We explore nature of price formation in financial markets and develop a theory of bid and ask price dynamics in which the two prices form due to quantum-chaotic interaction between buy and sell orders. In this model bid and ask prices are represented by eigenvalues of a 2x2 price operator corresponding to 'bid' and 'ask' eigenstates, while randomness of price operator results in price fluctuations that destroy oscillatory effects. We show that this theory adequately captures behavior of bid-ask spread and allows to model bid and ask price dynamics in a coordinated way. We also discuss ergodicity properties of price formation and show how directional price movement occurs due to ergodicity violation in a quantum process instead of the commonly believed forces acting on price. This theory has wide range of applications such as trade execution modeling, large order pricing and risk valuation for illiquid securities.
In a financial market, for agents with long investment horizons or at times of severe market stress, it is often changes in the asset price that act as the trigger for transactions or shifts in investment position. This suggests the use of price thresholds to simulate agent behavior over much longer timescales than are currently used in models of order-books. We show that many phenomena, routinely ignored in efficient market theory, can be systematically introduced into an otherwise efficient market, resulting in models that robustly replicate the most important stylized facts. We then demonst…
We develop a theory of securities price formation and dynamics based on quantum approach and without presuming any similarities with quantum mechanics. Disorder introduced by trading environment leads to probability distribution of returns that is not a smooth curve, but a speckle-pattern fluctuating in both price coordinate and time. This means that any given return can at times acquire a substantial probability of occurring while remaining low on average in time. Still, due to local character of order interaction during price formation the distribution width grows smoothly, has a minimum val…
We propose two novel frameworks to study the price formation of an asset negotiated in an order book. Specifically, we develop a game-theoretic model in many-person games and mean-field games, considering costs stemming from limited liquidity. We derive analytical formulas for the formed price in terms of the realized order flow. We also identify appropriate conditions that ensure the convergence of the price we find in the finite population game to that of its mean-field counterpart. We numerically assess our results with a large experiment using high-frequency data from ten stocks listed in …
We present a general Markovian framework for order book modeling. Through our approach, we aim at providing a tool enabling to get a better understanding of the price formation process and of the link between microscopic and macroscopic features of financial assets. To do so, we propose a new method of order book representation, and decompose the problem of order book modeling into two sub-problems: dynamics of a continuous-time double auction system with a fixed reference price; interactions between the double auction system and the reference price movements. State dependency is included in o…
In this chapter we review some recent results on the dynamics of price formation in financial markets and its relations with the efficient market hypothesis. Specifically, we present the limit order book mechanism for markets and we introduce the concepts of market impact and order flow, presenting their recently discovered empirical properties and discussing some possible interpretation in terms of agent's strategies. Our analysis confirms that quantitative analysis of data is crucial to validate qualitative hypothesis on investors' behavior in the regulated environment of order placement and…
We introduce an autoregressive-type model of prices in financial market taking into account the self-modulation effect. We find that traders are mainly using strategies with weighted feedbacks of past prices. These feedbacks are responsible for the slow diffusion in short times, apparent trends and power law distribution of price changes.
We introduce a new Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) model for simulating price evolution in an artificial financial market, based on a multilayer network of traders. The model also implements, in a quite realistic way with respect to previous studies, the order book dy- namics, by considering two assets with variable fundamental prices. Fat tails in the probability distributions of normalized returns are observed, together with other features of real financial markets.
We generalise the description of the dynamics of the order book of financial markets in terms of a Brownian particle embedded in a fluid of incoming, exiting and annihilating particles by presenting a model of the velocity on each side (buy and sell) independently. The improved model builds on the time-averaged number of particles in the inner layer and its change per unit time, where the inner layer is revealed by the correlations between price velocity and change in the number of particles (limit orders). This allows us to introduce the Knudsen number of the financial Brownian particle motio…
The use of kinetic modelling based on partial differential equations for the dynamics of stock price formation in financial markets is briefly reviewed. The importance of behavioral aspects in market booms and crashes and the role of agents' heterogeneity in emerging power laws for price distributions is emphasized and discussed.
