck, Joel & Saar, Gideon, 2013. "Low-latency trading," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 646-679.
    16. Robert McDonald & Daniel Siegel, 1986. "The Value of Waiting to Invest," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(4), pages 707-727.
    17. Delaney, Laura & Thijssen, Jacco J.J., 2015. "The impact of voluntary disclosure on a firm’s investment policy," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(1), pages 232-242.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Somayeh Kokabisaghi & Eric J Pauwels & Andre B Dorsman, 2019. "To snipe or not to snipe, that is the question! Transitions in sniping behaviour among competing algorithmic traders," Papers 1912.04012, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2020.
    2. Yang, Haijun & Ge, Hengshun & Luo, Ying, 2020. "The optimal bid-ask price strategies of high-frequency trading and the effect on market liquidity," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    3. Chuan-Chuan Ko & Chien-Yu Liu & Zan-Yu Chen & Jing Zhou, 2019. "Sustainable Development Economic Strategy Model for Reducing Carbon Emission by Using Real Options Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-14, October.
    4. Ladley, Daniel, 2020. "The high frequency trade off between speed and sophistication," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    5. Jun Aoyagi, 2019. "Strategic Speed Choice by High-Frequency Traders under Speed Bumps," ISER Discussion Paper 1050, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    6. Daniel Ladley, 2019. "The Design and Regulation of High Frequency Traders," Discussion Papers in Economics 19/02, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    7. Li, Jiang-Cheng & Leng, Na & Zhong, Guang-Yan & Wei, Yu & Peng, Jia-Sheng, 2020. "Safe marginal time of crude oil price via escape problem of econophysics," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    8. Li-Chen Cheng & Yu-Hsiang Huang & Ming-Hua Hsieh & Mu-En Wu, 2021. "A Novel Trading Strategy Framework Based on Reinforcement Deep Learning for Financial Market Predictions," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(23), pages 1-16, November.
    9. Driouchi, Tarik & Trigeorgis, Lenos & So, Raymond H.Y., 2020. "Individual antecedents of real options appraisal: The role of national culture and ambiguity," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(3), pages 1018-1032.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Delaney, L., 2016. "Equilibrium Investment in High Frequency Trading Technology: A Real Options Approach," Working Papers 15/14, Department of Economics, City University London.
    2. Gerig, Austin & Michayluk, David, 2017. "Automated liquidity provision," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-13.
    3. Nicholas Hirschey, 2021. "Do High-Frequency Traders Anticipate Buying and Selling Pressure?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3321-3345, June.
    4. Aggarwal, Nidhi & Panchapagesan, Venkatesh & Thomas, Susan, 2023. "When is the order-to-trade ratio fee effective?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    5. Breckenfelder, Johannes, 2024. "Competition among high-frequency traders and market quality," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    6. Zhou, Hao & Kalev, Petko S., 2019. "Algorithmic and high frequency trading in Asia-Pacific, now and the future," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 186-207.
    7. Breedon, Francis & Chen, Louisa & Ranaldo, Angelo & Vause, Nicholas, 2023. "Judgment day: Algorithmic trading around the Swiss franc cap removal," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    8. Oliver Linton & Soheil Mahmoodzadeh, 2018. "Implications of High-Frequency Trading for Security Markets," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 10(1), pages 237-259, August.
    9. Ben Ammar, Imen & Hellara, Slaheddine & Ghadhab, Imen, 2020. "High-frequency trading and stock liquidity: An intraday analysis," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    10. Aliyev, Nihad & Huseynov, Fariz & Rzayev, Khaladdin, 2022. "Algorithmic trading and investment-to-price sensitivity," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118844, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Ekinci, Cumhur & Ersan, Oğuz, 2022. "High-frequency trading and market quality: The case of a “slightly exposed” market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    12. Rzayev, Khaladdin & Ibikunle, Gbenga & Steffen, Tom, 2023. "The market quality implications of speed in cross-platform trading: Evidence from Frankfurt-London microwave," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    13. Chordia, Tarun & Miao, Bin, 2020. "Market efficiency in real time: Evidence from low latency activity around earnings announcements," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    14. Austin Gerig & David Michayluk, 2010. "Automated Liquidity Provision and the Demise of Traditional Market Making," Papers 1007.2352, arXiv.org.
    15. Hoffmann, Peter, 2014. "A dynamic limit order market with fast and slow traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 156-169.
    16. Delaney, L., 2015. "An Examination of the Optimal Timing Strategy for a Slow Trader Investing in a High Frequency Trading Technology," Working Papers 15/04, Department of Economics, City University London.
    17. Bellia, Mario & Pelizzon, Loriana & Subrahmanyam, Marti & Uno, Jun & Yuferova, Darya, 2017. "Coming early to the party," SAFE Working Paper Series 182, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
      • Mario Bellia & Loriana Pelizzon & Marti G. Subrahmanyam & Jun Uno & Darya Yuferova, 2020. "Coming early to the party," Working Papers 2020:11, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    18. Angerer, Martin & Neugebauer, Tibor & Shachat, Jason, 2023. "Arbitrage bots in experimental asset markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 262-278.
    19. Carrion, Allen, 2013. "Very fast money: High-frequency trading on the NASDAQ," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 680-711.
    20. Adrian, Tobias & Capponi, Agostino & Fleming, Michael & Vogt, Erik & Zhang, Hongzhong, 2020. "Intraday market making with overnight inventory costs," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:270:y:2018:i:1:p:375-385. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.