Correlation of coming limit price with order book in stock markets

We examine the correlation of the limit price with the order book, when a limit order comes. We analyzed the Rebuild Order Book of Stock Exchange Electronic Trading Service, which is the centralized order book market of London Stock Exchange. As a result, the limit price is broadly distributed around the best price according to a power-law, and it is not randomly drawn from the distribution, but has a strong correlation with the size of cumulative unexecuted limit orders on the price. It was also found that the limit price, on the coarse-grained price scale, tends to gather around the price which has a large size of cumulative unexecuted limit orders.     

Effect of Trader Composition on Stock Market

In this study, we build a double auction market model, which containstwo types of agent traders, i.e., the noise traders and fundamentalists, to investigate the effect of the trader composition on the stock market. It is found that, the non-trivial Hurst exponent and the fat-tailed distribution of transaction prices can be observed at any ratio of the noise traders. Analyses on the price variation properties, including the Hurst exponent and the price variation region, show that these properties are stable when the ratio is moderate. However, the non-price variation properties, including the trading volume and the profitability of the two kinds of agents, do not keep stable untrivially in any interval of the ratio of noise traders.     

Robot traders can prevent extreme events in complex stock markets

If stock markets are complex, monetary policy and even financial regulation may be useless to prevent bubbles and crashes. Here, we suggest the use of robot traders as an anti-bubble decoy. To make our case, we put forward a new stochastic cellular automata model that generates an emergent stock price dynamics as a result of the interaction between traders. After introducing socially integrated robot traders, the stock price dynamics can be controlled, so as to make the market more Gaussian.     

Why technical trading may be successful? A lesson from the agent-based modeling

It is shown using a simple agent-based market dynamics model that if the technical traders are able to affect the market liquidity, their concerted actions can move the market price in the direction favorable to their strategy.     

Statistical approach to partial equilibrium analysis

A statistical approach to market equilibrium and efficiency analysis is proposed in this paper. One factor that governs the exchange decisions of traders in a market, named willingness price, is highlighted and constitutes the whole theory. The supply and demand functions are formulated as the distributions of corresponding willing exchange over the willingness price. The laws of supply and demand can be derived directly from these distributions. The characteristics of excess demand function are analyzed and the necessary conditions for the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium point of the market are specified. The rationing rates of buyers and sellers are introduced to describe the ratio of realized exchange to willing exchange, and their dependence on the market price is studied in the cases of shortage and surplus. The realized market surplus, which is the criterion of market efficiency, can be written as a function of the distributions of willing exchange and the rationing rates. With this approach we can strictly prove that a market is efficient in the state of equilibrium.     

Statistical properties of agent-based models in markets with continuous double auction mechanism

Real world markets display power-law features in variables such as price fluctuations in stocks. To further understand market behavior, we have conducted a series of market experiments on our web-based prediction market platform which allows us to reconstruct transaction networks among traders. From these networks, we are able to record the degree of a trader, the size of a community of traders, the transaction time interval among traders and other variables that are of interest. The distributions of all these variables show power-law behavior. On the other hand, agent-based models have been proposed to study the properties of real financial markets. We here study the statistical properties of these agent-based models and compare them with the results from our web-based market experiments. In this work, three agent-based models are studied, namely, zero-intelligence (ZI), zero-intelligence-plus (ZIP) and Gjerstad-Dickhaut (GD). Computer simulations of variables based on these three agent-based models were carried out. We found that although being the most naive agent-based model, ZI indeed best describes the properties observed in real markets. Our study suggests that the basic ingredient to produce the observed properties from real world markets could in fact be the result of a continuously evolving dynamical system with basic features similar to the ZI model.     

Modeling stock price dynamics by continuum percolation system and relevant complex systems analysis

The continuum percolation system is developed to model a random stock price process in this work. Recent empirical research has demonstrated various statistical features of stock price changes, the financial model aiming at understanding price fluctuations needs to define a mechanism for the formation of the price, in an attempt to reproduce and explain this set of empirical facts. The continuum percolation model is usually referred to as a random coverage process or a Boolean model, the local interaction or influence among traders is constructed by the continuum percolation, and a cluster of continuum percolation is applied to define the cluster of traders sharing the same opinion about the market. We investigate and analyze the statistical behaviors of normalized returns of the price model by some analysis methods, including power-law tail distribution analysis, chaotic behavior analysis and Zipf analysis. Moreover, we consider the daily returns of Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index from January 1997 to July 2011, and the comparisons of return behaviors between the actual data and the simulation data are exhibited.     