How and why stock prices move is a centuries-old question still not answered conclusively. More recently, attention shifted to higher frequencies, where trades are processed piecewise across different timescales. Here we reveal that price impact has a universal non-linear shape for trades aggregated on any intra-day scale. Its shape varies little across instruments, but drastically different master curves are obtained for order-volume and -sign impact. The scaling is largely determined by the relevant Hurst exponents. We further show that extreme order flow imbalance is not associated with lar…
We use standard physics techniques to model trading and price formation in a market under the assumption that order arrival and cancellations are Poisson random processes. This model makes testable predictions for the most basic properties of a market, such as the diffusion rate of prices, which is the standard measure of financial risk, and the spread and price impact functions, which are the main determinants of transaction cost. Guided by dimensional analysis, simulation, and mean field theory, we find scaling relations in terms of order flow rates. We show that even under completely random…
We study a phenomenological model for the continuous double auction, equivalent to two independent $M/M/1$ queues. The continuous double auction defines a continuous-time random walk for trade prices. The conditions for ergodicity of the auction are derived and, as a consequence, three possible regimes in the behavior of prices and logarithmic returns are observed. In the ergodic regime, prices are unstable and one can observe an intermittent behavior in the logarithmic returns. On the contrary, non-ergodicity triggers stability of prices, even if two different regimes can be seen.
We investigate possible origins of trends using a deterministic threshold model, where we refer to long-term variabilities of price changes (price movements) in financial markets as trends. From the investigation we find two phenomena. One is that the trend of monotonic increase and decrease can be generated by dealers' minuscule change in mood, which corresponds to the possible fundamentals. The other is that the emergence of trends is all but inevitable in the realistic situation because of the fact that dealers cannot always obtain accurate information about deals, even if there is no influ…
We introduce and establish the main properties of QHawkes ("Quadratic" Hawkes) models. QHawkes models generalize the Hawkes price models introduced in E. Bacry et al. (2014), by allowing all feedback effects in the jump intensity that are linear and quadratic in past returns. A non-parametric fit on NYSE stock data shows that the off-diagonal component of the quadratic kernel indeed has a structure that standard Hawkes models fail to reproduce. Our model exhibits two main properties, that we believe are crucial in the modelling and the understanding of the volatility process: first, the model …
High-speed computerized trading, often called "high-frequency trading" (HFT), has increased dramatically in financial markets over the last decade. In the US and Europe, it now accounts for nearly one-half of all trades. Although evidence suggests that HFT contributes to the efficiency of markets, there are concerns it also adds to market instability, especially during times of stress. Currently, it is unclear how or why HFT produces these outcomes. In this paper, I use data from NASDAQ to show that HFT synchronizes prices in financial markets, making the values of related securities change co…
We demonstrate that minority mechanisms arise in the dynamics of markets because of effects of price impact; accordingly the relative importance of minority and delayed majority mechanisms depends on the frequency of trading. We then use minority games to illustrate that a vanishing price return auto-correlation function does not necessarily imply market efficiency. On the contrary, we stress the difference between correlations measured conditionally and unconditionally on external patterns.
We consider idealized financial markets in which price paths of the traded securities are cadlag functions, imposing mild restrictions on the allowed size of jumps. We prove the existence of quadratic variation for typical price paths, where the qualification "typical" means that there is a trading strategy that risks only one monetary unit and brings infinite capital if quadratic variation does not exist. This result allows one to apply numerous known results in pathwise Ito calculus to typical price paths; we give a brief overview of such results.
In this paper we study the price dynamics in a simple model of financial markets with heterogeneous agents. We concentrate on how increases in the total number of active traders influences fluctuations of asset prices. We find that a curious route to chaos is observed when the total number of [active traders] increases. Particularly, we show that {\it intermittent chaos} [1] of price fluctuations is observed as the total number of trader increases.
