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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how markets in financial instruments directive (MiFID) and regulation national market system (Reg NMS) affect the competition for order flow among trading venues in, respectively, Europe and the USA.

The paper examines the differences between MiFID and Reg NMS and provides, based on market microstructure principles, insights as to their likely impact on European and the US securities markets.

Although MiFID and Reg NMS share the common objective of enhancing competition in securities markets, they adopt different provisions with respect to three issues that strongly influence the competition for order flow among trading venues. Specifically, some of the provisions set forth by the US regulation with respect to the best execution duty, the consolidation of market data and the disclosure of execution quality information appear to be more effective, compared to the European Union ones, in strengthening competition for order flow among trading venues.

Regulatory factors can only partly explain the current structure of the European and US securities markets. Technology and heterogeneity in traders' demand are other important factors that concur in shaping the European and US markets.

The degree of competition for order flow among trading venues depends on how regulations define the best execution duty, the availability of updated and consolidated pre‐trade (i.e. quotations) and post‐trade (i.e. transactions) information and the efficiency of post‐trading infrastructures.

The paper addresses issues not yet investigated and provides valuable insights for financial intermediaries, incumbent and prospective exchanges as to the competition in the securities industry, and to regulators as to the likely impact of the new regulations.

The purpose of this paper is to study price discovery and price convergence in securities trading within a fragmented market environment where stocks are traded on multiple venues. The results provide novel empirical insights questioning the generalizability of the current literature and aim to expand the understanding of price determination in a fragmented market microstructure.

This paper provides an empirical data analysis based on an event study methodology. The authors applied Thomson Reuters Tick History data covering German blue chip stocks listed on multiple venues in 2009 and 2013. Different time aggregations up to one second are applied to provide an in-depth analysis.

The paper empirically discovers a persistent price leader-follower relationship not only during intraday auctions but also in subsequent continuous trading. The authors found that trading on alternative venues instantly dries out in case the dominant market switches to a call auction. In these situations, alternative markets await and adopt the official price signal of the dominant market although prices on alternative venues still indicate a certain extent of price discovery. This phenomenon remains persistent at different levels of market fragmentation, indicating that alternative trading venues fully accept the price leadership role of the dominant market, no matter their own market share.

This paper provides an innovative empirical setup to analyze price co-movement and convergence based on high-frequent data. Further, the results provide novel and robust insights into the price determination process in fragmented markets that clarify the role of price follower and price leader.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework for the legal classification of trading venues in financial markets. Currently, there is no clear definition of when a trading platform should be classified as multilateral or bilateral. This paper builds a theoretical framework that will allow regulators to define the border (with its regulatory implications) between multilateral and bilateral trading venues.

The approach used for this paper focuses on looking at the different trading models available in financial markets and analyzing their key features in order to bring up recurrent aspects that have helped to build the theoretical framework.

Multilateral trading facilities would not only be systems bringing together multiple interests from third parties, but those systems bringing together multiple interests with “no discretion” (ex ante rules) vis‐à‐vis membership, admission of products to trading, and matching of interests. All trading venues that do not meet these three key requirements will be falling under the bilateral trading classification, which implies the application of fiduciary duties, such as conflicts of interest rules and best execution. The paper then advances a proposal to solve the legal classification issue in the revision of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive in Europe (MiFID). In effect, despite the claim that the Organised Trading Facility (EU) and the Swap Execution Facility (USA) would be equivalent categories, EU and US regulators, respectively, have taken divergent paths on how these venues will ultimately look.

The value of the paper is in its ability to provide a theoretical framework to something that has not been assessed in these terms previously. Today, only the SEC is trying, for the first time, to have a definition of when a RFQ model can be defined “multilateral”. This topic has been rarely discussed before in financial regulation, while it is extensively discussed in market microstructure (but on the market structure implications, rather than its regulatory and policy implications).

The purpose of this paper is to scrutinise the effectiveness of four derivative exchanges’ enforcement efforts since 2007. These exchanges include the Commodity Exchange Inc. and ICE Futures US from the United States and ICE Futures Europe and the London Metal Exchange from the UK.

The paper examines 799 enforcement notices published by four exchanges through a behavioural science lens: HUMANS conceived by Hunt (2023) in Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioural Science to Ethics and Compliance.

The paper finds the effectiveness of the exchanges’ enforcement efforts to be a mixed picture as financial markets transition from the digital to artificial intelligence era. Humans remain a key cog in the wheel of market participants’ trading operations, albeit their roles have changed. Despite this, some elements of exchanges’ enforcement regimes have not kept pace with the move from floor to remote trading. However, in other respects, their efforts are or should be, effective, at least in behavioural terms.

The paper’s findings are arguably limited to exchanges based in Anglophone jurisdictions. The information published by the exchanges is variable, making “like-for-like” comparisons difficult in some areas.

The paper makes several recommendations that, if adopted, could help exchanges to increase the potency of their enforcement programmes.

A key aim of the paper is to shift the lens through which the debate concerning the efficacy of exchange-level oversight is conducted. Hitherto, a legal lens has been used, whereas this paper uses a behavioural lens.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of two regulatory initiatives in developing awareness of conduct risk associated with algorithmic and direct-electronic access (DEA) trading at broker-dealers: the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s algorithmic trading compliance in the wholesale markets and Commission Delegated Regulation 2017/589 (CDR 589) to the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive.

A qualitative examination of 15 semi-structured interviews with representatives of London Metal Exchange member firms, their clients and regulators.

