Optimal liquidation using extended trading close for multiple trading days

Abstract

The extended trading close (ETC) provides institutional investors an opportunity to trade at the closing price after the regular trading session (RTS) and disclosing the order imbalances to other market participants. ETCs exist in the Nasdaq, the SSE STAR, the SZSE ChiNext and the TWSE. To help a risk-averse institutional investor take advantage of the RTS and the ETC for liquidation, we develop a multistage dynamic programming model including the ETC, and derive recursive solutions for the multiple trading days scenario with closed-form solutions for the scenario with only two trading days. We also verify that the ETC is able to mitigate extreme price movements caused by fast liquidation, which is also a goal of the ETC set out by the SSE STAR and the SZSE ChiNext. Finally, we derive three results. First, an institutional investor can reduce execution costs after the introduction of the ETC. Second, a critical trading day exists, and to avoid prematurely revealing trading intentions, the investor should not trade in the ETC until such day. Third, even though the ETC orders submitted by the investor are unfilled, implementation of the ETC encourages the investor to change the liquidation strategy in the RTS, which reduces extreme price movements. In summary, the practical implications of this paper are that the investor should not trade during the ETC on the front few days to avoid prematurely revealing the investor’s trading intention by unfilled orders in the ETC and that introducing the ETC can reduce liquidation costs and extreme price movements.