Carole Gresse

Centralised order books versus hybrid order books: A paired comparison of trading costs on NSC (Euronext Paris) and SETS (London Stock Exchange)

This article compares the cost of trading large capitalisation equities on the hybrid order-driven segment of the London Stock Exchange and the centralised electronic order book of Euronext. Using samples of stocks matched according to economic sector, free float capitalisation, and trading volume, our study shows that transaction costs are lower on the centralised order book than on the hybrid order book. The presence of dealers outside the electronic order book favours the frequency of large trades, but is associated with higher execution costs for all other trades and higher adverse selection and inventory costs inside the order book.

The Diversion of Order Flow on French Stocks from CAC to SEAQ International: a Field Study

The competition between SEAQ International and Continental European equity markets to attract transactions in the most actively traded European stocks has intensified since the late 1980s. Because their transactions are organised in a different manner, and because reporting standards are not the same, comparisons of official transaction volumes from SEAQ International and the French CAC market system are misleading. The objective of this paper is to scrutinise the order flow for French stocks and the reporting procedures on both market systems, so as to ascertain the effective transactions on each market and estimate actual market shares. Based on both the observation of official statistics and a field study of order flows conducted among five large and active brokerage houses with a book on both markets, SEAQIs market share in French stocks as reported in previous studies using only official volume statistics seems largely overstated.

Effects of lit and dark market fragmentation on liquidity

Based on data from eight stock exchanges and a trade reporting facility for London Stock Exchange- and Euronext-listed equities, I investigate how lit and dark market fragmentation affects liquidity. Neither dark trading nor fragmentation between lit order books is found to harm liquidity. Lit fragmentation improves spreads and depth across markets and locally on the primary exchange, or at worst does not affect them. Benefits are greater for large stocks and stocks with less electronic trading. Lit fragmentation however harms the depth of small stocks. The adverse effects on the depth of large stocks result from algorithmic trading, not fragmentation.

Direct and Indirect Effects of Index ETFs on Spot-Futures Pricing and Liquidity: Evidence from the CAC 40 Index

This paper investigates how the introduction of an index security directly or indirectly impacts the underlying-index spot-futures pricing. Using intraday data for financial instruments related to the CAC 40 index, we do not find that the spot-futures price efficiency improvement observed after ETF introduction is explained either by the direct effect of ETF shares being used in arbitrage trades or by the indirect effect of ETF trading improving the liquidity of index stocks in the short run. Some of our findings suggest that the efficiency improvement could rather result from a structural change in the way index traders distribute across index markets, with the ETF market absorbing the liquidity demand from some hedgers or passive index traders.

Direct and Indirect Effects of Index ETFs on Spot-Futures Mispricing and Illiquidity

This paper investigates how the introduction of an index security directly or indirectly impacts the underlying-index spot-futures pricing. Using intraday data for financial instruments related to the CAC 40 index, we do not find that the spot-futures price efficiency improvement observed after ETF introduction is explained either by the direct effect of ETF shares being used in arbitrage trades or by the indirect effect of ETF trading improving the liquidity of index stocks in the short run. Some of our findings suggest that the efficiency improvement could rather result from a structural change in the way index traders distribute across index markets, with the ETF market absorbing the liquidity demand from some hedgers or passive index traders.

Effects of Lit and Dark Market Fragmentation on Liquidity

Based on trade and quote data from eight exchanges and a trade reporting facility for a sample of LSE- and Euronext-listed equities, this article compares the consolidated liquidity of competing markets, also called global liquidity, and the local liquidity of the primary exchang, before and after MiFID. It then investigates how liquidity measured by spreads and best-quote depth relate to market fragmentation and internalization after MiFID. Market fragmentation is found to improve global and local liquidity, with spreads decreasing proportionally to market competition. The decline in depth observed in the early post-MiFID period is driven by other factors than market fragmentation. The only harmful effect is that fragmentation may reduce market depth for small stocks. Further, internalization is not found to be detrimental for liquidity.

Market Fragmentation and Market Quality: The European Experience

This book chapter provides an overview of market fragmentation in Europe since the first implementation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) on 1 November 2007. It makes a brief literature review on the consequences of lit and dark fragmentation for liquidity. It presents an empirical analysis of the effect of market fragmentation on price quality measured by price inefficiency coefficients (PICs) based on variance ratios for a sample of European large and medium capitalizations stocks. Contrary to the results by O’Hara and Ye (Journal of Financial Economics 100(3):459–474, 2011) for U.S. stocks, I do not find a clearly significant impact of market fragmentation on price quality. The only PICs to be affected are those based on 1-s to 5-s return variance ratios. According to 1-s to 5-s PICs: (1) the price quality of large UK equities improved with market fragmentation after MiFID; (2) the price quality of large Euronext equities improved with fragmentation in the primary market but deteriorated when measured across markets; and (3) the price quality of Euronext mid-caps was adversely affected. Notwithstanding these findings, price quality is not affected when measured at any other horizon.

Pension Regulation and Investment Performance: Rule-Based vs. Risk-Based

We investigate the relationship between rule-based versus risk-based regulatory choices in different countries and the real investment performance of their pension funds. Pension systems in countries with more mature risk-based regulatory regimes tend to demonstrate superior investment performance. The benefit of implementing risk-based regulation is more pronounced in countries with low regulatory quality. The core of rule-based regulations, i.e., quantitative investment limits, has no significant impact on the Sharpe ratio of pension investment returns.