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Estimating the profits from trading strategies

Peter J. Knez1,2; Mark J. Ready2

1 Northwestern University · 2 University of Wisconsin–Madison

Review of Financial Studies 1996

Price improvement is the difference between the execution price of an order and the quoted bid or ask when the order was submitted. We show that expected price improvement falls off dramatically as the size of the order approaches the quoted depth, and becomes negative for larger orders. This is particularly important for small firms because the quoted depths are low. Using quoted spreads and depths and our estimate of expected price improvement, we show that trading strategies that attempt to exploit the weekly predictability of small-firm returns would be swamped by transaction costs.

DOI
10.1093/rfs/9.4.1121
Volume
9 (4)
Pages
1121-1163
Language
en
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