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High Frequency Trading and Fragility

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Abstract

We show that limited dealer participation in the market, coupled with an informational friction resulting from high frequency trading, can induce demand for liquidity to be upward sloping and strategic complementarities in traders' liquidity consumption decisions: traders demand more liquidity when the market becomes less liquid, which in turn makes the market more illiquid, fostering the initial demand hike. This can generate market instability, where an initial dearth of liquidity degenerates into a liquidity rout (as in a flash crash). While in a transparent market, liquidity is increasing in the proportion of high frequency traders, in an opaque market strategic complementarities can make liquidity U-shaped in this proportion as well as in the degree of transparency.

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  • Cespa, Giovanni & Vives, Xavier, 2017. "High Frequency Trading and Fragility," IESE Research Papers D/1161, IESE Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-1161
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    Cited by:

    1. Andrew C. Meldrum & Oleg Sokolinskiy, 2025. "The Relationship between Market Depth and Liquidity Fragility in the Treasury Market," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2025-014, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Market fragmentation; high frequency trading; flash crash; asymmetric information;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

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