Foreign institutions and the behavior of liquidity following macroeconomic announcements

Abstract

This study uses a transaction-level dataset from the index futures market to investigate whether changes in the active participation ratio of foreign institutions explain the behavior of market liquidity following scheduled macroeconomic announcements. This ratio is positively associated with the bid-ask spread in general, but its marginal effect diminishes as the ratio increases. Announcement impacts vanish after controlling for the active participation of foreign investors.