Price Discovery Dynamics Research Articles

The dynamics of price discovery between the U.S. and Chinese soybean market: a wavelet approach to understanding the effects of Sino-US trade conflict and COVID-19 pandemic

During geopolitical crises, the price stability of agricultural commodities is critical for national security. Understanding the dynamics of pricing power between the U.S. and China and how it varies over time can help smaller nations navigate unpredictable moments. This study uses a unified framework and wavelet approach to examine soybean price discovery in the U.S. and China from the standpoints of price interdependence and information flows. We begin by illustrating the integrated link between the soybean futures markets in the U.S. and China, which includes multiple structural breaks. The pricing difference between the two nations acts as the primary information spillover route for their integrated relationship. Furthermore, we show that the direction and degree of information spillover change dramatically in proportion to the strength of the U.S.–Chinese soybean interaction. Finally, we find that China’s recent retaliatory tax on the U.S. soybeans gave the Chinese market a more powerful position in soybean futures price discovery. After the first-stage trade deal was reached, and during the epidemic phase of the coronavirus pandemic, the pricing power of the U.S. soybean market showed no signs of full recovery.

Do spot market auction data help price discovery?

This paper contributes to the price discovery literature by establishing, for the first time, the role of commodity spot market auction data. Using the New Zealand whole milk powder market as an example, we show that auction-level data explain the price discovery dynamics above and beyond determinants previously identified as being relevant to spot and futures market price formation. In particular, the price discovery of the futures market rises with the volume of dairy products traded at the auction, signaling that the volume auctioned induces a change in the trading strategies of futures market participants. The whole milk powder discovery process is found to primarily take place in the spot market, which aligns well with the auction predating the introduction of the futures market, its higher volume, and lower trading costs.

Price discovery between Bitcoin spot markets and exchange traded products

We examine price discovery dynamics between Bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETPs) and spot markets on centralised cryptocurrency exchanges. We apply four popular price discovery measures to ETP and spot transaction data between August 2021 and July 2022. Our results show that price discovery is dominated by the spot market across all measures and sampling frequencies. This implies that ETP markets play a smaller role in the incorporation of new information about Bitcoin prices, and that informed investors largely prefer to trade on spot markets that offer significantly deeper liquidity and operate round the clock.

Price discovery in the CSI 300 Index derivatives markets

AbstractThe price discovery in finance markets has been the focus of many researches. On the basis of 1‐min high‐frequency returns, this paper sets out to examine the dynamics of price discovery between the China Securities Index 300 index and its derivative products: the futures, the index exchange‐traded fund (ETF), and the ETF options. Nonparametric nonlinear method thermal optimal path method is adopted in this study. The empirical evidence shows a clear difference in price discovery ability concerning the three products under investigation, and their rank (sorted by strength) can be presented as options, futures, and ETF. In addition, the leading phenomenon has been verified by the regression method. Furthermore, we find that out‐of‐the‐money options have the strongest price discovery ability among different moneyness option contracts. On this basis, we find that leverage is an important factor affecting the ability of price discovery.

The importance of memory for price discovery in decentralized markets

We study the dynamics of price discovery in decentralized two-sided markets. We show that there exist memoryless dynamics that converge to the core of the underlying assignment game in which agents' actions depend only on their current payoff. However, we show that for any such dynamic the convergence time can grow exponentially in relation to the population size. We present a natural dynamic in which a player's reservation value provides a summary of his past information and show that this dynamic converges to the core in polynomial time in homogeneous markets.

Efficient Price Discovery and Information in the Decentralized Assignment Game

We study the dynamics of price discovery in decentralized two-sided markets. There exist memoryless dynamics that converge to the core in which agents' actions depend only on their current payoff. However, we show that for any such dynamic the convergence time can grow exponentially in the population size. We present a natural dynamic in which a player's reservation value provides a summary of her past information and show that this dynamic converges to the core in polynomial time in homogeneous markets.

