Liquidity supply and volatility: futures market evidence

This article examines the provision of liquidity in futures markets as price volatility changes. We find that customer trading costs do not increase with volatility. However, for three of the four contracts studied, the nature of liquidity supply changes with volatility. Specifically, for relatively inactive contracts, customers as a group trade more with each other and less with market makers, on higher volatility days. By contrast, for the most active contract, trading between customers and market makers increases with volatility. We also find that market makers' income per contract decreases with volatility for one of the least active contracts in our sample, but is not significantly affected by volatility for the other contracts. These results are consistent with the idea that, for high‐cost, inactive contracts, market makers react to temporary increases in volatility by raising their bid‐ask spreads significantly, and customers provide increased liquidity through standing limit orders. An implication of our results is that electronic systems, where market maker participation is not required, are able to supply adequate liquidity during volatile periods. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:1–17, 2001