This paper investigates the existence of equilibria with information-based block trading in a multiperiod market when no investor is constrained to block trade. Attention is restricted to equilibria in which a strategic uninformed institution (i.e., one which is forced to rebalance its portfolio but is free to choose an optimal rebalancing strategy) is willing to trade a block rather than break up the block into a series of smaller trades. Examples of such equilibria are found and analyzed. A STRIKING FACT ABOUT the New York Stock Exchange is that roughly half of the volume is traded in blocks of over 10,000 shares.1 However, despite the obvious importance of block trading, the types of market microstructures which generate block trades are not well understood. This paper provides a theoretical rationale for block trades by modeling an equilibrium in which blocks are endogenously traded. In particular, we show that, even when a block can be broken up into a sequence of small trades, blocks may still be traded as part of both informed and uninformed investors' optimal trading strategies. The analysis is conducted in a simple market in which there are competitive dealers and specialists, a group of small noise traders, and a strategic institution which trades either to exploit private information or because it is constrained to rebalance its portfolio. The main results about block trading in this setting are as follows:

This paper investigates the existence of equilibria with information-based black trading in a multiperiod market when no investor is constrained to block trade. Attention is restricted to equilibria in which a strategic uninformed institution (i.e., one which is forced to rebalance its portfolio, but is free to choose an optimal rebalancing strategy) is willing to trade a block rather than "break up" the block into a series of smaller trades. Examples of such equilibria are found and analyzed.

This paper investigates the existence of equilibria with information‐based block trading in a multiperiod market when no investor is constrained to block trade. Attention is restricted to equilibria in which a strategic uninformed institution (i.e., one which is forced to rebalance its portfolio but is free to choose an optimal rebalancing strategy) is willing to trade a block rather than “break up” the block into a series of smaller trades. Examples of such equilibria are found and analyzed.

This paper investigates the susceptibility of futures markets to price manipulation in a two-period model with asymmetric information and "cash settlement" futures contracts. Without "physical delivery," strategies based on "corners" or "squeezes" are infeasible. However, uninformed investors still earn positive expected profits by establishing a futures position and then trading in the spot market to manipulate the spot price used to compute the cash settlement at delivery. The authors also show that as the number of manipulators grows, profits from manipulation fall to zero. However, even in the limit, manipulation still has a nontrivial impact on market liquidity. More broadly, they interpret manipulation as a form of endogenous "noise trading" which can arise in multiperiod security markets.

This paper investigates the susceptibility of futures markets to price manipulation in a two‐period model with asymmetric information and “cash settlement” futures contracts. Without “physical delivery,” strategies based on “corners” or “squeezes” are infeasible. However, uninformed investors still earn positive expected profits by establishing a futures position and then trading in the spot market to manipulate the spot price used to compute the cash settlement at delivery. We also show that as the number of manipulators grows, profits from manipulation fall to zero. However, even in the limit, manipulation still has a nontrivial impact on market liquidity. More broadly, we interpret manipulation as a form of endogenous “noise trading” which can arise in multiperiod security markets.

We develop an equilibrium model of the term structure of forward prices for storable commodities. As a consequence of a nonnegativity constraint on inventory, the spot commodity has an embedded timing option that is absent in forward contracts. This option's value changes over time due to both endogenous inventory and exogenous transitory shocks to supply and demand. Our model makes predictions about volatilities of forward prices at different horizons and shows how conditional violations of the ‘Samuelson effect’ occur. We extend the model to incorporate a permanent second factor and calibrate the model to crude oil futures data.