Information flow and price discovery dynamics

Non-homogeneous and time-varying information flow that affects the price discovery processes within and across markets is a common occurrence in reality but is often neglected in the literature of price discovery. To analyze such information flow within and across markets, we propose a new strategy with a new dynamic price discovery measure. We use this strategy to test the efficient home market hypothesis and the sector effect hypothesis based on the intraday data of the 115 stocks cross-listed and traded in the Canadian and U.S. stock markets. We find that the Canadian stock market is more efficient in price discovery for the Canadian stocks cross-listed in the U.S. stock market. A higher trading volume in the Canadian market makes price discovery in that market more efficient. The Canadian stock market is more efficient in price discovery for stocks in the basic materials sector but not in the technology and financial sectors. The NYSE Alternext is more efficient for junior stocks while the NASDAQ is more efficient for technology stocks.

Information arrival, delay, and clustering in financial markets with dynamic freeriding

We study informational freeriding in a model where agents privately acquire information and then decide when to reveal it by taking an action. Examples of such freeriding are prevalent in financial markets, e.g., the timing of initial public offerings, analysts’ forecasts, and mutual funds’ investment decisions. The main results show that, in large populations, few agents provide significant information while the vast majority of agents freeride. We highlight the role of uncertainty and market size in shaping the dynamics of price discovery. Among other results, we find that heightened uncertainty over the underlying state enhances information production, yet weakens the precision and speed of information aggregation in the market.

Price Discovery in the Chinese Stock Index Futures Market

ABSTRACTWe investigate China’s three stock index futures, and their underlying index in Chinese financial markets, to test their long- and short-run price discovery ability. Additionally, we analyze the regulation change of September 7, 2015, which greatly affected the futures market by imposing restrictions on trading volumes. The results suggest that the futures market tends to dominate price discovery compared with the corresponding stock indices, and that this effect became stronger in the post-regulation period. However, CSI 500 index futures initiate price discovery in the futures market, whereas the SSE50 lead spot market indices before the September 2015 regulation. A crash in CSI 500 futures would easily result in a market-wide crisis, as we conclude from analysis of monthly price discovery dynamics. This suggests one possible explanation for the market crash of 2015. Our results provide the first description of whole futures market price discovery characteristics in the Chinese stock market.

Information Arrival, Delay, and Clustering in Financial Markets With Dynamic Freeriding

We study informational freeriding in a model where agents privately acquire information and then decide when to reveal it by taking an action. Examples of such freeriding are prevalent in financial markets, e.g., the timing of IPOs, analysts' forecasts, and mutual funds' investment decisions. The main results show that, in large populations, few agents provide significant information while the vast majority of agents freeride. We highlight the role of uncertainty and market size in shaping the dynamics of price discovery. Our predictions include, among others, that heightened uncertainty enhances information production, yet weakens the precision and speed of information aggregation in the market.

Dynamic Price Discovery in a Securities Market: Public vs. Private Offers

This paper studies how public disclosure of past trade details affects price discovery dynamics under asymmetric information with heterogenous hedging motives. We model that an informed buyer (informed trader) sequentially trades with a series of uninformed sellers (hedgers). The informed buyer is forward-looking and risk-neutral, and uninformed sellers are myopic and heterogeneously risk-averse. We discover that sellers’ price discovery over the underlying fundamentals is crucially affected by what they can observe about past trade details. Specifically, (i) the availability of past trade details, paradoxically, makes it easier for the informed party to hide her private information and offer opaque prices. (ii) Post-trade price transparency delays price discovery, but once it happens, it is always perfect. (iii) In contrast, when only past order information is available, price discovery can never be perfect, and can even be in the wrong direction. We establish that, under some minor regularity conditions, our equilibrium characterization achieves the maximal degree of ignorance among all pure-strategy PBE. Hence, this paper can be viewed as a worst case analysis for regulators who care about market transparency. Moreover, we show that our findings are robust when the informed party’s bargaining power decreases in the length of past trade history. Finally, we extend our results to the case where the informed buyer has a non-zero outside option, and the case where both parties switch their trading positions.

