IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/acctfi/v60y2020i3p2889-2918.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Margin trading and price efficiency: information content or price‐adjustment speed?

Author

Listed:
  • Dayong Lv
  • Wenfeng Wu

Abstract

The literature offers contradictory views on the effect of margin‐trading activities on price efficiency. Based on data from a Chinese margin‐trading pilot programme in 2010, we separate price efficiency into information content and price‐adjustment speed and investigate the effect of margin‐trading activity on price efficiency. We find that after adding to the eligible list, pilot stocks experience a decrease in information content, but an increase in price‐adjustment speed. Furthermore, increased margin‐buying activities are associated with lower information content, but faster price adjustment. Our results reconcile the debate over the effect of margin trading on price efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Dayong Lv & Wenfeng Wu, 2020. "Margin trading and price efficiency: information content or price‐adjustment speed?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(3), pages 2889-2918, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:acctfi:v:60:y:2020:i:3:p:2889-2918
    DOI: 10.1111/acfi.12403
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/acfi.12403
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/acfi.12403?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. Hasbrouck, Joel, 1993. "Assessing the Quality of a Security Market: A New Approach to Transaction-Cost Measurement," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(1), pages 191-212.
    2. Tiandu Wang & Qian Sun, 2015. "Why investors use technical analysis? Information discovery versus herding behavior," China Finance Review International, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 5(1), pages 53-68, February.
    3. Chen, Crystal Xiaobei & Rhee, S. Ghon, 2010. "Short sales and speed of price adjustment: Evidence from the Hong Kong stock market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 471-483, February.
    4. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    5. Amihud, Yakov & Hameed, Allaudeen & Kang, Wenjin & Zhang, Huiping, 2015. "The illiquidity premium: International evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 350-368.
    6. Hasbrouck, Joel, 1991. "Measuring the Information Content of Stock Trades," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 179-207, March.
    7. Alexander, Gordon J. & Ors, Evren & Peterson, Mark A. & Seguin, Paul J., 2004. "Margin regulation and market quality: a microstructure analysis," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 549-574, September.
    8. Pedro A. C. Saffi & Kari Sigurdsson, 2011. "Price Efficiency and Short Selling," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(3), pages 821-852.
    9. Xiong Xiong & Ya Gao & Xu Feng, 2017. "Successive short‐selling ban lifts and gradual price efficiency: evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(5), pages 1557-1604, December.
    10. Hardouvelis, Gikas A, 1990. "Margin Requirements, Volatility, and the Transitory Components of Stock Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 736-762, September.
    11. Eric C. Chang & Joseph W. Cheng & Yinghui Yu, 2007. "Short‐Sales Constraints and Price Discovery: Evidence from the Hong Kong Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(5), pages 2097-2121, October.
    12. Ekkehart Boehmer & Charles M. Jones & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2008. "Which Shorts Are Informed?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(2), pages 491-527, April.
    13. Easley, David, et al, 1996. "Liquidity, Information, and Infrequently Traded Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1405-1436, September.
    14. Stefan Thurner & J. Doyne Farmer & John Geanakoplos, 2012. "Leverage causes fat tails and clustered volatility," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(5), pages 695-707, February.
    15. Arturo Bris & William N. Goetzmann & Ning Zhu, 2007. "Efficiency and the Bear: Short Sales and Markets Around the World," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1029-1079, June.
    16. Ang, Andrew & Hodrick, Robert J. & Xing, Yuhang & Zhang, Xiaoyan, 2009. "High idiosyncratic volatility and low returns: International and further U.S. evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 1-23, January.
    17. Saqib Sharif & Hamish D. Anderson & Ben R. Marshall, 2014. "The announcement and implementation reaction to China's margin trading and short selling pilot programme," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 10(3), pages 368-384, May.
    18. Tarun Chordia & Richard Roll & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2001. "Market Liquidity and Trading Activity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 501-530, April.
    19. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2005. "Evidence on the speed of convergence to market efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 271-292, May.
    20. Kewei Hou & Tobias J. Moskowitz, 2005. "Market Frictions, Price Delay, and the Cross-Section of Expected Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(3), pages 981-1020.
    21. Seguin, Paul J & Jarrell, Gregg A, 1993. "The Irrelevance of Margin: Evidence form the Crash of'87," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1456-1473, September.
    22. Gikas A. Hardouvelis & Stavros Peristiani, 1992. "Margin Requirements, Speculative Trading, and Stock Price Fluctuations: The Case of Japan," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(4), pages 1333-1370.
    23. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    24. Jennings, Robert & Starks, Laura, 1986. "Earnings Announcements, Stock Price Adjustment, and the Existence of Option Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(1), pages 107-125, March.
    25. Chang, Chuang-Chang & Hsieh, Pei-Fang & Wang, Yaw-Huei, 2010. "Information content of options trading volume for future volatility: Evidence from the Taiwan options market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 174-183, January.
    26. McInish, Thomas H & Wood, Robert A, 1992. "An Analysis of Intraday Patterns in Bid/Ask Spreads for NYSE Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 753-764, June.
    27. Seguin, Paul J., 1990. "Stock volatility and margin trading," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 101-121, August.
    28. Bessembinder, Hendrik & Chan, Kalok & Seguin, Paul J., 1996. "An empirical examination of information, differences of opinion, and trading activity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 105-134, January.
    29. Ekkehart Boehmer & Juan (Julie) Wu, 2013. "Short Selling and the Price Discovery Process," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(2), pages 287-322.
    30. Chen, Jun & Kadapakkam, Palani-Rajan & Yang, Ting, 2016. "Short selling, margin trading, and the incorporation of new information into prices," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 1-17.
    31. Gikas A. Hardouvelis & Panayiotis Theodossiou, 2002. "The Asymmetric Relation Between Initial Margin Requirements and Stock Market Volatility Across Bull and Bear Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(5), pages 1525-1560.
    32. John M. Griffin & Patrick J. Kelly & Federico Nardari, 2010. "Do Market Efficiency Measures Yield Correct Inferences? A Comparison of Developed and Emerging Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(8), pages 3225-3277, August.
    33. Brennan, Michael J & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Swaminathan, Bhaskaran, 1993. "Investment Analysis and the Adjustment of Stock Prices to Common Information," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(4), pages 799-824.
    34. Oleg Rytchkov, 2014. "Asset Pricing with Dynamic Margin Constraints," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(1), pages 405-452, February.
    35. Chowdhry, Bhagwan & Nanda, Vikram, 1998. "Leverage and Market Stability: The Role of Margin Rules and Price Limits," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 71(2), pages 179-210, April.
    36. Ekkehart Boehmer & Eric K. Kelley, 2009. "Institutional Investors and the Informational Efficiency of Prices," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(9), pages 3563-3594, September.
    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. Yaping Zhou & Xundi Diao & Dayong Lv, 2023. "Role of OTC options in stock price efficiency: Evidence from the Chinese market," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(4), pages 4629-4655, December.

