IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v150y2017icp27-33.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Informativeness of trade size in foreign exchange markets

Author

Listed:
  • Gradojevic, Nikola
  • Erdemlioglu, Deniz
  • Gençay, Ramazan

Abstract

This article investigates a trading strategy that relies on private information in an electronic spot foreign exchange market. In a structural microstructure model extended for high-frequency data, our analysis links the informational content of trading activity to order size. We find that large currency orders are likely to be placed by informed traders during increased price volatility episodes. In addition, the data suggest that excess kurtosis in exchange rate returns (corresponding to large price-contingent trades) is significantly lower than that in small trades.

Suggested Citation

  • Gradojevic, Nikola & Erdemlioglu, Deniz & Gençay, Ramazan, 2017. "Informativeness of trade size in foreign exchange markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 27-33.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:150:y:2017:i:c:p:27-33
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2016.11.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517651630461X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2016.11.010?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 look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chan, Kalok & Fong, Wai-Ming, 2000. "Trade size, order imbalance, and the volatility-volume relation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 247-273, August.
    2. Martin D.D. Evans & Richard K. Lyons, 2017. "Order Flow and Exchange Rate Dynamics," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Studies in Foreign Exchange Economics, chapter 6, pages 247-290, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Ricardo J. Caballero & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2008. "Collective Risk Management in a Flight to Quality Episode," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2195-2230, October.
    4. Chakravarty, Sugato, 2001. "Stealth-trading: Which traders' trades move stock prices?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 289-307, August.
    5. Dungey, Mardi & Milunovich, George & Thorp, Susan, 2010. "Unobservable shocks as carriers of contagion," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 1008-1021, May.
    6. Martin D. D. Evans, 2002. "FX Trading and Exchange Rate Dynamics," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(6), pages 2405-2447, December.
    7. Ederington, Louis H. & Lee, Jae Ha, 1995. "The Short-Run Dynamics of the Price Adjustment to New Information," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(1), pages 117-134, March.
    8. Easley, David & O'Hara, Maureen, 1987. "Price, trade size, and information in securities markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 69-90, September.
    9. Gençay, Ramazan & Gradojevic, Nikola, 2013. "Private information and its origins in an electronic foreign exchange market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 86-93.
    10. Osler, Carol & Savaser, Tanseli, 2011. "Extreme returns: The case of currencies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 2868-2880, November.
    11. Franklin Allen & Douglas Gale, 2000. "Financial Contagion," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(1), pages 1-33, February.
    12. Ederington, Louis H & Lee, Jae Ha, 1993. "How Markets Process Information: News Releases and Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1161-1191, September.
    13. Ramazan Gençay & Nikola Gradojevic & Richard Olsen & Faruk Selçuk, 2015. "Informed traders’ arrival in foreign exchange markets: Does geography matter?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 1431-1462, December.
    14. David Easley & Robert F. Engle & Maureen O'Hara & Liuren Wu, 2008. "Time-Varying Arrival Rates of Informed and Uninformed Trades," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 171-207, Spring.
    15. Menkhoff, Lukas & Schmeling, Maik, 2010. "Whose trades convey information? Evidence from a cross-section of traders," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 101-128, February.
    16. Easley, David & Kiefer, Nicholas M & O'Hara, Maureen, 1997. "One Day in the Life of a Very Common Stock," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(3), pages 805-835.
    17. Jiang, George J. & Lo, Ingrid & Verdelhan, Adrien, 2011. "Information Shocks, Liquidity Shocks, Jumps, and Price Discovery: Evidence from the U.S. Treasury Market," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(2), pages 527-551, April.
    18. Anand, Amber & Chakravarty, Sugato, 2007. "Stealth Trading in Options Markets," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(1), pages 167-187, March.
    19. Osler, Carol L., 2005. "Stop-loss orders and price cascades in currency markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 219-241, March.
    20. Ramazan Gencay & Soheil Mahmoodzadeh & Jakub Rojcek & Michael C Tseng, 2016. "Price Impact of Aggressive Liquidity Provision," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 16-21, Swiss Finance Institute, revised May 2016.
    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. Cui, Zhenyu & Taylor, Stephen, 2020. "Arbitrage detection using max plus product iteration on foreign exchange rate graphs," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 35(C).
    2. Tahara, Hiroki, 2020. "On the Applicability of the Black-Scholes Model to the Inverse Quantity of Price (Under Peer-Review)," OSF Preprints fgnca, Center for Open Science.
    3. Nihad Aliyev & Xue-Zhong He, 2017. "Ambiguous Market Making," Research Paper Series 383, Quantitative Finance Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney.
    4. Nihad Aliyev, 2019. "Financial Markets with Multidimensional Uncertainty," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 2-2019, January-A.
    5. Sensoy, Ahmet & Serdengeçti, Süleyman, 2019. "Intraday volume-volatility nexus in the FX markets: Evidence from an emerging market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-12.
    6. Donald Lien & Pi-Hsia Hung, 2023. "Whose trades contribute more to price discovery? Evidence from the Taiwan stock exchange," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 213-263, July.

