IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jsustf/v4y2014i2p161-175.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An ecological/evolutionary perspective on high-frequency trading

Author

Listed:
  • Bogdan Dragos
  • Inigo Wilkins

Abstract

What follows is an account of the concepts of information and noise as they apply to an analysis of high-frequency trading according to 'heterodox economics'. The text proposes a framework according to which finance can best be understood as a complex technical system tightly coupled to other social, economic systems. To be more precise, the paper attempts to show how finance is not just any complex system but it can be understood as an ecology of evolving socio-technical systems, sub-systems such as investment banks, hedge funds, high-frequency trading traders, retail investors, pensions funds, etc. All of these are the technical building blocks of our financial markets. Moreover, we attempt to show how concepts from other disciplines, such as entropy, information and noise, can be useful in opening up the world of finance from its traditional economic milieu. Although the following text is confined to the discursive realm of humanities/social sciences, it echoes the analytical approaches of econophysics and experimental economics and particularly the ongoing research around 'computational evolutionary economics' [Mirowski, P. 2007. "Markets Come to Bits: Evolution, Computation and Markomata in Economic Science." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 63: 209-242; Mirowski, P. 2010. "Inherent Vice: Minsky, Markomata, and the Tendency of Markets to Undermine Themselves." Journal of Institutional Economics 6: 415-443]. This becomes particularly relevant in the context of the so-called robot phase transition from human-dominated trading to the more automatic electronic trading. The current microstructure of automatic market-making can be understood as an 'ecological niche' developed by ultra-fast trading algorithms which 'feed' on the asymmetries and disparities of the wider 'financial ecology'. They do this by dissipating noise and adding to the complexity of market microstructure a behaviour that can push the whole ecology to critical thresholds, sometimes referred to as flash crashes. This whole process can ultimately be described by Philip Mirowski's notion of 'inherent vice', as well as by Sir Robert May's concept of instability 'which develops in ecosystems upon increasing bio-diversity' [Caccioli, F., M. Marsili, and P. Vivo. 2007. "Eroding Market Stability by Proliferation of Financial Instruments." The European Physical Journal B - Condensed Matter and Complex Systems 71: 467-479 ; Haldane, A., and R. May. 2011. "Systemic Risk in Banking Ecosystems." Nature 469: 351-355].

Suggested Citation

  • Bogdan Dragos & Inigo Wilkins, 2014. "An ecological/evolutionary perspective on high-frequency trading," Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 161-175, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jsustf:v:4:y:2014:i:2:p:161-175
    DOI: 10.1080/20430795.2014.883300
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20430795.2014.883300
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/20430795.2014.883300?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan Brogaard & Terrence Hendershott & Ryan Riordan, 2014. "High-Frequency Trading and Price Discovery," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(8), pages 2267-2306.
    2. Elena Esposito, 2011. "The Future of Futures," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13975.
    3. Gençay, Ramazan & Dacorogna, Michel & Muller, Ulrich A. & Pictet, Olivier & Olsen, Richard, 2001. "An Introduction to High-Frequency Finance," Elsevier Monographs, Elsevier, edition 1, number 9780122796715.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maria Carolina Rezende de Carvalho Ferreira & Vinicius Amorim Sobreiro & Herbert Kimura & Flavio Luiz de Moraes Barboza, 2016. "A systematic review of literature about finance and sustainability," Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 112-147, April.

    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. Baoqiang Zhan & Shu Zhang & Helen S. Du & Xiaoguang Yang, 2022. "Exploring Statistical Arbitrage Opportunities Using Machine Learning Strategy," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 60(3), pages 861-882, October.
    2. Sun, Yuxin & Ibikunle, Gbenga, 2017. "Informed trading and the price impact of block trades: A high frequency trading analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 114-129.
    3. Barunik, Jozef & Vacha, Lukas, 2010. "Monte Carlo-based tail exponent estimator," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(21), pages 4863-4874.
    4. Dash, Saumya Ranjan & Maitra, Debasish, 2018. "Does sentiment matter for stock returns? Evidence from Indian stock market using wavelet approach," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 32-39.
    5. Sabrina Camargo & Silvio M. Duarte Queiros & Celia Anteneodo, 2013. "Bridging stylized facts in finance and data non-stationarities," Papers 1302.3197, arXiv.org, revised May 2013.
    6. Lallouache, Mehdi & Abergel, Frédéric, 2014. "Tick size reduction and price clustering in a FX order book," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 416(C), pages 488-498.
    7. Aviral Tiwari & Niyati Bhanja & Arif Dar & Faridul Islam, 2015. "Time–frequency relationship between share prices and exchange rates in India: Evidence from continuous wavelets," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 699-714, March.
    8. Bruno Biais & Fany Declerck & Sophie Moinas, 2016. "Who supplies liquidity, how and when?," BIS Working Papers 563, Bank for International Settlements.
    9. Dufour, Jean-Marie & García, René & Taamouti, Abderrahim, 2008. "Measuring causality between volatility and returns with high-frequency data," UC3M Working papers. Economics we084422, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    10. Goergen, Marc & Renneboog, Luc & Zhao, Yang, 2019. "Insider trading and networked directors," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 152-175.
    11. Bence Toth & Janos Kertesz, 2009. "The Epps effect revisited," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(7), pages 793-802.
    12. Do, Hung Xuan & Brooks, Robert & Treepongkaruna, Sirimon & Wu, Eliza, 2014. "How does trading volume affect financial return distributions?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 190-206.
    13. W.-S. Jung & F. Z. Wang & S. Havlin & T. Kaizoji & H.-T. Moon & H. E. Stanley, 2008. "Volatility return intervals analysis of the Japanese market," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 62(1), pages 113-119, March.
    14. NIdhi Aggarwal & Venkatesh Panchapagesan & Susan Thomas, 2022. "When is the Order to Trade Ratio fee effective?," Working Papers 8, xKDR.
    15. Kaijian He & Rui Zha & Jun Wu & Kin Keung Lai, 2016. "Multivariate EMD-Based Modeling and Forecasting of Crude Oil Price," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-11, April.
    16. Kang, Jongho & Kang, Jangkoo & Kwon, Kyung Yoon, 2022. "Market versus limit orders of speculative high-frequency traders and price discovery," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    17. Ozcan Ceylan, 2015. "Limited information-processing capacity and asymmetric stock correlations," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(6), pages 1031-1039, June.
    18. Beine, Michel & Laurent, Sébastien & Palm, Franz C., 2009. "Central bank FOREX interventions assessed using realized moments," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 112-127, February.
    19. Robert J. Kauffman & Yuzhou Hu & Dan Ma, 2015. "Will high-frequency trading practices transform the financial markets in the Asia Pacific Region?," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 1(1), pages 1-27, December.
    20. Scalas, Enrico & Kaizoji, Taisei & Kirchler, Michael & Huber, Jürgen & Tedeschi, Alessandra, 2006. "Waiting times between orders and trades in double-auction markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 366(C), pages 463-471.

    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:taf:jsustf:v:4:y:2014:i:2:p:161-175. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TSFI20 .

    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.