High Frequency Market Making: Implications for Liquidity

Abstract

We analyze the consequences for liquidity provision of competing market makers operating at high frequency. Competition increases overall liquidity and deters the fast market maker’s use of order flow signals. Using various liquidity metrics, we find that the market maker provides more liquidity as he gets faster but shies away from it as volatility increases. We then provide a model-based analysis of the impact of four widely discussed policies designed to regulate high frequency trading: imposing a transactions tax, setting minimum-time limits before quotes can be cancelled, taxing the cancellations of limit orders, and replacing time priority with a pro rata or random allocation. We find that these policies are largely unable to induce high frequency market makers to provide liquidity that is robust across volatility events