IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/huj/dispap/dp356.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Brokerage Commissions and Institutional Trading Patterns

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Goldstein
  • Paul Irvine
  • Eugene Kandel
  • Zvi Wiener

Abstract

Why do brokers charge per-share commissions to institutional traders? What determines the commission charge? We examine commissions and order flow for a sample of institutional orders and find that most per-share commissions are concentrated at only a few price points, primarily 5 and 6 cents per share. Further, we find that the prior-period commission, rather than execution costs, is the strongest determinant of next period's commission. These results are inconsistent with negotiation of commissions on an order-by-order basis or with the impression of a continuous transaction cost that is deduced from the distribution of percentage commissions, suggesting that commissions are not a marginal cost of execution. We also find that institutional clients concentrate their order flow with a small set of brokers, and that small institutions concentrate more than large institutions. Collectively, our results suggest that brokers and their institutional clients enter into long-term agreements where the per-share commission is constant, and the order flow routed to a particular broker is used to maintain the required payment for an institution's desired level of service. Commissions, therefore, constitute a convenient way of charging a predetermined fixed fee for broker services.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Goldstein & Paul Irvine & Eugene Kandel & Zvi Wiener, 2004. "Brokerage Commissions and Institutional Trading Patterns," Discussion Paper Series dp356, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    • Handle: RePEc:huj:dispap:dp356
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ratio.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/publications/dp356.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elton, Edwin J & Gruber, Martin J & Grossman, Seth, 1986. "Discrete Expectational Data and Portfolio Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(3), pages 699-713, July.
    2. Womack, Kent L, 1996. "Do Brokerage Analysts' Recommendations Have Investment Value?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(1), pages 137-167, March.
    3. Vayanos, Dimitri, 1998. "Transaction Costs and Asset Prices: A Dynamic Equilibrium Model," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(1), pages 1-58.
    4. 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.
    5. George M. Constantinides, 2005. "Capital Market Equilibrium with Transaction Costs," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 7, pages 207-227, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Aitken, Michael J & Garvey, Gerald T & Swan, Peter L, 1995. "How Brokers Facilitate Trade for Long-Term Clients in Competitive Securities Markets," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(1), pages 1-33, January.
    7. Klein, Benjamin & Leffler, Keith B, 1981. "The Role of Market Forces in Assuring Contractual Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 615-641, August.
    8. Brennan, Michael J & Chordia, Tarun, 1993. "Brokerage Commission Schedules," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1379-1402, September.
    9. Easley, David & O'Hara, Maureen, 1987. "Price, trade size, and information in securities markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 69-90, September.
    10. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    11. Jennifer S. Conrad & Kevin M. Johnson & Sunil Wahal, 2001. "Institutional Trading and Soft Dollars," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 397-416, February.
    12. Kavajecz, Kenneth A. & Keim, Donald B., 2005. "Packaging Liquidity: Blind Auctions and Transaction Efficiencies," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(3), pages 465-492, September.
    13. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    14. Chan, Louis K. C. & Lakonishok, Josef, 1993. "Institutional trades and intraday stock price behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 173-199, April.
    15. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:1:p:97-112 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Jenkinson, Tim & Ljungqvist, Alexander, 2001. "Going Public: The Theory and Evidence on How Companies Raise Equity Finance," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780198295990.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dimitri Vayanos & Jiang Wang, 2012. "Market Liquidity -- Theory and Empirical Evidence," NBER Working Papers 18251, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2013. "Market Liquidity—Theory and Empirical Evidence ," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1289-1361, Elsevier.
    3. Andrew W. Lo & Harry Mamaysky & Jiang Wang, 2004. "Asset Prices and Trading Volume under Fixed Transactions Costs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(5), pages 1054-1090, October.
    4. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2009. "Liquidity and asset prices: a united framework," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 29303, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Geert Bekaert & Campbell R. Harvey & Christian Lundblad, 2007. "Liquidity and Expected Returns: Lessons from Emerging Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(6), pages 1783-1831, November.
    6. Jagjeev Dosanjh, 2017. "Exchange Initiatives and Market Efficiency: Evidence from the Australian Securities Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2017, January-A.
    7. repec:uts:finphd:34 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Lee, Yi-Tsung & Lin, Ji-Chai & Liu, Yu-Jane, 1999. "Trading patterns of big versus small players in an emerging market: An empirical analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 701-725, May.
    9. Jiang Wang, 2002. "Trading Volume and Asset Prices," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 3(2), pages 299-359, November.
    10. Matthew Pritsker, 2005. "Large investors: implications for equilibrium asset, returns, shock absorption, and liquidity," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-36, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. Sugato Chakravarty & Asani Sarkar, 1999. "Liquidity in U.S. fixed income markets: a comparison of the bid-ask spread in corporate, government and municipal bond markets," Staff Reports 73, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    12. Aktas, Osman Ulas & Kryzanowski, Lawrence, 2014. "Market impacts of trades for stocks listed on the Borsa Istanbul," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 152-175.
    13. Sagade, Satchit & Scharnowski, Stefan & Westheide, Christian, 2022. "Broker colocation and the execution costs of customer and proprietary orders," SAFE Working Paper Series 366, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    14. Amihud, Yakov, 2002. "Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time-series effects," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 31-56, January.
    15. Matthias Bank & Martin Larch & Georg Peter, 2011. "Google search volume and its influence on liquidity and returns of German stocks," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 25(3), pages 239-264, September.
    16. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Tan, 2007. "Search and endogenous concentration of liquidity in asset markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 66-104, September.
    17. Yildiz, Serhat & Van Ness, Bonnie & Van Ness, Robert, 2020. "VPIN, liquidity, and return volatility in the U.S. equity markets," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    18. Adrian Buss & Bernard Dumas, 2019. "The Dynamic Properties of Financial‐Market Equilibrium with Trading Fees," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 795-844, April.
    19. Baker, Malcolm & Stein, Jeremy C., 2004. "Market liquidity as a sentiment indicator," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 271-299, June.
    20. Luca Erzegovesi, 2002. "VaR and Liquidity Risk.Impact on Market Behaviour and Measurement Issues," Alea Tech Reports 014, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 14 Jun 2008.
    21. Ricardo Lagos & Guillaume Rocheteau, 2009. "Liquidity in Asset Markets With Search Frictions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 403-426, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage

    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:huj:dispap:dp356. 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: Michael Simkin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crihuil.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.