Over-the-counter Markets Research Articles

The Anatomy of Three Scandals: Conspiracies, Beauty Contests, and Sabotage in OTC Markets

Until the Great Recession, the largely unregulated over-the-counter (OTC) markets had received little attention from compliance officers, regulators, and lawmakers. Perhaps more important than the lack of regulatory framework as such, the markets were widely perceived to be sufficiently large, liquid, efficient and competitive to withstand manipulative and collusive attempts by traders and banks. However, the status quo was radically altered in 2012, when it was revealed that major international banks had systematically manipulated the world’s most widely used interest rate benchmark. The “LIBOR scandal” was quickly followed by a “Forex scandal” and the discovery of grave misconduct in a range of other OTC benchmarks and markets. At the time of writing, government bonds traded on electronic trading platforms are under particular scrutiny. This paper draws on the concepts of conspiracies, beauty contests, and sabotage to reflect on why it took so long for the scandals to be discovered.

Modern OTC market structure and liquidity: The tale of three tiers

OTC Markets Group organizes stocks that trade over-the-counter (OTC) into three marketplaces (OTCQX, OTCQB, and Pink) based on firm quality and disclosure practices. We examine trading within these tiers and find that stocks in higher tiers are more liquid than stocks in lower tiers. After a series of difference-in-differences tests comparing a matched sample of stocks that change tiers, we find that liquidity improves (deteriorates) for stocks moving up (down) the tiered market structure, suggesting that the tier designations resolve uncertainty and increase firm visibility. Our results show that liquidity differences between tiers is attributable to OTC market structure.

Intermediation in over-the-counter markets with price transparency

A salient feature of over-the-counter (OTC) markets is intermediation: dealers buy from and sell to customers as well as other dealers. Traditionally, the search-theoretic literature of OTC markets has rationalized this as a consequence of random meetings and ex post bargaining between investors. We show that neither of these are necessary conditions for intermediation. We build a model of a fully decentralized OTC market in which search is directed and sellers post prices ex ante. Intermediation arises naturally as an equilibrium outcome for a broad class of matching functions commonly used in the literature. We further explore, both analytically and numerically, how the extent of intermediation depends on the nature of frictions and model primitives. Our numerical exercises also contrast the model's equilibrium implications to those of a benchmark model with random meetings and ex post bargaining.

Strategic Analysis of the Turkish Over-the-Counter Drugs and Non-pharmaceutical Products Market

The over-the-counter (OTC) drug (i.e., non-prescription drugs) market is growing significantly on a global scale. Our study reviews strategies for OTCs, together with other non-pharmaceutical products, such as herbal products, dietary supplements, and other healthcare products. The aim of this study is to analyze the expanded OTC industry to offer possible strategic solutions for existing problems. We utilized integrated SWOT and Fuzzy Analytic Network Process analyses, together with quantitative analysis covering industry professionals' perspectives. Our findings showed that the most suitable market strategies are WO2 (i.e., to use information and digital technologies, including mobile applications and social media, to reduce marketing costs), SO2 (i.e., to promote self-medication/self-care to grow the OTC market and invest in information and communication technologies for this purpose), and ST2 (i.e., to improve health literacy and increase access to accurate and understandable information via alternative channels, such as the internet and social media). These key strategies are closely related to the utilization of digital technologies. Other strategies, such as SO1 (i.e., to encourage pharmacists to provide consulting for OTC products, which carry high profitability) and ST1 (i.e., to undertake stakeholder training programs to ensure production quality and introduce safe use to improve community health), were examined in detail, and their outcomes were interpreted in this study. Given the impact of digital transformation, the same strategies can be implemented for other emerging OTC markets. This study underlines the importance of the OTC sector as one of the main drivers for improving community health and reducing health costs.

Regulatory Enforcement in OTC Markets

Regulators of over-the-counter (OTC) markets face a unique enforcement challenge. OTC markets are particularly susceptible to investor fraud, but prior research indicates regulators prefer to focus their enforcement efforts on larger, exchange-listed firms. We shed light on the SEC’s tailored approach to enforcement in OTC markets by examining the SEC’s most common regulatory action against OTC firms—trading suspensions. We find that approximately half of all SEC suspensions are due to the targeted firms’ delinquency in filing required documents with the SEC. A relatively small percentage of suspensions are explicitly reactive to suspicious disclosure or trading behavior. The remaining suspensions are shell company eliminations that the SEC alleges help to prevent future fraud. We find, however, that these allegedly preventative suspensions are more likely to occur in stocks that already exhibit recent indicators of fraud, and that the SEC’s practice of suspending shell companies does little to prevent future fraud.

