We show whether central clearing of a particular class of derivatives lowers counterparty risk. For plausible cases, adding a central clearing counterparty (CCP) for a class of derivatives such as credit default swaps reduces netting efficiency, leading to an increase in average exposure to counterparty default. Further, clearing different classes of derivatives in separate CCPs always increases counterparty exposures relative to clearing the combined set of derivatives in a single CCP. We provide theory as well as illustrative numerical examples of these results that are calibrated to notional derivatives position data for major banks.

Market prices are noisy signals of economic fundamentals. In a two-period model, we show that if the central bank uses market prices as guidance for intervention, large strategic investors who benefit from high prices would depress market prices to induce a market-supportive intervention. Stronger anticipated interventions lead to deeper price depressions preintervention and sharper price reversals post-intervention. The central bank intervention harms strategic investors even though it is the investors who tried to mislead the central bank. The model predicts a V-shaped price pattern around central bank interventions, consistent with recent evidence.

We provide novel evidence that arbitrageurs use exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as an avenue to circumvent short-sale constraints at the stock level. Using a large sample of U.S. equity ETF holdings, we document that shorting activity on ETFs rises with the difficulty of shorting underlying stocks. Stocks heavily shorted via their holding ETFs underperform those that are lightly shorted. The return predictability of ETF shorting is distinct from stock-level shorting measures and is concentrated among stocks that face severe arbitrage constraints. These findings suggest that ETFs allow arbitrageurs to target overpriced stocks that are otherwise difficult to short.

We propose a novel trend factor for the Chinese stock market that incorporates both price and volume information to capture dominant individual trading, momentum, and liquidity. We find that volume plays a more significant role in the trend factor for China than for the United States, reflecting the greater retail participation in China. By incorporating this trend factor into the 3-factor model of Liu et al. (2019), we propose a 4-factor model that explains a wide range of stylized facts and 60 representative anomalies. Our study highlights the important role of individual trading in asset pricing, especially in China.