IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/cfrwps/0407.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Strategic trading behavior and price distortion in a manipulated market: Anatomy of a squeeze

Author

Listed:
  • Merrick, John J.
  • Naik, Narayan Y.
  • Yadav, Pradeep K.

Abstract

This paper investigates the trading behavior of major market participants during an attempted delivery squeeze in a bond futures contract traded in London. Using the cash and futures trades of dealers and customers, we analyze their strategic trading behavior, price distortion and learning in a market manipulation setting. We argue that the marked differences in the penalties for settlement failures in the cash and futures markets create conditions that favor squeezes. We recommend that regulators require special flagging of forward term repurchase agreements on the key deliverables that span futures contract maturity date, and exchanges remove the conditions that create squeeze incentives in the first place, e.g. mark-to-market their contract specifications much more frequently, or consider redefining the contract to be cash-settled on a basket of traded bonds.

Suggested Citation

  • Merrick, John J. & Naik, Narayan Y. & Yadav, Pradeep K., 2004. "Strategic trading behavior and price distortion in a manipulated market: Anatomy of a squeeze," CFR Working Papers 04-07, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:cfrwps:0407
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/57748/1/699890209.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen J. Brown & William N. Goetzmann & James M. Park, 1998. "Hedge Funds and the Asian Currency Crisis of 1997," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 98-014, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    2. Dunn, Kenneth B. & Spatt, Chester S., 1984. "A strategic analysis of sinking fund bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 399-423, September.
    3. Nicola Anderson & John Sleath, 2001. "New estimates of the UK real and nominal yield curves," Bank of England working papers 126, Bank of England.
    4. Vikas Agarwal, 2004. "Risks and Portfolio Decisions Involving Hedge Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 63-98.
    5. Barnhill, Theodore M., 1990. "Quality Option Profits, Switching Option Profits, and Variation Margin Costs: An Evaluation of Their Size and Impact on Treasury Bond Futures Prices," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 65-86, March.
    6. Joshua D. Coval & Tyler Shumway, 2001. "Is Sound Just Noise?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1887-1910, October.
    7. Duffie, Darrell, 1996. "Special Repo Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(2), pages 493-526, June.
    8. Cooper, David J. & Donaldson, R. Glen, 1998. "A Strategic Analysis of Corners and Squeezes," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(1), pages 117-137, March.
    9. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:1:p:101-13 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Epps, Thomas W, 1975. "Security Price Changes and Transaction Volumes: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(4), pages 586-597, September.
    11. Chatterjea, Arkadev & Jarrow, Robert A., 1998. "Market Manipulation, Price Bubbles, and a Model of the U.S. Treasury Securities Auction Market," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(2), pages 255-289, June.
    12. Copeland, Thomas E, 1976. "A Model of Asset Trading under the Assumption of Sequential Information Arrival," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1149-1168, September.
    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. Merrick, John Jr & Naik, Narayan Y. & Yadav, Pradeep K., 2005. "Strategic trading behavior and price distortion in a manipulated market: anatomy of a squeeze," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 171-218, July.
    2. Rydqvist, Kristian & Wu, Mark, 2014. "Pre-Auction Inventory and Bidding Behavior?An Analysis of Canadian Treasury Auctions," CEPR Discussion Papers 10112, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Rydqvist, Kristian & Wu, Mark, 2016. "Pre-auction inventory and bidding behavior: Evidence from Canadian Treasury auctions," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 78-102.
    4. Avouyi-Dovi, S. & Jondeau, E. & Lai Tong, C., 1997. "Effets “volume”, volatilité et transmissions internationales sur les marchés boursiers dans le G5," Working papers 42, Banque de France.
    5. Arjen Siegmann & Denitsa Stefanova, 2011. "Market Liquidity and Exposure of Hedge Funds," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-150/2/DSF27, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Song, Zhaogang & Zhu, Haoxiang, 2018. "Quantitative easing auctions of Treasury bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 103-124.
    7. Sarika Mahajan & Balwinder Singh, 2008. "An Empirical Analysis of Stock Price-Volume Relationship in Indian Stock Market," Vision, , vol. 12(3), pages 1-13, July.
    8. Taisei Kaizoji, 2013. "Modelling of Stock Returns and Trading Volume," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 2(2), pages 147-155, July.
    9. Chuang, Wen-I & Liu, Hsiang-Hsi & Susmel, Rauli, 2012. "The bivariate GARCH approach to investigating the relation between stock returns, trading volume, and return volatility," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-15.
    10. Michael Smirlock & Laura Starks, 1985. "A Further Examination Of Stock Price Changes And Transaction Volume," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 8(3), pages 217-226, September.
    11. Doojin RYU & Hyein SHIM, 2017. "Intraday Dynamics of Asset Returns, Trading Activities, and Implied Volatilities: A Trivariate GARCH Framework," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(2), pages 45-61, June.
    12. Sameen Fatima & Christopher Gan & Baiding Hu, 2022. "Volatility Spillovers between Stock Market and Hedge Funds: Evidence from Asia Pacific Region," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-39, September.
    13. Assogbavi, T. & Khoury, N. & Yourougou, P., 1995. "Short interest and the asymmetry of the price-volume relationship in the Canadian stock market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1341-1358, November.
    14. Ling-Yun He & Sheng Yang & Wen-Si Xie & Zhi-Hong Han, 2014. "Contemporaneous and Asymmetric Properties in the Price-Volume Relationships in China's Agricultural Futures Markets," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(S1), pages 148-166.
    15. Paul D. McNelis & Carrie K.C. Chan, 2004. "Deflationary Dynamics in Hong Kong: Evidence from Linear and Neural Network Regime Switching Models," Working Papers 212004, Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.
    16. Ashok Chanabasangouda Patil & Shailesh Rastogi, 2019. "Time-Varying Price–Volume Relationship and Adaptive Market Efficiency: A Survey of the Empirical Literature," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-18, June.
    17. Nyborg, Kjell G. & Strebulaev, Ilya A., 2001. "Collateral and short squeezing of liquidity in fixed rate tenders," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 769-792, November.
    18. Ming-Hsien Chen & Vivian Tai, 2014. "The price discovery of day trading activities in futures market," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 217-239, July.
    19. Henryk Gurgul & Roland Mestel & Tomasz Wojtowicz, 2007. "Distribution of volume on the American stock market," Managerial Economics, AGH University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 1, pages 143-163.
    20. Aïd, René & Callegaro, Giorgia & Campi, Luciano, 2020. "No-arbitrage commodity option pricing with market manipulation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103815, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Price manipulation; Futures markets; Squeeze;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage

    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:zbw:cfrwps:0407. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfkoede.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.