Price discovery in euro area sovereign credit markets and the ban on naked CDS

Abstract The sovereign debt crisis in the euro area saw credit spreads on sovereign bonds and credit default swaps (CDS) surge for a number of member states. The rise in sovereign yields was accompanied by a significant increase in sovereign CDS market activity. This pattern raised concerns that destabilising speculation via outright short-selling of CDS (so-called ‘naked CDS’) was behind the increase in bond yields. In response, policy-makers introduced a ban on naked CDS trading. We investigate the effect of the ban on the price discovery process of sovereign credit risk, contrasting results for the post-ban period with those obtained prior to the ban. We use intraday data on sovereign CDS and bonds across a number of euro area countries. Our first main finding is that the CDS market dominates the bond market in terms of price discovery. That is, CDS premia in most cases adjust quicker to reflect new information than bond spreads. This result holds also when taking into account transaction costs. Our second main finding is that the ban on short-selling did not alter price discovery dynamics or reduce the efficiency of the market. Finally, we find that prior to the ban, CDS spreads were persistently higher than bond credit spreads, even after controlling for transaction costs. This points to the presence of market frictions that limit the ability of arbitrage forces to fully close pricing gaps between the two markets. However, these pricing discrepancies were in many cases largely eliminated following the introduction of the ban.

The Equity Market and Its Price Discovery Risk: An Empirical Study for the CAC40 Stock Market Index

This paper studies the price discovery dynamics in an order-driven market. Based on the transaction data on individual stocks, the paper focuses on the study of the monthly evolution of normalized volatility ratios on Euronext Paris for the CAC40 stocks before and after the implementation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). Since 2007, this European directive ended the national rule of order concentration and increased the fragmentation among trading venues. The normalized volatility ratio is used as a measure of the market quality from the point of view of price discovery. A significant inefficient price determination is observed at the opening period of the market before and after the implementation of MiFID, unlike the closing period. This finding is attributable to the complexity of price discovery following a period of non-trading and relatively heavy information releases. The opening half-hour percentage of High Frequency buyers, the opening half-hour number of trades and the monthly average number of transactions are significant explanatory variables of the volatility accentuation at the opening in the post-MiFID context. The market quality could be improved at the opening half-hour for the CAC40 stock Index on Euronext Paris.

The interactions between price discovery, liquidity and algorithmic trading for U.S.-Canadian cross-listed shares

We analyze price discovery dynamics for Canadian companies cross-listed on the NYSE from January 2004 to August 2017. We employ a structural vector autoregression to assess the interactions between price discovery, liquidity and algorithmic trading activity. We observe that over time, the U.S. market is gaining dominance in terms of price discovery. Improvements in liquidity increase a market's contribution to price discovery, and vice versa. We find that algorithmic trading activity is negatively related to price discovery, indicating negative externalities of high-frequency trading. These results are robust to fragmentation in the Canadian financial markets as well as regulatory changes in both the U.S. and Canada.

Price discovery dynamics in European agricultural markets

This article examines the influence of European agricultural futures contracts on price discovery during periods of price turmoil and rising trading activity. We use a hand‐collected data set of spot and futures prices for canola, wheat, and corn and show that the impact of the futures markets was high during the first period of price spikes (2007 to 2009) but lower during the second one (2010 to 2013). These results are noteworthy as more trading activity in futures markets did not lead to a higher influence on spot prices.

Impact of Economic Crises on the Price Discovery Dynamics of Spot & Index Futures Market

We investigate the effect of economic crises on the direction of information flow and price discovery efficiency of spot and futures market by considering the near month Nifty50 index futures and its corresponding spot index. The period of study commences from January, 2004 to December, 2015 and the study period is further classified as pre-crisis, crisis and post crisis with four years band to measure the change in price discovery dynamics using VECM and the Schwarz & Szakmary common factor measures. The study findings not only highlight slight significant impact of economic crises on price discovery dynamics but also upheld the dominance of spot in price discovery process. We also find evidence on the gradual increase in common factor weights of futures and varying direction of information transmission during sub-sample study periods.