    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. Yaping Zhou & Xundi Diao & Dayong Lv, 2023. "Role of OTC options in stock price efficiency: Evidence from the Chinese market," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(4), pages 4629-4655, December.
    2. Lv, Dayong & Wu, Wenfeng, 2019. "Margin-trading volatility and stock price crash risk," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 179-196.
    3. Chen, Jun & Kadapakkam, Palani-Rajan & Yang, Ting, 2016. "Short selling, margin trading, and the incorporation of new information into prices," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 1-17.
    4. Chang, Eric C. & Luo, Yan & Ren, Jinjuan, 2014. "Short-selling, margin-trading, and price efficiency: Evidence from the Chinese market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 411-424.
    5. Yanxi Li & Siu Kai Choy & Mingzhu Wang, 2022. "The potential built‐in supply effect from margin trading in the Chinese stock market," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(4), pages 835-861, November.
    6. Strych, Jan-Oliver, 2022. "The impact of margin trading and short selling by retail investors on market price efficiency: Empirical evidence from bitcoin exchanges," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB).
    7. Thanh Huong Nguyen, 2019. "Information and Noise in Stock Markets: Evidence on the Determinants and Effects Using New Empirical Measures," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 7-2019.
    8. Shyu, Yih-Wen & Chan, Kam C. & Liang, Hsin-Yu, 2018. "Spillovers of price efficiency and informed trading from short sales to margin purchases in absence of uptick rule," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 163-183.
    9. Wan, Xiaoyuan, 2020. "The impact of short-selling and margin-buying on liquidity: Evidence from the Chinese stock market," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 104-118.
    10. Xiong Xiong & Ya Gao & Xu Feng, 2017. "Successive short‐selling ban lifts and gradual price efficiency: evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(5), pages 1557-1604, December.
    11. Jiang, Haiyan & Chen, Jun, 2019. "Short selling and financial reporting quality: Evidence from Chinese AH shares," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 118-130.
    12. Li Qian & Mingsheng Li & Yan Li, 2020. "Does news travel slowly before a market crash? The role of margin traders," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(3), pages 3065-3101, September.
    13. Albuquerque, Rui & Song, Shiyun & Yao, Chen, 2017. "The Price Effects of Liquidity Shocks: A Study of SEC’s Tick-Size Experiment," CEPR Discussion Papers 12486, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Bessler, Wolfgang & Vendrasco, Marco, 2022. "Short-selling restrictions and financial stability in Europe: Evidence from the Covid-19 crisis," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    15. Sheng Guo, 2014. "Margin requirements and portfolio optimization: A geometric approach," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 15(3), pages 191-204, June.
    16. Tibor Neugebauer & Sascha Füllbrunn, 2013. "Deflating Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets: Comparative Statics of Margin Regulations," LSF Research Working Paper Series 13-14, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    17. Haiyan Jiang & Ahsan Habib & Mostafa Monzur Hasan, 2022. "Short Selling: A Review of the Literature and Implications for Future Research," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 1-31, January.
    18. Duong, Truong X. & Huszár, Zsuzsa R. & Yamada, Takeshi, 2015. "The costs and benefits of short sale disclosure," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 124-139.
    19. Duong, Huu Nhan & Kalev, Petko S. & Tian, Xiao, 2023. "Short selling, divergence of opinion and volatility in the corporate bond market," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    20. Jagjeev Dosanjh, 2017. "Exchange Initiatives and Market Efficiency: Evidence from the Australian Securities Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2017.

    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:bla:acctfi:v:60:y:2020:i:3:p:2889-2918. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaanzea.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.