Trading Activity and Realized Volatility: Evidence with Decomposed Trading Volume and Order Imbalance

Abstract

This study investigates the relation between decomposed trading volume (number of trades and average trade size) and realized volatility and its continuous and jump components. Considering buyer-initiated and seller-initiated trades and investigate whether buyer and seller initiated trades as two factors of realized volatility, we investigate whether they have an asymmetric effect on realized volatility. The stocks in the ASX50 sampled over the period January 1996 to April 2010 reveal that realized volatility and its continuous component in the returns has a positive association with trading volume, number of trades and average trade size. The association between the jump component of realized volatility and trading volume and the number of trades is negative. The buyer and seller initiated trades do not appear to explain realized volatility well. These results are robust to the GMM estimation and in sub-period analysis.