IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4984.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Foreign Exchange Volume: Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing?

Author

Listed:
  • Richard K. Lyons

Abstract

This paper examines whether currency trading volume is informative, and under what circumstances. Specifically, we use transactions data to test whether trades occurring when trading intensity is high are more informative - dollar for dollar - than trades occurring when intensity is low. Theory admits both possibilities, depending primarily on the posited information structure. We present what we call a hot-potato model of currency trading, which explains why low-intensity trades might be more informative. In the model, the wave of inventory-management trading among dealers following innovations in order flow generates an inverse relationship between intensity and information content. Empirically, low-intensity trades are more informative, supporting the hot-potato hypothesis."

Suggested Citation

  • Richard K. Lyons, 1995. "Foreign Exchange Volume: Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing?," NBER Working Papers 4984, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4984
    Note: IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4984.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard K. Lyons., 1993. "Optimal Transparency in a Dealership Market with an Application to Foreign Exchange," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-231, University of California at Berkeley.
    2. O'Hara, Maureen & Oldfield, George S., 1986. "The Microeconomics of Market Making," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(4), pages 361-376, December.
    3. Glosten, Lawrence R. & Milgrom, Paul R., 1985. "Bid, ask and transaction prices in a specialist market with heterogeneously informed traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-100, March.
    4. Flood, Mark D., 1994. "Market structure and inefficiency in the foreign exchange market," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 131-158, April.
    5. Lee, Charles M C & Ready, Mark J, 1991. "Inferring Trade Direction from Intraday Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(2), pages 733-746, June.
    6. Harold Demsetz, 1968. "The Cost of Transacting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(1), pages 33-53.
    7. Lyons, Richard K., 1995. "Tests of microstructural hypotheses in the foreign exchange market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2-3), pages 321-351.
    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. Hasbrouck, Joel, 1991. "The Summary Informativeness of Stock Trades: An Econometric Analysis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(3), pages 571-595.
    10. Madhavan, Ananth & Smidt, Seymour, 1991. "A Bayesian model of intraday specialist pricing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 99-134, November.
    11. Roell, Ailsa, 1990. "Dual-capacity trading and the quality of the market," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 105-124, June.
    12. Easley, David & O'Hara, Maureen, 1992. "Time and the Process of Security Price Adjustment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 576-605, June.
    13. Hausman, Jerry A. & Lo, Andrew W. & MacKinlay, A. Craig, 1992. "An ordered probit analysis of transaction stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 319-379, June.
    14. Bessembinder, Hendrik, 1994. "Bid-ask spreads in the interbank foreign exchange markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 317-348, June.
    15. Amihud, Yakov & Mendelson, Haim, 1980. "Dealership market : Market-making with inventory," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 31-53, March.
    16. Garman, Mark B., 1976. "Market microstructure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 257-275, June.
    17. Albert S. Kyle, 1989. "Informed Speculation with Imperfect Competition," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(3), pages 317-355.
    18. Anat R. Admati, Paul Pfleiderer, 1988. "A Theory of Intraday Patterns: Volume and Price Variability," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 3-40.
    19. Hasbrouck, Joel, 1988. "Trades, quotes, inventories, and information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 229-252, December.
    20. repec:bla:econom:v:55:y:1988:i:220:p:437-60 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Ho, Thomas S Y & Stoll, Hans R, 1983. "The Dynamics of Dealer Markets under Competition," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(4), pages 1053-1074, September.
    22. Manaster, Steven & Mann, Steven C, 1996. "Life in the Pits: Competitive Market Making and Inventory Control," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(3), pages 953-975.
    23. Bollerslev, Tim & Domowitz, Ian, 1993. "Trading Patterns and Prices in the Interbank Foreign Exchange Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1421-1443, September.
    24. Goodhart, C. A. E. & Figliuoli, L., 1991. "Every minute counts in financial markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 23-52, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Lyons, Richard K., 1995. "Tests of microstructural hypotheses in the foreign exchange market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2-3), pages 321-351.
    2. 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.
    3. Goodhart, Charles A. E. & O'Hara, Maureen, 1997. "High frequency data in financial markets: Issues and applications," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 4(2-3), pages 73-114, June.
    4. Madhavan, Ananth, 2000. "Market microstructure: A survey," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 205-258, August.
    5. Biais, Bruno & Glosten, Larry & Spatt, Chester, 2005. "Market microstructure: A survey of microfoundations, empirical results, and policy implications," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 217-264, May.
    6. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2013. "Market Liquidity—Theory and Empirical Evidence ," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1289-1361, Elsevier.
    7. Tapia, Mikel & Pascual, Roberto & Escribano, Álvaro, 2000. "Adverse selection costs, trading activity and liquidity in the NYSE: an empirical analysis in a dynamic context," UC3M Working papers. Economics 7276, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    8. Lyons, Richard K., 1998. "Profits and position control: a week of FX dealing1," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 97-115, February.
    9. Jun (Tony) Ruan & Tongshu Ma, 2017. "Bid-Ask Spread, Quoted Depths, and Unexpected Duration Between Trades," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 385-436, June.
    10. Escribano, Álvaro & Tapia, Mikel & Pascual, Roberto, 1999. "How does liquidity behave? A multidimensional analysis of NYSE stocks," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB 6433, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    11. Imen Kouki & Mahfuzul Haque, 2009. "Tunisian Dealer Behaviour in FX Market," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 8(3), pages 265-287, September.
    12. Ahn, Hee-Joon & Cai, Jun & Hamao, Yasushi & Ho, Richard Y. K., 2002. "The components of the bid-ask spread in a limit-order market: evidence from the Tokyo Stock Exchange," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 399-430, November.
    13. Bjonnes,H. & Rime,D., 2000. "FX trading ... LIVE! : dealer behavior and trading systems in foreign exchange markets," Memorandum 29/2000, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    14. Dubofsky, David, 1997. "Limit orders and ex-dividend day return distributions," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 47-65, January.
    15. Chakravarty, Sugato & Harris, Fredreck H. deB. & Wood, Roger A., 2001. "Do Bid-Ask Spreads or Bid and Ask Depths Convey New Information First?," Purdue University Economics Working Papers 1149, Purdue University, Department of Economics.
    16. Bjonnes, Geir Hoidal & Rime, Dagfinn, 2005. "Dealer behavior and trading systems in foreign exchange markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 571-605, March.
    17. Chelley-Steeley, Patricia L. & Tsorakidis, Nikos, 2013. "Bid-ask spread dynamics in foreign exchange markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 119-131.
    18. Flannery, Mark J. & Kwan, Simon H. & Nimalendran, M., 2004. "Market evidence on the opaqueness of banking firms' assets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 419-460, March.
    19. Andy Snell & Ian Tonks, 1996. "Utilising Time Series Methods to Assess Information and Inventory Effects in a Dealer Market in Illiquid Stocks," FMG Discussion Papers dp242, Financial Markets Group.
    20. Sigridur Benediktsdottir, 2006. "An empirical analysis of specialist trading behavior at the New York Stock Exchange," International Finance Discussion Papers 876, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange

    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:nbr:nberwo:4984. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.