Self-organized model for information spread in financial markets

A self-organized model with social percolation process is proposed to describe the propagations of information for different trading ways across a social system and the automatic formation of various groups within market traders. Based on the market structure of this model, some stylized observations of real market can be reproduced, including the slow decay of volatility correlations, and the fat tail distribution of price returns which is found to cross over to an exponential-type asymptotic decay in different dimensional systems. Received 15 March 2000     

An interacting-agent model of financial markets from the viewpoint of nonextensive statistical mechanics

In this paper we present an interacting-agent model of stock markets. We describe a stock market through an Ising-like model in order to formulate the tendency of traders to be influenced by the other traders’ investment attitudes [Kaizoji, Physica A 287 (2000) 493], and formulate the traders’ decision-making regarding investment as the maximum entropy principle for nonextensive entropy [C. Tsallis, J. Stat. Phys. 52 (1988) 479]. We demonstrate that the equilibrium probability distribution function of the traders’ investment attitude is the q-exponential distribution. We also show that the power-law distribution of the volatility of price fluctuations, which is often demonstrated in empirical studies can be explained naturally by our model which originates in the collective crowd behavior of many interacting-agents.     

Using conditional probability to identify trends in intra-day high-frequency equity pricing

By examining the conditional probabilities of price movements in a popular US stock over different high-frequency intra-day timespans, varying levels of trend predictability are identified. This study demonstrates the existence of predictable short-term trends in the market; understanding the probability of price movement can be useful to high-frequency traders. Price movement was examined in trade-by-trade (tick) data along with temporal timespans between 1 s to 30 min for 52 one-week periods for one highly-traded stock. We hypothesize that much of the initial predictability of trade-by-trade (tick) data is due to traditional market dynamics, or the bouncing of the price between the stock’s bid and ask. Only after timespans of between 5 to 10 s does this cease to explain the predictability; after this timespan, two consecutive movements in the same direction occur with higher probability than that of movements in the opposite direction. This pattern holds up to a one-minute interval, after which the strength of the pattern weakens.     

Contagion effects in a chartist-fundamentalist model with time delays

In this paper two models of speculative markets are developed to study the effects of feedback mechanisms in financial markets. In the first model, a crash market model couples a linear chartist-fundamentalist model with time delays with a log-periodic market index I(t) through direct coupling. Numerical solutions to the model show that asset prices exhibit significant persistence as a result of the coupling to the log-periodic market index. An extension to include endogenous wealth dynamics shows that the chartists benefit from the persistent dynamics induced by the coupling. The second model is a two-asset model represented by a 2-dimensional delay-differential equation. Asset one price exhibits limit cycle dynamics while in the second market asset prices follow stable damped oscillations. The markets are coupled through a diffusive coupling term. Solutions to the coupled model show that the dynamics of asset two changes fundamentally with the price now exhibiting a limit cycle. The stable converging dynamics is replaced with limit cycle oscillations around the fundamental.     

Mutual Information between Order Book Layers

The order book is a list of all current buy or sell orders for a given financial security. The rise of electronic stock exchanges introduced a debate about the relevance of the information it encapsulates of the activity of traders. Here, we approach this topic from a theoretical perspective, estimating the amount of mutual information between order book layers, i.e., different buy/sell layers, which are aggregated by buy/sell orders. We show that (i) layers are not independent (in the sense that the mutual information is statistically larger than zero), (ii) the mutual information between layers is small (compared to the joint entropy), and (iii) the mutual information between layers increases when comparing the uppermost layers to the deepest layers analyzed (i.e., further away from the market price). Our findings, and our method for estimating mutual information, are relevant to developing trading strategies that attempt to utilize the information content of the limit order book.     

Dependence structure of the Korean stock market in high frequency data

This paper analyzes the evolution of the dependence structure for various time window intervals, known as Epps effect, using the Trade and Quote data of 663 actively traded stocks in Korean stock market. It is found that the random matrix theory analysis could not represent the dependence structure of the stock market in the microstructure regime. The Cook-Johnson copula is introduced as a parsimonious alternative method to handle this problem, and the existence of the Epps effect is confirmed for the 663 stocks using high frequency data. It was also found that large capitalization companies tend to have a stronger dependence structure, except for the largest capitalization group, since the phenomenon of price level resistance leads to the weak dependence structure in the largest capitalization group. In addition, grouping the industry as a sub-portfolio is an appropriate approach for hour interval traders, whereas this approach is not a strategy recommended for high frequency traders.     

Regularities and irregularities in order flow data

We identify and analyze statistical regularities and irregularities in the recent order flow of different NASDAQ stocks, focusing on the positions where orders are placed in the order book. This includes limit orders being placed outside of the spread, inside the spread and (effective) market orders. Based on the pairwise comparison of the order flow of different stocks, we perform a clustering of stocks into groups with similar behavior. This is useful to assess systemic aspects of stock price dynamics. We find that limit order placement inside the spread is strongly determined by the dynamics of the spread size. Most orders, however, arrive outside of the spread. While for some stocks order placement on or next to the quotes is dominating, deeper price levels are more important for other stocks. As market orders are usually adjusted to the quote volume, the impact of market orders depends on the order book structure, which we find to be quite diverse among the analyzed stocks as a result of the way limit order placement takes place.     

