Enhancing trading strategies with order book signals

We use high-frequency data from the Nasdaq exchange to build a measure of volume imbalance in the limit order (LO) book. We show that our measure is a good predictor of the sign of the next market order (MO), i.e., buy or sell, and also helps to predict price changes immediately after the arrival of...

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Main Authors: Cartea, Á, Donnelly, R, Jaimungal, S
Format: Journal article
Published: Routledge 2018
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author Cartea, Á
Donnelly, R
Jaimungal, S
author_facet Cartea, Á
Donnelly, R
Jaimungal, S
author_sort Cartea, Á
collection OXFORD
description We use high-frequency data from the Nasdaq exchange to build a measure of volume imbalance in the limit order (LO) book. We show that our measure is a good predictor of the sign of the next market order (MO), i.e., buy or sell, and also helps to predict price changes immediately after the arrival of an MO. Based on these empirical findings, we introduce and calibrate a Markov chain-modulated pure jump model of price, spread, LO and MO arrivals and volume imbalance. As an application of the model, we pose and solve a stochastic control problem for an agent who maximizes terminal wealth, subject to inventory penalties, by executing trades using LOs. We use in-sample-data (January to June 2014) to calibrate the model to 11 equities traded in the Nasdaq exchange and use out-of-sample data (July to December 2014) to test the performance of the strategy. We show that introducing our volume imbalance measure into the optimization problem considerably boosts the profits of the strategy. Profits increase because employing our imbalance measure reduces adverse selection costs and positions LOs in the book to take advantage of favourable price movements.
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spelling oxford-uuid:006addde-3a03-4d75-89c1-04b59026e1c02022-03-26T08:29:21ZEnhancing trading strategies with order book signalsJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:006addde-3a03-4d75-89c1-04b59026e1c0Symplectic Elements at OxfordRoutledge2018Cartea, ÁDonnelly, RJaimungal, SWe use high-frequency data from the Nasdaq exchange to build a measure of volume imbalance in the limit order (LO) book. We show that our measure is a good predictor of the sign of the next market order (MO), i.e., buy or sell, and also helps to predict price changes immediately after the arrival of an MO. Based on these empirical findings, we introduce and calibrate a Markov chain-modulated pure jump model of price, spread, LO and MO arrivals and volume imbalance. As an application of the model, we pose and solve a stochastic control problem for an agent who maximizes terminal wealth, subject to inventory penalties, by executing trades using LOs. We use in-sample-data (January to June 2014) to calibrate the model to 11 equities traded in the Nasdaq exchange and use out-of-sample data (July to December 2014) to test the performance of the strategy. We show that introducing our volume imbalance measure into the optimization problem considerably boosts the profits of the strategy. Profits increase because employing our imbalance measure reduces adverse selection costs and positions LOs in the book to take advantage of favourable price movements.
spellingShingle Cartea, Á
Donnelly, R
Jaimungal, S
Enhancing trading strategies with order book signals
title Enhancing trading strategies with order book signals
title_full Enhancing trading strategies with order book signals
title_fullStr Enhancing trading strategies with order book signals
title_full_unstemmed Enhancing trading strategies with order book signals
title_short Enhancing trading strategies with order book signals
title_sort enhancing trading strategies with order book signals
work_keys_str_mv AT carteaa enhancingtradingstrategieswithorderbooksignals
AT donnellyr enhancingtradingstrategieswithorderbooksignals
AT jaimungals enhancingtradingstrategieswithorderbooksignals