IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/ijtafx/v12y2009i08ns0219024909005609.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Mirage Of Triangular Arbitrage In The Spot Foreign Exchange Market

Author

Listed:
  • DANIEL J. FENN

    (Mathematical and Computational Finance Group, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3LB, UK)

  • SAM D. HOWISON

    (Mathematical and Computational Finance Group, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3LB, UK)

  • MARK MCDONALD

    (FX Research and Trading Group, HSBC Bank, 8 Canada Square, London E14 5HQ, UK)

  • STACY WILLIAMS

    (FX Research and Trading Group, HSBC Bank, 8 Canada Square, London E14 5HQ, UK)

  • NEIL F. JOHNSON

    (Physics Department, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida 33146, USA)

Abstract

We investigate triangular arbitrage within the spot foreign exchange market using high-frequency executable prices. We show that triangular arbitrage opportunities do exist, but that most have short durations and small magnitudes. We find intra-day variations in the number and length of arbitrage opportunities, with larger numbers of opportunities with shorter mean durations occurring during more liquid hours. We demonstrate further that the number of arbitrage opportunities has decreased in recent years, implying a corresponding increase in pricing efficiency. Using trading simulations, we show that a trader would need to beat other market participants to an unfeasibly large proportion of arbitrage prices to profit from triangular arbitrage over a prolonged period of time. Our results suggest that the foreign exchange market is internally self-consistent and provide a limited verification of market efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel J. Fenn & Sam D. Howison & Mark Mcdonald & Stacy Williams & Neil F. Johnson, 2009. "The Mirage Of Triangular Arbitrage In The Spot Foreign Exchange Market," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 12(08), pages 1105-1123.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijtafx:v:12:y:2009:i:08:n:s0219024909005609
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219024909005609
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219024909005609
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0219024909005609?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. Charles Goodhart & Takatoshi Ito & Richard Payne, 1995. "One Day in June, 1994: A Study of the Working of Reuters 2000-2 Electronic Foreign Exchange Trading System," NBER Technical Working Papers 0179, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. 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. Mueller, Philippe & Stathopoulos, Andreas & Vedolin, Andrea, 2017. "International correlation risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 270-299.
    2. Gradojevic, Nikola & Erdemlioglu, Deniz & Gençay, Ramazan, 2020. "A new wavelet-based ultra-high-frequency analysis of triangular currency arbitrage," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 57-73.
    3. Wilfredo L. Maldonado & Juan José Egozcue & Vera Pawlowsky‐Glahn, 2021. "No‐arbitrage matrices of exchange rates: Some characterizations," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 17(4), pages 375-389, December.
    4. Thierry Foucault & Roman Kozhan & Wing Wah Tham, 2017. "Toxic Arbitrage," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(4), pages 1053-1094.
    5. Stefanescu, Razvan & Dumitriu, Ramona, 2016. "Particularitǎţi ale evoluţiei variabilelor financiare [Some particularities of the financial variables evolution]," MPRA Paper 73481, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 02 Sep 2016.
    6. Alberto Ciacci & Takumi Sueshige & Hideki Takayasu & Kim Christensen & Misako Takayasu, 2020. "The microscopic relationships between triangular arbitrage and cross-currency correlations in a simple agent based model of foreign exchange markets," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-19, June.
    7. Ye Wang & Yan Chen & Haotian Wu & Liyi Zhou & Shuiguang Deng & Roger Wattenhofer, 2021. "Cyclic Arbitrage in Decentralized Exchanges," Papers 2105.02784, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    8. 'Alvaro Cartea & Sebastian Jaimungal & Tianyi Jia, 2020. "Trading Foreign Exchange Triplets," Papers 2004.12011, arXiv.org.
    9. Alexey Ponomarenko, 2023. "National Currencies in International Settlements: Main Mechanisms," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 82(3), pages 35-47, September.
    10. Marcin Wk{a}torek & Stanis{l}aw Dro.zd.z & Jaros{l}aw Kwapie'n & Ludovico Minati & Pawe{l} O'swik{e}cimka & Marek Stanuszek, 2020. "Multiscale characteristics of the emerging global cryptocurrency market," Papers 2010.15403, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2021.

    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Mende, Alexander, 2005. "09/11 on the USD/EUR Foreign Exchange Market," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-312, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    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. Dufour, Jean-Marie & García, René, 2008. "Measuring causality between volatility and returns with high-frequency data," UC3M Working papers. Economics we084422, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    9. Bence Toth & Janos Kertesz, 2009. "The Epps effect revisited," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(7), pages 793-802.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. Ozcan Ceylan, 2015. "Limited information-processing capacity and asymmetric stock correlations," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(6), pages 1031-1039, June.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. Nour Meddahi, 2002. "A theoretical comparison between integrated and realized volatility," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(5), pages 479-508.
    17. Andrea Terzi, 2003. "Is a transactions tax an effective means to stabilize the foreign exchange market?," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 56(227), pages 367-385.
    18. Malgorzata Doman, 2008. "Information Impact on Stock Price Dynamics," Dynamic Econometric Models, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, vol. 8, pages 13-20.
    19. Torben G. ANDERSEN & Tim BOLLERSLEV & Nour MEDDAHI, 2002. "Correcting The Errors : A Note On Volatility Forecast Evaluation Based On High-Frequency Data And Realized Volatilities," Cahiers de recherche 21-2002, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    20. Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen & Neil Shephard, 2006. "Econometrics of Testing for Jumps in Financial Economics Using Bipower Variation," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 4(1), pages 1-30.

    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:wsi:ijtafx:v:12:y:2009:i:08:n:s0219024909005609. 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: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ijtaf/ijtaf.shtml .

    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.