IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/7416.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Traders, Market Microstructure and Exchange Rate Dynamics

Author

Listed:
  • Yin-Wong Cheung
  • Menzie D. Chinn

Abstract

We report findings from a survey of United States foreign exchange traders. Our results indicate that: (i) The share of customer business, versus interbank business, has remained fairly constant; (ii) The channels by which transactions take place have changed, as electronically-brokered transactions have risen from 2% to 46% of total, mostly at the expense of transactions undertaken by traditional brokers; (iii) The single most widely- cited reason for deviating from the standard market convention on the bid-ask spread is a thin/hectic market; (iv) Half or more of market respondents believe that large players dominate in the dollar-pound and dollar-Swiss franc markets; and (v) 60% of respondents believe there is low predictability of exchange rates intraday. Even at medium and long run horizons, only a third of traders believe that there is high predictability.

Suggested Citation

  • Yin-Wong Cheung & Menzie D. Chinn, 1999. "Traders, Market Microstructure and Exchange Rate Dynamics," NBER Working Papers 7416, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7416
    Note: IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7416.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Flood, Robert P. & Rose, Andrew K., 1995. "Fixing exchange rates A virtual quest for fundamentals," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 3-37, August.
    2. Yin-Wong Cheung & Menzie D. Chinn, 1999. "Macroeconomic Implications of the Beliefs and Behavior of Foreign Exchange Traders," NBER Working Papers 7417, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Blinder, Alan S, 1991. "Why Are Prices Sticky? Preliminary Results from an Interview Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 89-96, May.
    4. Martin D. D. Evans, 2011. "Exchange-Rate Dynamics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9475.
    5. Ronald Macdonald & Mark P. Taylor, 1992. "Exchange Rate Economics: A Survey," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 39(1), pages 1-57, March.
    6. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. Frankel, Jeffrey A. & Rose, Andrew K., 1995. "Empirical research on nominal exchange rates," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 33, pages 1689-1729, Elsevier.
    10. Lyons, Richard K., 1997. "A simultaneous trade model of the foreign exchange hot potato," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-4), pages 275-298, May.
    11. Osler, C. L., 1998. "Short-term speculators and the puzzling behaviour of exchange rates," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 37-57, June.
    12. Bessembinder, Hendrik, 1994. "Bid-ask spreads in the interbank foreign exchange markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 317-348, June.
    13. Richard K. Lyons., 1997. "Profits and Position Control: A Week of FX Dealing," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-273, University of California at Berkeley.
    14. Robert P. Flood & Mark P. Taylor, 1996. "Exchange Rate Economics: What's Wrong with the Conventional Macro Approach?," NBER Chapters, in: The Microstructure of Foreign Exchange Markets, pages 261-302, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Bollerslev, Tim & Melvin, Michael, 1994. "Bid--ask spreads and volatility in the foreign exchange market : An empirical analysis," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3-4), pages 355-372, May.
    16. William Perraudin & Paolo Vitale, 1996. "Interdealer Trade and Information Flows in a Decentralized Foreign Exchange Market," NBER Chapters, in: The Microstructure of Foreign Exchange Markets, pages 73-106, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Philippe Jorion, 1996. "Risk and Turnover in the Foreign Exchange Market," NBER Chapters, in: The Microstructure of Foreign Exchange Markets, pages 19-40, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. 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.
    19. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Wong, Clement Yuk-Pang, 2000. "A survey of market practitioners' views on exchange rate dynamics," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 401-419, August.
    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. Tiffany Hutcheson, 2000. "Trading in the Australian Foreign Exchange Market," Working Paper Series 107, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    2. Bjonnes,H. & Rime,D., 2000. "Customer trading and information in foreign exchange markets," Memorandum 30/2000, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    3. Stephan Schulmeister, 2000. "Technical Analysis and Exchange Rate Dynamics," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 25857, April.
    4. Martin D. D. Evans, 2017. "FX Trading and Exchange Rate Dynamics," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Studies in Foreign Exchange Economics, chapter 5, pages 189-245, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. M. Frenkel & C. Pierdzionc & G. Stadtmann, 2001. "The foreign exchange market interventions of the European Central Bank," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 54(218), pages 249-287.
    6. Arnswald, Torsten, 2001. "Investment Behaviour of German Equity Fund Managers - An Exploratory Analysis of Survey Data," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2001,08, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    7. Gonca ATICI, 2018. "Bitcoin and Blockchain: A Threat or Opportunity for the Financial System," European Journal of Economics and Business Studies Articles, Revistia Research and Publishing, vol. 4, September.
    8. M. Frenkel & C. Pierdzionc & G. Stadtmann, 2001. "The foreign exchange market interventions of the European Central Bank," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 54(218), pages 249-287.
    9. Chris D'Souza, 2002. "A Market Microstructure Analysis of Foreign Exchange Intervention in Canada," Staff Working Papers 02-16, Bank of Canada.
    10. Gabriele Galati, 2000. "Trading volumes, volatility and spreads in foreign exchange markets: evidence from emerging market countries," BIS Working Papers 93, Bank for International Settlements.
    11. Gabriele Galati, 2001. "Trading volumes, volatility and spreads in FX markets: evidence from emerging market countries," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Market liquidity: proceedings of a workshop held at the BIS, volume 2, pages 197-229, Bank for International Settlements.
    12. Poskitt, Russell, 2005. "Bid/ask spreads in the foreign exchange market: An alternative interpretation," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 13(5), pages 562-583, November.
    13. Carol L. Osler, 2000. "Support for resistance: technical analysis and intraday exchange rates," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Jul, pages 53-68.
    14. 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.
    15. Oberlechner, Thomas & Hocking, Sam, 2004. "Information sources, news, and rumors in financial markets: Insights into the foreign exchange market," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 407-424, June.
    16. Kari Heimonen, 2009. "The euro–dollar exchange rate and equity flows," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(4), pages 202-209, October.
    17. Mr. Christiane Nickel & Mr. Günter Schmidt & Mr. Georg Stadtmann & Mr. Michael Frenkel, 2001. "The Effects of Capital Controls on Exchange Rate Volatility and Output," IMF Working Papers 2001/187, International Monetary Fund.
    18. Hogan, Warren P. & Batten, Jonathan A., 2005. "Informed and uninformed trading on the Australian dollar," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 61-75.

