Sean Foley

Should We Be Afraid of the Dark? Dark Trading and Market Quality

We exploit a unique natural experiment—recent restrictions of dark trading in Canada—and proprietary trade-level data to analyze the effects of dark trading. Disaggregating two types of dark trading, we find that dark limit order markets are beneficial to market quality, reducing quoted, effective and realized spreads and increasing informational efficiency. In contrast, dark midpoint crossing systems do not benefit market quality. Our results support recent theory that dark limit order markets encourage aggressive competition in liquidity provision. We discuss implications for the regulation of dark trading and tick sizes. JEL classification: G14

Dark Trading on Public Exchanges

Over the last decade, market participants increasingly use trading tools that allow them to hide their trading intentions. We study how “dark trading” in the form of fully hidden, or dark, orders posted on a visible exchange affects the quality of the visible market. Dark orders were introduced on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2011 in two stages, allowing us to employ a difference-in-differences approach to isolate the causal effect of the availability of dark trading. Using order-level data, we observe that the introduction of dark orders led to a widening of quoted spreads and an increase in trading costs, leaving depth, volume, and volatility unaffected. At the intra-day level, dark trading leads to decreased quoted spreads, increased depth, increased volume and to reduced trading costs and volatility. We interpret our findings as two sides of the same coin: the possible presence of dark liquidity causes market participants to post visible quotes more carefully. Upon detecting dark executions, however, traders infer that dark liquidity is diminished and thus post quotes more aggressively.

Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity Is Financed Through Cryptocurrencies?

Cryptocurrencies are among the largest unregulated markets in the world. We find that approximately one-quarter of bitcoin users are involved in illegal activity. We estimate that around

Price Discovery in Stock and Options Markets

76 billion of illegal activity per year involves bitcoin (46% of bitcoin transactions), which is close to the scale of the US and European markets for illegal drugs. The illegal share of bitcoin activity declines with mainstream interest in bitcoin and with the emergence of more opaque cryptocurrencies. The techniques developed in this paper have applications in cryptocurrency surveillance. Our findings suggest that cryptocurrencies are transforming the black markets by enabling “black e-commerce.�?

How Beneficial Has Competition Been for the Australian Equity Marketplace

Using new empirical measures of information leadership, we find that the role of options in price discovery is up to five times larger than previously thought. Approximately one-quarter of new information is reflected in options prices before being transmitted to stock prices, with options playing a more important role in price discovery around information events. Using unique data on prosecuted insider trading, we find that insider traders often choose to trade in options, attracted by their leverage, and when they do the options share of price discovery is higher. Our results help interpret conflicting findings in the existing literature.

Fundamental Based Market Strategies

We analyse the impact of two major financial frictions on market quality in a high-frequency environment: market fragmentation and exchange fees. We find fragmentation significantly improves market quality, with benefits increasing with greater fragmentation. Fragmentation significantly reduces spreads for stocks that are least constrained by the minimum tick size, whilst constrained stocks experience significant increases in depth. These changes are driven by the entry of fee-sensitive electronic liquidity providers (ELPs). Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find reductions in exchange trading fees are passed through to market participants. The main improvement in market quality, however, is driven by the entry of new ELPs who benefit from cross-venue market making strategies.

The Value of a Millisecond: Harnessing Information in Fast, Fragmented Markets

A pronounced body of literature has raised the possibility that portfolio outperformance based on a simple accounting-based investment strategy can persist through time because markets may ignore and potentially misinterpret financial market signals. Employing a fundamental based strategy, we show that superior performance can be earned consistently through time by identifying and investing in firms with more favourable performance and credit signals. The strength of the portfolios are additionally characterised by the ability of the strategies to avoid firms with poor future prospects. These findings are robust across varying time periods after both transaction costs and related market constraints are considered.

Does Insider Trading Explain Price Run-Up Ahead of Takeover Announcements?

We examine the introduction of a speed-bump by an existing exchange which provides certain participants with guaranteed speed advantages. A selective order processing delay for market orders on TSX Alpha allows low-latency liquidity providers to avoid adverse selection through their ability to react to activity on other venues. These changes increase profits for liquidity providers on TSX Alpha but negatively impact aggregate liquidity: market-wide costs for liquidity demanders increase, with liquidity suppliers’ profits reduced across remaining venues. Our findings have implications for the speed bump debate in the United States, speed differentials more generally, as well as the regulation of market linkages across fragmented trading venues.