Analysis of Individual High-Frequency Traders’ Buy–Sell Order Strategy Based on Multivariate Hawkes Process

Traders who instantly react to changes in the financial market and place orders in milliseconds are called high-frequency traders (HFTs). HFTs have recently become more prevalent and attracting attention in the study of market microstructures. In this study, we used data to track the order history of individual HFTs in the USD/JPY forex market to reveal how individual HFTs interact with the order book and what strategies they use to place their limit orders. Specifically, we introduced an 8-dimensional multivariate Hawkes process that included the excitations due to the occurrence of limit orders, cancel orders, and executions in the order book change, and performed maximum likelihood estimations of the limit order processes for 134 HFTs. As a result, we found that the limit order generation processes of 104 of the 134 HFTs were modeled by a multivariate Hawkes process. In this analysis of the EBS market, the HFTs whose strategies were modeled by the Hawkes process were categorized into three groups according to their excitation mechanisms: (1) those excited by executions; (2) those that were excited by the occurrences or cancellations of limit orders; and (3) those that were excited by their own orders.     

Characterizing limit order prices

A computational model of a limit order book is used to study the effect of different limit order distribution offsets. Reference prices such as same side/contra side best market prices and last traded price are considered in combination with different price offset distributions. We show that when characterizing limit order prices, varying the offset distribution only produces different behavior when the reference price is the contra side best price. Irrespective of the underlying mechanisms used in computing the limit order prices, the shape of the price graph and the behavior of the average order book profile distribution are strikingly similar in all the considered reference prices/offset distributions. This implies that existing averaging methods can cancel variabilities in limit order book shape/attributes and may be misleading.     

Mechanistic origin of dragon-kings in a population of competing agents

We analyze the mechanistic origins of the extreme behaviors that arise in an idealized model of a population of competing agents, such as traders in a market. These extreme behaviors exhibit the defining characteristics of ‘dragon-kings’. Our model comprises heterogeneous agents who repeatedly compete for some limited resource, making binary choices based on the strategies that they have in their possession. It generalizes the well-known Minority Game by allowing agents whose strategies have not made accurate recent predictions, to step out of the competition until their strategies improve. This generates a complex dynamical interplay between the number V of active agents (mimicking market volume) and the imbalance D between the decisions made (mimicking excess demand). The wide spectrum of extreme behaviors which emerge, helps to explain why no unique relationship has been identified between the price and volume during real market crashes and rallies.     

From market games to real-world markets

This paper uses the development of multi-agent market models to present a unified approach to the joint questions of how financial market movements may be simulated, predicted, and hedged against. We first present the results of agent-based market simulations in which traders equipped with simple buy/sell strategies and limited information compete in speculatory trading. We examine the effect of different market clearing mechanisms and show that implementation of a simple Walrasian auction leads to unstable market dynamics. We then show that a more realistic out-of-equilibrium clearing process leads to dynamics that closely resemble real financial movements, with fat-tailed price increments, clustered volatility and high volume autocorrelation. We then show that replacing the `synthetic' price history used by these simulations with data taken from real financial time-series leads to the remarkable result that the agents can collectively learn to identify moments in the market where profit is attainable. Hence on real financial data, the system as a whole can perform better than random. We then employ the formalism of Bouchaud in conjunction with agent based models to show that in general risk cannot be eliminated from trading with these models. We also show that, in the presence of transaction costs, the risk of option writing is greatly increased. This risk, and the costs, can however be reduced through the use of a delta-hedging strategy with modified, time-dependent volatility structure. Received 30 August 2000     

Impact of asymmetric information on market evolution

In this paper, we propose an agent-based model to study the impact of asymmetric information on market evolution. In each period, buyers and sellers are randomly matched. The condition for the transaction being performed depends on the comparison between valuations of buyers and sellers on the good they trade. We introduce cognitive capability to describe buyers’ valuation on a good and valuation ratio to reflect the gap between two kinds of traders’ valuations on the good. The market outcomes are sorted into four phases in the parameter space of these two variables. Computer simulations show us critical phenomena of phase transition. The model proposed herein is able to demonstrate how the asymmetry of information leads to the adverse selection effect. The model also explains the coexistence of low- and high-quality goods in a market with asymmetric information. We analyze the condition under which the asymmetry of information might not take its effect and find that the gap of valuations between buyers and sellers plays the key role.