IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dpr/wpaper/1050.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Strategic Speed Choice by High-Frequency Traders under Speed Bumps

Author

Listed:
  • Jun Aoyagi

Abstract

We study how high-frequency traders (HFTs) strategically decide their speed level in a market with a random speed bump. If HFTs recognize the market impact of their speed decision, they perceive a wider bid-ask spread as an endogenous upward-sloping cost of being faster. We find that the speed elasticity of the bid-ask spread (slope of the endogenous cost function) negatively depends on the expected length of a speed bump since a longer delay makes market makers insensitive to HFTs' speed increment. Hence, speed bumps promote the investment of HFTs in high-speed technology by reducing the marginal cost of getting faster, undermining their intended purpose of protecting market makers. Depending on the expected length of a bump, an arms race among HFTs exhibits both complementarity and substitution. These findings explain the ambiguous empirical results regarding speed bumps and adverse selection for market makers.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1050
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.osaka-u.ac.jp/library/dp/2019/DP1050.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thierry Foucault & Ailsa Röell & Patrik Sandås, 2003. "Market Making with Costly Monitoring: An Analysis of the SOES Controversy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 345-384.
    2. Thierry Foucault & Roman Kozhan & Wing Wah Tham, 2017. "Toxic Arbitrage," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(4), pages 1053-1094.
    3. Biais, Bruno & Foucault, Thierry & Moinas, Sophie, 2015. "Equilibrium fast trading," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 292-313.
    4. Yacine Aït-Sahalia & Mehmet Saglam, 2013. "High Frequency Traders: Taking Advantage of Speed," NBER Working Papers 19531, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. J. Dugast & T. Foucault, 2014. "False News, Informational Efficiency, and Price Reversals," Working papers 513, Banque de France.
    6. Brolley, Michael & Cimon, David A., 2020. "Order-Flow Segmentation, Liquidity, and Price Discovery: The Role of Latency Delays," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(8), pages 2555-2587, December.
    7. Conrad, Jennifer & Wahal, Sunil & Xiang, Jin, 2015. "High-frequency quoting, trading, and the efficiency of prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 271-291.
    8. Albert J. Menkveld, 2016. "The Economics of High-Frequency Trading: Taking Stock," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 1-24, October.
    9. Songzi Du & Haoxiang Zhu, 2017. "What is the Optimal Trading Frequency in Financial Markets?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(4), pages 1606-1651.
    10. Jonathan Brogaard & Björn Hagströmer & Lars Nordén & Ryan Riordan, 2015. "Trading Fast and Slow: Colocation and Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(12), pages 3407-3443.
    11. 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.
    12. Terrence Hendershott & Haim Mendelson, 2000. "Crossing Networks and Dealer Markets: Competition and Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 2071-2115, October.
    13. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    14. Marlene Haas & Marius Andrei Zoican, 2016. "Beyond the Frequency Wall: Speed and Liquidity on Batch Auction Markets," Post-Print hal-01484805, HAL.
    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. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Liu, Wai-Man, 2009. "Monitoring and limit order submission risks," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 107-141, February.
    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. Kaihua Qin & Liyi Zhou & Yaroslav Afonin & Ludovico Lazzaretti & Arthur Gervais, 2021. "CeFi vs. DeFi -- Comparing Centralized to Decentralized Finance," Papers 2106.08157, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2021.
    2. Vasilios Mavroudis & Hayden Melton, 2019. "Libra: Fair Order-Matching for Electronic Financial Exchanges," Papers 1910.00321, arXiv.org.

    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. 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).
    2. Xu, Ke, 2023. "High frequency market making during stressed periods," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 379-397.
    3. Suchismita Mishra & Le Zhao, 2021. "Order Routing Decisions for a Fragmented Market: A Review," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-32, November.
    4. 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.
    5. Eric M. Aldrich & Daniel Friedman, 2023. "Order Protection Through Delayed Messaging," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(2), pages 774-790, February.
    6. Anderson, Lisa & Andrews, Emad & Devani, Baiju & Mueller, Michael & Walton, Adrian, 2022. "Speed segmentation on exchanges: Competition for slow flow," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    7. Roşu, Ioanid, 2019. "Fast and slow informed trading," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 1-30.
    8. Haas, Marlene & Khapko, Mariana & Zoican, Marius, 2021. "Speed and learning in high-frequency auctions," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    9. Markus Baldauf & Joshua Mollner, 2020. "High‐Frequency Trading and Market Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(3), pages 1495-1526, June.
    10. Mark Marner-Hausen, 2022. "Developing a Framework for Real-Time Trading in a Laboratory Financial Market," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 172, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    11. Li, Sida & Wang, Xin & Ye, Mao, 2021. "Who provides liquidity, and when?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 968-980.
    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. Breckenfelder, Johannes, 2024. "Competition among high-frequency traders and market quality," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    14. Tomy Lee, 2019. "Latency in Fragmented Markets," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 33, pages 128-153, July.
    15. 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).
    16. Sánchez Serrano Antonio, 2020. "High-Frequency Trading and Systemic Risk: A Structured Review of Findings and Policies," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 71(3), pages 169-195, December.
    17. Daniel Fricke & Austin Gerig, 2018. "Too fast or too slow? Determining the optimal speed of financial markets," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(4), pages 519-532, April.
    18. Brolley, Michael & Cimon, David A., 2020. "Order-Flow Segmentation, Liquidity, and Price Discovery: The Role of Latency Delays," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(8), pages 2555-2587, December.
    19. Gerig, Austin & Michayluk, David, 2017. "Automated liquidity provision," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-13.
    20. Thierry Foucault & Roman Kozhan & Wing Wah Tham, 2017. "Toxic Arbitrage," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(4), pages 1053-1094.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:dpr:wpaper:1050. 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: Librarian (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isosujp.html .

    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.