Size matters for OTC market makers: General results and dimensionality reduction techniques

AbstractIn most over‐the‐counter (OTC) markets, a small number of market makers provide liquidity to other market participants. More precisely, for a list of assets, they set prices at which they agree to buy and sell. Market makers face therefore an interesting optimization problem: they need to choose bid and ask prices for making money while mitigating the risk associated with holding inventory in a volatile market. Many market‐making models have been proposed in the academic literature, most of them dealing with single‐asset market making whereas market makers are usually in charge of a long list of assets. The rare models tackling multiasset market making suffer however from the curse of dimensionality when it comes to the numerical approximation of the optimal quotes. The goal of this paper is to propose a dimensionality reduction technique to address multiasset market making by using a factor model. Moreover, we generalize existing market‐making models by the addition of an important feature: the existence of different transaction sizes and the possibility for the market makers in OTC markets to answer different prices to requests with different sizes.

Expertise, Information, and Dealer-intermediated OTC Markets

In most over-the-counter (OTC) markets, a few dealers build large research teams and account for major proportions of customer trades. We endogenize dealer expertise and size in a model in which each customer values such expertise and can choose one dealer with whom to trade. The equilibrium market structure is driven by two countervailing effects when more customers concentrate in a dealer: the dealer acquires more expertise and enjoys greater bargaining power, with the former effect benefiting and the latter hurting these customers. Multiple equilibria emerge and ex-ante identical dealers may differ substantially in equilibrium. While social welfare always increases when customers concentrate in fewer dealers, customers fare better in equilibria with intermediate levels of concentration. Scarcity of public information tends to intensify market concentration and inefficient dealers can capture more customers.

Smart Derivatives Contracting: Automating Interest Rate Swaps in the Over-the-Counter (OTC) Market with the DAML

The over-the-counter (OTC) market sees the majority of trading volume in the finance industry, yet it remains vastly unregulated. Inherent to its nature are issues with transparency, efficiency and security, which have been barely addressed by legislators post the 2008 crisis. We propose that the utilization of Smart Contracts in the OTC market and creation of “smart derivatives”, solves the majority of issues that are associated with the market. While other researchers have debated on this matter and proposed the use of Smart Contracts in OTC markets, there are no papers offering an example of practical implementation. We selected interest rate swaps (IRS) as the test-case derivative for implementation in the form of a smart contract. Having unpacked the mathematical and theoretical framework behind structuring and pricing IRS, we produced a Vasicek Simulated Yield Curve from the Ten Year Constant Maturity Treasury Rates and found that the curve was inverted, which, combined with a characteristic LIBOR Simulated Yield Curve pointed to an increasingly negative swap spread for longer maturities that was demonstrated with a plotted Swap Spread. The parameters of the model were derived from live market data through Maximum Likelihood Estimation with Monte Carlo Simulation of Euler Scheme discretized Vasicek instantaneous rates. We concluded that short term interest rate swap contracts were preferable and implemented a one-year Interest Rate Swap by instantiating the DAML Ledger Sandbox. The implementation offers the likely innovation of merging a Swap Execution Facility and a Swap Data Repository into one platform, ensuring end-to-end automation, as well as providing the benefits of visibility, while preserving anonymity, improving efficiency and security in the market.

Private and public liquidity provision in over‐the‐counter markets

We show that trade frictions in over‐the‐counter (OTC) markets result in inefficient private liquidity provision. We develop a dynamic model of market‐based financial intermediation with a two‐way interaction between primary credit markets and secondary OTC markets. Private allocations are generically inefficient due to a congestion externality operating through market liquidity in the OTC market. This inefficiency can lead to liquidity that is suboptimally low or high compared to the second best, providing a rationale for the regulation and public provision of liquidity. Moreover, our model characterizes a transmission channel of quantitative easing or tightening that operates through liquidity premia.

Information Disclosure in Dynamic OTC Markets

This paper studies how mandatory transparency (through TRACE), along with long term incentive of informed dealers, affect market price informativeness, liquidity and welfare in dynamic over-the-counter (OTC) markets. We show public disclosure of additional information about past trades, paradoxically, makes the markets more opaque, by reducing market price informativeness. Thus, surprisingly, the transparency requirements of the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act may make the markets more opaque. However, this market opacity creates liquidity and increases welfare. To enhance financial transparency via improving price informativeness as well as market liquidity and welfare, an effective way is to randomly audit dealers.

Bilateral vs. Central Counterparty Clearing in OTC Markets: Counterparty Exposures, Allocation Efficiency, and Applications

I construct a model of over-the-counter (OTC) trading to study equilibrium allocation properties under bilateral clearing (BC) and central counterparty (CCP) clearing of OTC derivatives. I show how CCP mutualizes individual counterparty exposures and prevents massive equilibrium defaults. I define allocation efficiency, show inefficient allocation under BC, and that CCP may improve efficiency. I also apply the model to produce different levels of equilibrium collateral requirement under CCP and to illustrate an aggregate risk-induced systemic CCP default.

