Journal Article Liquidity Provision with Limit Orders and a Strategic Specialist Get access Duane J. Seppi Duane J. Seppi Carnegie Mellon University Address correspondence to Duane Seppi, Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Financial Studies, Volume 10, Issue 1, January 1997, Pages 103–150, https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/10.1.103 Published: 04 June 2015

The author investigate the empirical importance of information revelation in the pricing of block trades. In particular, he examine whether block prices are correlated with the unexpected part of firms' quarterly earnings. For his sample of block trades, information revelation does indeed appear to be a significant factor shortly before earnings announcements. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.

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 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.

We present a microstructure model of competition for order flow between exchanges based on liquidity provision. We find that neither a pure limit order market (PLM) nor a hybrid specialist/limit order market (HM) structure is competition-proof. A PLM can always be supported in equilibrium as the dominant market (i.e., where the hybrid limit book is empty), but an HM can also be supported, for some market parameterizations, as the dominant market. We also show the possible coexistence of competing markets. Order preferencing—that is, decisions about where orders are routed when investors are indifferent—is a key determinant of market viability. Welfare comparisons show that competition between exchanges can increase as well as reduce the cost of liquidity.

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.