    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. Nikola Gradojevic, 2014. "Informativeness of the Trade Size in an Electronic Foreign Exchange Market," Working Papers 2014-ACF-02, IESEG School of Management.
    2. Gençay, Ramazan & Gradojevic, Nikola, 2013. "Private information and its origins in an electronic foreign exchange market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 86-93.
    3. King, Michael R. & Osler, Carol L. & Rime, Dagfinn, 2013. "The market microstructure approach to foreign exchange: Looking back and looking forward," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 95-119.
    4. Ledenyov, Dimitri O. & Ledenyov, Viktor O., 2015. "Wave function method to forecast foreign currencies exchange rates at ultra high frequency electronic trading in foreign currencies exchange markets," MPRA Paper 67470, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Menkhoff, Lukas & Schmeling, Maik, 2010. "Whose trades convey information? Evidence from a cross-section of traders," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 101-128, February.
    6. Dungey, Mardi & Matei, Marius & Treepongkaruna, Sirimon, 2020. "Examining stress in Asian currencies: A perspective offered by high frequency financial market data," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    7. Menkhoff, Lukas & Schmeling, Maik, 2010. "Trader see, trader do: How do (small) FX traders react to large counterparties' trades?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(7), pages 1283-1302, November.
    8. Ramazan Gençay & Nikola Gradojevic & Richard Olsen & Faruk Selçuk, 2015. "Informed traders’ arrival in foreign exchange markets: Does geography matter?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 1431-1462, December.
    9. Martin D. D. Evans & Richard K. Lyons, 2017. "Do Currency Markets Absorb News Quickly?," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Studies in Foreign Exchange Economics, chapter 12, pages 477-505, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Chang, Chuang-Chang & Hsieh, Pei-Fang & Lai, Hung-Neng, 2013. "The price impact of options and futures volume in after-hours stock market trading," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 984-1007.
    11. Carol Osler & Geir Bjonnes & Neophytos Kathitziotis, 2016. "Bid-Ask Spreads in OTC Markets," Working Papers 102, Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School.
    12. Meifen Qian & Bin Yu & Qianyu Zhu, 2018. "Noise traders, firm-specific uncertainty and technical trading effectiveness," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(13), pages 918-923, July.
    13. Kitamura, Yoshihiro, 2016. "The probability of informed trading measured with price impact, price reversal, and volatility," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 77-90.
    14. Osler, Carol L. & Mende, Alexander & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2011. "Price discovery in currency markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(8), pages 1696-1718.
    15. Rafael R. Rebitzky, 2010. "The Influence Of Fundamentals On Exchange Rates: Findings From Analyses Of News Effects," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 680-704, September.
    16. Lee, Jaeram & Ryu, Doojin & Yang, Heejin, 2021. "Does vega-neutral options trading contain information?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 294-314.
    17. Natashekara, Karthik & Sampath, Aravind, 2024. "Informed trading and cryptocurrencies. New evidence using tick-by-tick data," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    18. Ligon, James A. & Liu, Hao-Chen, 2013. "The relation of trade size and price contribution in a traditional foreign exchange brokered market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1024-1045.
    19. Dungey, Mardi & Erdemlioglu, Deniz & Matei, Marius & Yang, Xiye, 2018. "Testing for mutually exciting jumps and financial flights in high frequency data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 202(1), pages 18-44.
    20. Rime, Dagfinn & Sarno, Lucio & Sojli, Elvira, 2010. "Exchange rate forecasting, order flow and macroeconomic information," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 72-88, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Foreign exchange markets; Volume; Trade size; Volatility; Informed trading; Noise trading; Market microstructure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • G0 - Financial Economics - - General
    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets

    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:eee:ecolet:v:150:y:2017:i:c:p:27-33. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.