Managing Counterparty Risk in OTC Markets

We study how banks manage their default risk before bilaterally negotiating the quantities and prices of over-the-counter (OTC) contracts resembling credit default swaps (CDSs). We show that the costly actions exerted by banks to reduce their default probabilities are not socially optimal. Depending on the imposed trade size limits, risk-management costs and sellers' bargaining power, banks may switch from choosing default risk levels above the social optimum to reducing them even below the social optimum. We use a unique and comprehensive data set of bilateral exposures from the CDS market to test the main model implications on the OTC market structure: (i) intermediation is done by low-risk banks with medium credit exposure; (ii) all banks with high credit exposures are net buyers of CDSs, and low-risk banks with low credit exposures are the main net sellers; and (iii) heterogeneity in post-trade credit exposures is higher for riskier banks and smaller for safer banks.

Is Transparency a Value on OTC Markets? Challenging Industry Registers to Escape Categorization.

In this paper, we examine how categorization is resisted. We analyze the way organizations draw on industry registers to resist or adapt to changes that will potentially alter the definition and nature of the markets in which they compete. We approach this question through a qualitative study of the heated debate over the new regulation of over-the-counter (OTC) financial markets in Europe between 2010 and 2011. Our paper enriches the existing literature on the political nature of categorization. Our results show that in response to unwanted change, incumbent firms try to create incommensurability with their own industry’s standard cultural register. Most importantly, this incommensurability is not argued in the name of any higher-order sets of values. Our main contribution lies in the article’s focus on the way powerful actors resist categorization, highlighting the link between forms of commensuration and the status of the actors who attempt to instrument it.

Liquidity and Counterparty Risk in OTC Markets

I study dispersion of CDS premia in a theoretical over-the-counter (OTC) economy. Agents have heterogeneous expectations about counterparty and reference entity default rates. In equilibrium, spreads of CDS contracts vary based on counterparty characteristics even if reference entity risk is fixed. Price distortions from counterparty risk are more pronounced in markets with less liquidity. Heterogeneous beliefs imply agents do better than break-even from trade in expectation. I derive an equilibrium pricing kernel that allocates expected gains from trade between counterparties based on their beliefs and relative bargaining power. The model suggests central clearing counterparties will have more impact on prices in markets that are less liquid. I show the widely-used risk-neutral CDS spread is a special case of the spread obtained in the search model.

Reforming OTC Markets: The Politics and Economics of Technical Fixes

The paper focuses on financial transactions, addressing over-the-counter (OTC) trading of derivatives, which many analyses of the recent financial crisis argue produced significant problems. This area of financial activity grew massively from the 1990s, facilitated by legal developments in both the US and the UK that ruled out any state regulation of the market whilst at the same time affirming that the contracts made in the area were fully legally enforceable in US and UK law. At the same time, the private association, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), developed the Model Contract and international private soft law agreements that were generally respected by national legal systems and provided an agreed framework for OTC contracts. The paper explores how this lack of public regulation was legitimated, and the interests which lay behind this legitimation process. It then considers how the financial crisis and the role of OTC derivatives forced a re-opening of the issue of how these markets should be regulated. The paper explores the interplay between what may be described as technical fixes to regulatory problems, on the one hand, and the efforts of private and public actors to defend their interests by shaping the new markets in particular ways, on the other.

Late entrant over‐the‐counter and Rx market entry strategies

PurposeThis paper aims to explore market dynamics and strategic issues that contribute to a late entrant's success in achieving market leadership in the prescription (Rx) and over‐the‐counter (OTC) markets. In the Rx market, consumers must receive physicians' approval before purchasing the product. In the OTC market, consumers make the final drug choice.Design/methodology/approachData on sales (both Rx and OTC) and direct‐to‐consumer advertising expenditures for nine gastrointestinal drug products were obtained covering a 17‐year period. Ordinary least squares regression was employed.FindingsThe findings show that late‐market entrants, despite existing challenges, can become market leaders. This applies to both the Rx and OTC markets, via varying mechanisms.Originality/valueThis study is unique in demonstrating the differential mechanism in achieving market success for late entrants in the Rx and OTC markets.

