IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0186688.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The October 2014 United States Treasury bond flash crash and the contributory effect of mini flash crashes

Author

Listed:
  • Zachary S Levine
  • Scott A Hale
  • Luciano Floridi

Abstract

We investigate the causal uncertainty surrounding the flash crash in the U.S. Treasury bond market on October 15, 2014, and the unresolved concern that no clear link has been identified between the start of the flash crash at 9:33 and the opening of the U.S. equity market at 9:30. We consider the contributory effect of mini flash crashes in equity markets, and find that the number of equity mini flash crashes in the three-minute window between market open and the Treasury Flash Crash was 2.6 times larger than the number experienced in any other three-minute window in the prior ten weekdays. We argue that (a) this statistically significant finding suggests that mini flash crashes in equity markets both predicted and contributed to the October 2014 U.S. Treasury Bond Flash Crash, and (b) mini-flash crashes are important phenomena with negative externalities that deserve much greater scholarly attention.

Suggested Citation

  • Zachary S Levine & Scott A Hale & Luciano Floridi, 2017. "The October 2014 United States Treasury bond flash crash and the contributory effect of mini flash crashes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(11), pages 1-14, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0186688
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186688
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186688
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186688&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0186688?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anton Golub & John Keane & Ser-Huang Poon, 2012. "High Frequency Trading and Mini Flash Crashes," Papers 1211.6667, arXiv.org.
    2. J. Dugast & T. Foucault, 2014. "False News, Informational Efficiency, and Price Reversals," Working papers 513, Banque de France.
    3. Harrison Hong & Jeremy C. Stein, 2003. "Differences of Opinion, Short-Sales Constraints, and Market Crashes," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 487-525.
    4. Schweitzer, Maurice E. & Hershey, John C. & Bradlow, Eric T., 2006. "Promises and lies: Restoring violated trust," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 1-19, September.
    5. Blau, Benjamin M., 2017. "Economic freedom and crashes in financial markets," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 33-46.
    6. Hutton, Amy P. & Marcus, Alan J. & Tehranian, Hassan, 2009. "Opaque financial reports, R2, and crash risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 67-86, October.
    7. Sangnier, Marc, 2013. "Does trust favor macroeconomic stability?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 653-668.
    8. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2008. "Trusting the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2557-2600, December.
    9. J. Tobin, 1958. "Liquidity Preference as Behavior Towards Risk," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 25(2), pages 65-86.
    10. Neil Johnson & Guannan Zhao & Eric Hunsader & Jing Meng & Amith Ravindar & Spencer Carran & Brian Tivnan, 2012. "Financial black swans driven by ultrafast machine ecology," Papers 1202.1448, arXiv.org.
    11. Demos, Guilherme & Da Silva, Sergio & Matsushita, Raul, 2015. "Some Statistical Properties of the Mini Flash Crashes," MPRA Paper 65473, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, 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. Lu, Xiaomeng & Guo, Jiaojiao & Gan, Li, 2020. "International comparison of household asset allocation: Micro-evidence from cross-country comparisons," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    2. Steffen, Viktoria, 2023. "A literature review on extreme price movements with reversal," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    3. Yaniv Konchitchki & Yan Luo & Mary L. Z. Ma & Feng Wu, 2016. "Accounting-based downside risk, cost of capital, and the macroeconomy," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 1-36, March.
    4. Panta, Humnath, 2020. "Does social capital influence corporate risk-taking?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).
    5. Hong, Claire Yurong & Lu, Xiaomeng & Pan, Jun, 2021. "FinTech adoption and household risk-taking," BOFIT Discussion Papers 14/2021, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    6. Dipankar Mondal & N. Selvaraju, 2022. "Convexity, two-fund separation and asset ranking in a mean-LPM portfolio selection framework," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 44(1), pages 225-248, March.
    7. Anders Johansson, 2009. "An analysis of dynamic risk in the Greater China equity markets," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(3), pages 299-320.
    8. Chia-Lin Chang & Jukka Ilomäki & Hannu Laurila & Michael McAleer, 2018. "Long Run Returns Predictability and Volatility with Moving Averages," Risks, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-18, September.
    9. Hany Shawky & Ronald Forbes & Alan Frankle, 1983. "Liquidity Services and Capital Market Equilibrium: The Case for Money Market Mutual Funds," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 6(2), pages 141-152, June.
    10. Lin, Tse-Chun & Liu, Jinyu & Ni, Xiaoran, 2022. "Foreign bank entry deregulation and stock market stability: Evidence from staggered regulatory changes," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 185-207.
    11. Harper, Joel & Johnson, Grace & Sun, Li, 2020. "Stock price crash risk and CEO power: Firm-level analysis," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    12. Amore, Mario Daniele & Epure, Mircea, 2021. "Riding out of a financial crisis: The joint effect of trust and corporate ownership," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 92-109.
    13. Leitner Johannes, 2005. "Optimal portfolios with expected loss constraints and shortfall risk optimal martingale measures," Statistics & Risk Modeling, De Gruyter, vol. 23(1/2005), pages 49-66, January.
    14. Zubanov, Nick & Cadsby, Bram & Song, Fei, 2017. "The," IZA Discussion Papers 10542, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Paulo Coutinho & Benjamin Miranda Tabak, 2003. "Decentralized Portfolio Management," Brazilian Review of Finance, Brazilian Society of Finance, vol. 1(2), pages 243-270.
    16. Alessandro, Martin & Cardinale Lagomarsino, Bruno & Scartascini, Carlos & Streb, Jorge & Torrealday, Jerónimo, 2021. "Transparency and Trust in Government. Evidence from a Survey Experiment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    17. Chen, Yong & Da, Zhi & Huang, Dayong, 2022. "Short selling efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 387-408.
    18. Kanwal Iqbal Khan & Syed M. Waqar Azeem Naqvi & Muhammad Mudassar Ghafoor & Rana Shahid Imdad Akash, 2020. "Sustainable Portfolio Optimization with Higher-Order Moments of Risk," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-14, March.
    19. Babalos, Vassilios & Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Philippas, Nikolaos, 2012. "Efficiency evaluation of Greek equity funds," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 317-333.
    20. Ben-Nasr, Hamdi & Ghouma, Hatem, 2018. "Employee welfare and stock price crash risk," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 700-725.

    More about this item

    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:plo:pone00:0186688. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.