    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. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Chinn, Menzie David, 2001. "Currency traders and exchange rate dynamics: a survey of the US market," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 439-471, August.
    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. 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..
    4. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Wong, Clement Yuk-Pang, 2000. "A survey of market practitioners' views on exchange rate dynamics," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 401-419, August.
    5. Martin D. D. Evans, 2017. "FX Trading and Exchange Rate Dynamics," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Studies in Foreign Exchange Economics, chapter 5, pages 189-245, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Richard K. Lyons, 2002. "Foreign exchange: macro puzzles, micro tools," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 51-69.
    7. Mr. Torbjorn I. Becker & Mr. Amadou N Sy, 2005. "Were Bid-Ask Spreads in the Foreign Exchange Market Excessive During the Asian Crisis?," IMF Working Papers 2005/034, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Hua, Mingshu, 2009. "A study on foreign exchange dealers' bid-ask spread quote behavior," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 506-523, September.
    9. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Giampaolo Galli & Alberto Giovannini, 1996. "Introduction to "The Microstructure of Foreign Exchange Markets"," NBER Chapters, in: The Microstructure of Foreign Exchange Markets, pages 1-18, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Killeen, William P. & Lyons, Richard K. & Moore, Michael J., 2006. "Fixed versus flexible: Lessons from EMS order flow," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 551-579, June.
    11. Gehrig, Thomas & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2004. "The use of flow analysis in foreign exchange: exploratory evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 573-594, June.
    12. Stenfors, Alexis & Susai, Masayuki, 2019. "Liquidity withdrawal in the FX spot market: A cross-country study using high-frequency data," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 36-57.
    13. Hartmann, Philipp, 1998. "Do Reuters spreads reflect currencies' differences in global trading activity?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 757-784, October.
    14. 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.
    15. Chionis, Dionysios & MacDonald, Ronald, 1997. "Some tests of market microstructure hypotheses in the foreign exchange market," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 203-229, October.
    16. Yin-Wong Cheung & Menzie D. Chinn & Ian W. Marsh, 2004. "How do UK-based foreign exchange dealers think their market operates?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(4), pages 289-306.
    17. 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.
    18. 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.
    19. Laurini, Márcio Poletti & Furlani, Luiz Gustavo Cassilatti & Portugal, Marcelo Savino, 2008. "Empirical market microstructure: An analysis of the BRL/US$ exchange rate market," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 247-265, December.
    20. Rafael Romeu, 2003. "An Intraday Pricing Model of Foreign Exchange Markets," IMF Working Papers 2003/115, International Monetary Fund.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:7416. 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.