Yield to Commission

The principle of maximizing the “yield to commission” is a normal human trait and one that applies to sales in just about any industry. In the over-the-counter (OTC) world of complex assets containing subprime debt, however, everybody besides the dealers seems to be the losers. OTC instruments offer dealers far better profits than exchange-traded contracts, but at a cost in terms of inferior price discovery, a lack of liquidity support from other dealers, and little or no secondary market support for buy side investors. The use of illiquid and opaque OTC instruments not only was an important factor in the failures of Long Term Capital Management, Amaranth Advisers, and Bear Stearns, but also threatened the stability of other firms and in general caused substantial market volatility, both for OTC markets and the traditional exchanges. The author observes that there is a substantial “silent majority” of investors, advisers, and risk professionals who would be very pleased to see much of the OTC market flows in derivatives and structured assets move back into the daylight of open price discovery and liquidity that an exchange-based model provides. <b>TOPICS:</b>Volatility measures, exchange-traded funds and applications

Price Dispersion in OTC Markets: A New Measure of Liquidity

In this paper, we model price dispersion effects in over-the-counter (OTC) markets to show that in the presence of inventory risk for dealers and search costs for investors, traded prices may deviate from the expected market valuation of an asset. We interpret this deviation as a liquidity effect and develop a new liquidity measure quantifying the price dispersion in the context of the US corporate bond market. This market offers a unique opportunity to study liquidity effects since, from October 2004 onwards, all OTC transactions in this market have to be reported to a common database known as the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE). Furthermore, market-wide average price quotes are available from Markit Group Limited, a financial information provider. Thus, it is possible, for the first time, to directly observe deviations between transaction prices and the expected market valuation of securities. We quantify and analyze our new liquidity measure for this market and find significant price dispersion effects that cannot be simply captured by bid-ask spreads. We show that our new measure is indeed related to liquidity by regressing it on commonly-used liquidity proxies and find a strong relation between our proposed liquidity measure and bond characteristics, as well as trading activity variables. Furthermore, we evaluate the reliability of end-of-day marks that traders use to value their positions. Our evidence suggests that the price deviations are significantly larger and more volatile than previously assumed. Overall, the results presented here improve our understanding of the drivers of liquidity and are important for many applications in OTC markets, in general.

Derivative Market Competition: OTC Markets Versus Organized Derivative Exchanges

Chapter I - Derivative Market Competition: OTC Markets Versus Organized Derivative Exchanges Recent regulatory initiatives in the United States have again raised the issue of a ''level regulatory and supervisory playing field'' and the degree of competition globally between over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives and organized derivative exchange (ODE) markets. This chapter models some important aspects of how an ODE market interrelates with the OTC markets. It analyzes various ways in which an ODE market can respond to competition from the OTC markets and considers whether ODE markets would actually benefit from a more level playing field. Among other factors, such as different transaction costs, different abilities to mitigate credit risk play a significant role in determining the degree of competition between the two types of markets. This implies that a potentially important service ODE markets can provide OTC market participants is to extend clearing services to them. Such services would allow the OTC markets to focus more on providing less competitive contracts/innovations and instead customize their contracts to specific investors’ risk preferences and needs. Chapter II – Crisis Resolution and Private Sector Adaptation Efforts at crisis resolution that succeed in reducing potential inefficiencies and instability in the international financial system are in the interest of both the private and the public sector. Unlike in the domestic context, in the international context, in the absence of clearly established rules of the game, the approaches adopted toward crisis resolution, and the extent to which they are interpreted by market participants as setting a precedent, can have profound implications for the nature and structure of international capital flows. The key conclusion of this chapter is that recent experiences with payment suspensions and bond restructurings are limited as guides to determining the future success or failures of these initiatives, as the private sector most likely has adapted in order to minimize any unwanted public sector involvement. Chapter III - European Equity Market Integration: Cyclical or Structural? Reviewing the empirical evidence of equity market integration in the European Union, the chapter finds a significant increase in the importance of global sector factors for a number of industries. Unlike most past studies, which only covered developments during the bull market of the late nineties, the results presented in this chapter suggest that the degree of Euroland equity market integration has declined gradually following the bursting of the TMT bubble. This seems to suggest that the findings of previous studies that Euroland equity markets were nearly fully financially integrated is worth revisiting. There are, however, several good reasons to believe that the structural factors driving European equity market integration have yet to play themselves out fully. Institutional investors both outside the Euroland area and within have substantial untapped capacity to take on Euroland exposures and invest additionally in Euroland equities.

Derivative Market Competition: OTC Versus Organized Derivative Exchanges

Recent regulatory initiatives in the United States have again raised the issue of a 'level regulatory and supervisory playing field' and the degree of competition globally between over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives and organized derivative exchange (ODE) markets. This paper models some important aspects of how an ODE market interrelates with the OTC markets. It analyzes various ways in which an ODE market can respond to competition from the OTC markets and considers whether ODE markets would actually benefit from a more level playing field. Among other factors, such as different transaction costs, different abilities to mitigate credit risk play a significant role in determining the degree of competition between the two types of markets. This implies that a potentially important service ODE markets can provide OTC market participants is to extend clearing services to them. Such services would allow the OTC markets to focus more on providing less competitive contracts/innovations and instead customize its contracts to specific investors' risk preferences and needs.