The dynamics of price discovery for cross-listed stocks evidence from US and Chinese markets

Purpose: This study examines how, and to what extent the trading of the cross-listed China-backed ADRs on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) contributes to the information flow and price discovery for the corresponding cross-listed stocks on the Shanghai Stock exchange (SSE). Design/methodology/approach: The study utilizes the information share, Granger causality test, Vector error correction model, Permanent–Temporary Gonzalo–Granger (PT/GG) method and Bivariate DCC-EGARCH model to examine the price discovery dynamics across the cross-listed stocks. Findings: The Granger causality tests show that there is two-way transmission on feedback between the Chinese and US markets. The effects from NYSE to SSE are larger than the other way round. The Bivariate DCC-EGARCH model test results indicate the volatility spill over from NYSE is larger from the SSE. Practical implications: Results suggest that in contrast to previous studies that showed very little contribution to price discovery by Chinese ADRs on the NYSE, the present study indicates that the contribution to price-discovery of Chinese ADRs on NYSE has increased relative to the past, suggesting the importance of changing time frames and economic situations. Originality/value: The study differentiates between long-term and short-term price discovery effects and finds that home country bias persists in the long term and in the short term the information from the Cross-listed China-backed ADRs on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) affects price discovery for SSE stocks.

Time-Varying Price Discovery Dynamics of Corporate Credit Default Swaps and Bonds

This paper empirically analyzes in a time-varying context if the U.S. corporate Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and bond markets of 81 reference entities reflect the same information on their prices between October 2004 and December 2010. The analysis shows that the theoretical no-arbitrage relation between CDS and bond spreads holds during economic stable times, but is violated as soon as markets are exposed to economic turmoil as in the financial crisis starting in August 2007. The difference between CDS and bond spreads, called the basis, is more volatile the lower the firms are rated. The price discovery is unaffected by the reference entities' credit rating and is strongly time-varying. Nevertheless the CDS spreads lead the price discovery process. Price discovery is significantly influenced uniquely by counterparty risk only when economic risks achieve abnormal levels as during the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Other risks as interbank liquidity risk, global risk and financing costs aren't considered by CDS traders when markets are facing abnormal risks. The more the markets are exposed to counterparty risk, defined as the risk that the CDS seller defaults, the less the price discovery takes place in the CDS market and therefore the more the bond spreads tend to reflect credit risk more efficiently than the CDS spreads. Thus market participants have the tendency to abscond from the CDS market as soon as counterparty risk is elevated. Because price discovery still takes place in the CDS market, economic risks are strongly underestimated by market participants.

Price discovery in the S&P 500 index derivatives markets

This study sets out to examine the dynamics of price discovery between the S&P 500 index and its derivative products: the index futures, the index options, the S&P 500 exchange-traded funds (SPDRs), and the SPDR options. Empirical results reveal that overall the contribution of SPDRs to price discovery exceeds the contribution of E-mini index futures except in the high volatility period. However, E-mini index futures contribute higher information share than SPDRs in the high volatility sub-period, indicating that E-mini index futures play an important role on hedge strategies. The results are associated with (i) increasing institutional ownership in SPDRs and (ii) the rapid growth of algorithmic trading (AT) and high-frequency trading (HFT) by institutional investors.

Evidences for Price Discovery between On- and Off-shore Won/Dollar Spot, Forward and NDF FX Rate

Using Hasbrouck’s (1995, 2002) information share method, we examine the mutual price discovery dynamics among Won/Dollar spot, forward, and NDF exchange rates in on- and off-shore FX markets. Our findings include : (i) During the entire period, the mutual price discovery between on-shore FX market and off-shore NDF market are significantly led by on-shore Won-Dollar spot and forward exchange rates. (ii) Within the period around the global crisis, NDF exchange rates have mutual influence on the price discovery, which is expecially greater than the any other period. The results show Won-Dollar spot exchange rate fluctuations during the global crisis are greatly affected by external factors of the international financial markets. Not only that, but off-shore NDF trading promptly reflects the price information of KRW on the factors.