This paper finds that the key conduct related messages in algorithmic trading compliance in the wholesale markets may not yet be fully embedded at broker–dealers. This is because of a perceived simplicity of the algorithms deployed by broker dealers or, alternatively, a lack of reflection on their impact. Conversely, a concern exists that clients’ deployment of algorithms on DEA channels provided by broker–dealers increase conduct risk. However, the threat of harm posed by clients is not envisaged in current definitions of conduct risk. Accordingly, CDR 2017/589 does not currently require firms to evaluate clients’ awareness of it.

This study’s findings are limited to the insights provided by 15 participants.

This paper contributes to existing research by deepening understanding of conduct risk arising from algorithmic trading and DEA. To account for the potential harm arising from clients’ activities, this paper proposes a revision to Miles’s definition of conduct risk. This is complemented by a proposed amendment to CDR 2017/589 to require evaluation of clients’ understanding of conduct risk.

Prior research posits that traders with short-lived information favor lit exchanges over dark pools due to execution certainty. This paper aims to focus on the relation between informed trading based on firm fundamentals and dark pool volume because the preferred venue for traders with longer-lived information is less certain.

The authors examine the effect of short interest, a proxy for informed traders with long-lived information, on dark pool volume using fixed effects, first difference and instrumental variable approaches. They examine the effect of dark pools on the profitability of long-lived information using market- and characteristic-adjusted returns.

The proportion of trading volume executed in dark pools is positively correlated with short interest. This result is stronger for stocks that suffer from greater uncertainty and stocks targeted by transient institutional investors. Short sellers profit substantially from their information as subsequent returns are lower for heavily shorted stocks with greater dark pool volume.

In 2014, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority began making trading data available for dark pools. Before that, only limited information was publicly available. The authors use that data to shed more light on dark pools activity.

The evidence presented in the paper helps inform the current discussion about the role and regulation of dark pools.

This is the first study to show that informed traders with long-lived information favor dark pools due to their opacity and the possibility of price improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of UK investment firms’ implementation of the requirements in Commission Delegated Regulation 2017/589 (more commonly known as “Regulatory Technical Standard 6” or “RTS 6”) that govern the conduct of algorithmic trading activities.

A qualitative examination of 19 semi-structured interviews with practitioners working for, or with, UK investment firms engaged in algorithmic trading activities.

The paper finds that practitioners generally have a good understanding of the requirements in RTS 6. Some lack knowledge of algorithms, coding and algorithmic strategies but have used best efforts to implement RTS 6. However, regulatory fatigue, complacency, cost pressures, governance in international groups, overreliance on external knowledge and generous risk parameter calibration threaten to undermine these efforts.

The study’s findings are limited to the participants’ insights. Some areas of the RTS 6 regime attracted little comment from participants.

The paper proposes the introduction of mandatory algorithmic trading qualification requirements for key staff; the lessening of the requirements in RTS 6 for automated executors; and the introduction of a recognised software vendor regime to reduce duplication and improve coordination between market participants that deploy algorithmic trading systems.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the study represents the first qualitative examination of firms’ implementation of the algorithmic trading regime in the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive 2014/65/EU.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of price-limit hits by hit type and when such hits start and stop using intraday trades and quotes at a one-second frequency for firms included in the BIST-50 index during the 13-months starting with March 2008. Like the recent COVID-19 period, this period includes the heightened stress in global financial markets in September 2008.

Using intra-day trades and quotes at a one-second frequency, the authors examine the market effects of price limits for firms included in the BIST-50 index during the global financial crisis. The authors compare the values of various metrics for 60 min centered on price-limit hit periods. The authors conduct robustness tests using auto regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models with trade-by-trade and with 3-min returns.

The findings are supportive of the following hypotheses: magnet price effects, greater informational asymmetric effects of market quality and each version of price discovery. Results are robust using samples differentiated by cross-listed status, same-day quotes instead of transaction prices and equidistant and trade-by-trade returns.

The authors use intraday data to reduce measurement error that is particularly pronounced when daily data are used to assess price limits that start and/or stop during a trading session. The authors contribute to the micro-structure literature by using ARIMA models with trade-by-trade and 3-min returns to alleviate some bias due to the autocorrelations in returns around price-limit hits in the presence of a magnet effect. The authors include some recent regulation changes in various countries to illustrate the importance of circuit breakers using price limits during COVID-19.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the current state of knowledge about the Flash Crash. It has been one of the remarkable events of the decade and its causes are still a matter of debate.

This paper reviews the literature since the early days to most recent findings, and critically compares the most important hypotheses about the possible causes of the crisis.

Among the causes of the Flash Crash, the literature has propsed the following: a large selling program triggering the sales wave, small but not negligible delays suffered by the exchange computers, the micro-structure of the financial markets, the price fall leading to margin cover and forced sales, some types of feedback loops leading to downward price spiral, stop-loss orders coupled with scarce liquidity that triggered price reduction. On its turn leading to further stop-loss activation, the use of Intermarket Sweep Orders, that is, orders that sacrificed search for the best price to speed of execution, and dumb algorithms.

The results of the previous section are condensed in a set of policy implications and recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how quotes originating via electronic communication networks (ECN)s affect trading costs.

In order to investigate the relations between trading costs and quotation venue, the bid‐ask spread is decomposed into its theoretical cost components associated with adverse selection, inventory handling, and order processing.

Stoll's adverse selection costs of ECN‐originated quotes relate positively to effective spreads, while Lin et al.'s adverse selection costs relate negatively to effective spreads.

The paper shows how trading costs relate to trading venue choice by decomposing the bid‐ask spread.