Search Results
Working Paper
Extracting information from trading volume
This paper shows how to infer information about any random variable from trading volume, assuming that the random variable and the traders' demands are symmetrically (and then normally) distributed around zero. The volume-based conditional expectation of such a random variable is zero, while the covariance between its absolute value and volume is positive if the variable is jointly normally distributed with the traders' demands. In that case, numerical examples indicate that the volume-based conditional probability of extreme asset value realizations (positive or negative) increases with ...
Journal Article
The Treasury Securities Market: Overview and Recent Developments
The market for U.S. Treasury securities is by many measures the largest, most active debt market in the world, and the securities play a pivotal role in world financial markets. The market has evolved over time in keeping with the changing needs of both the Treasury and investors. After describing the market's structure and examining the factors driving the demand for Treasury securities in some detail, this article discusses recent developments, including the introduction of inflation-indexed securities and a decline in the issuance of Treasury securities.
Working Paper
Equilibrium price with institutional investors and with naive traders
This paper uses a competitive equilibrium model to study how institutional investors influence the volatility and the informativeness of asset prices. Institutional investors are assumed to be "rational" informed traders, while individual investors are supposed to be "naive" informed traders, insofar as the former use the equilibrium price to extract information while the latter do not. The paper compares the informativeness and the volatility of the equilibrium price in an economy in which the informed traders are naive and in one where they are rational; the paper also investigates how ...
Working Paper
Trading volume and information distribution in a market-clearing framework
This paper investigates the relations between aggregate trading volume and information on financial markets from a theoretical standpoint. Through numerical examples, it relates some statistics describing equilibrium price and volume--such as the variance of the price and its correlation with the true asset value, the volume mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis--to the distribution of information across traders. The analysis is carried out in a static noisy rational expectations framework, with multiple informed traders, where both the precision and the correlation of the signals observed ...
Journal Article
The Treasury securities market: overview and recent development
The market for U.S. Treasury securities is by many measures the largest, most active debt market in the world, and the securities play a pivotal role in world financial markets. The market has evolved over time in keeping with the changing needs of both the Treasury and investors. After describing the market's structure and examining the factors driving the demand for Treasury securities in some detail, this article discusses recent developments, including the introduction of inflation-indexed securities and a decline in the issuance of Treasury securities.