Previous studies of the stock price response to individual trades focused on single stocks. We empirically investigate the price response of one stock to the trades of other stocks. How large is the impact of one stock on others and vice versa? -- This impact of trades on the price change across stocks appears to be transient instead of permanent. Performing different averages, we distinguish active and passive responses. The two average responses show different characteristic dependences on the time lag. The passive response exhibits a shorter response period with sizeable volatilities, and t…
Using Trades and Quotes data from the Paris stock market, we show that the random walk nature of traded prices results from a very delicate interplay between two opposite tendencies: long-range correlated market orders that lead to super-diffusion (or persistence), and mean reverting limit orders that lead to sub-diffusion (or anti-persistence). We define and study a model where the price, at any instant, is the result of the impact of all past trades, mediated by a non constant `propagator' in time that describes the response of the market to a single trade. Within this model, the market is s…
We introduce solvable stochastic dealer models, which can reproduce basic empirical laws of financial markets such as the power law of price change. Starting from the simplest model that is almost equivalent to a Poisson random noise generator, the model becomes fairly realistic by adding only two effects, the self-modulation of transaction intervals and a forecasting tendency, which uses a moving average of the latest market price changes. Based on the present microscopic model of markets, we find a quantitative relation with market potential forces, which has recently been discovered in the …
We study the relationship between price spread, volatility and trading volume. We find that spread forms as a result of interplay between order liquidity and order impact. When trading volume is small adding more liquidity helps improve price accuracy and reduce spread, but after some point additional liquidity begins to deteriorate price. The model allows to connect the bid-ask spread and high-low bars to measurable microstructural parameters and express their dependence on trading volume, volatility and time horizon. Using the established relations, we address the operating spread optimizati…
Stock price change in financial market occurs through transactions in analogy with diffusion in stochastic physical systems. The analysis of price changes in real markets shows that long-range correlations of price fluctuations largely depend on the number of transactions. We introduce the multiplicative stochastic model of time interval between trades and analyze spectral density and correlations of the number of transactions. The model reproduces spectral properties of the real markets and explains the mechanism of power law distribution of trading activity. Our study provides an evidence th…
There is a large body of work, built on tools developed in mathematics and physics, demonstrating that financial market prices exhibit self-similarity at different scales. In this paper, we explore the use of analytical topology to characterize financial price series. While wavelet and Fourier transforms decompose a signal into sets of wavelets and power spectrum respectively, the approach presented herein decomposes a time series into components of its total variation. This property is naturally suited for the analysis of scaling characteristics in fractals.
In financial markets, not only prices and returns can be considered as random variables, but also the waiting time between two transactions varies randomly. In the following, we analyse the statistical properties of General Electric stock prices, traded at NYSE, in October 1999. These properties are critically revised in the framework of theoretical predictions based on a continuous-time random walk model.
Using a large-scale Deep Learning approach applied to a high-frequency database containing billions of electronic market quotes and transactions for US equities, we uncover nonparametric evidence for the existence of a universal and stationary price formation mechanism relating the dynamics of supply and demand for a stock, as revealed through the order book, to subsequent variations in its market price. We assess the model by testing its out-of-sample predictions for the direction of price moves given the history of price and order flow, across a wide range of stocks and time periods. The uni…
We propose a dynamical theory of market liquidity that predicts that the average supply/demand profile is V-shaped and {\it vanishes} around the current price. This result is generic, and only relies on mild assumptions about the order flow and on the fact that prices are (to a first approximation) diffusive. This naturally accounts for two striking stylized facts: first, large metaorders have to be fragmented in order to be digested by the liquidity funnel, leading to long-memory in the sign of the order flow. Second, the anomalously small local liquidity induces a breakdown of linear respons…
We propose a heterogeneous agent market model (HAM) in continuous time. The market is populated by fundamental traders and chartists, who both use simple linear trading rules. Most of the related literature explores stability, price dynamics and profitability either within deterministic models or by simulation. Our novel formulation lends itself to analytic treatment even in the stochastic case. We prove conditions for the (stochastic) stability of the price process, and also for the price to mean-revert to the fundamental value. Assuming stability, we derive analytic formulae on how the popul…
The financial market is nonpredictable, as according to the Bachelier, the mathematical expectation of the speculator is zero. Nevertheless, we observe in the price fluctuations the two distinct scales, short and long time. Behaviour of a market in long terms, such as year intervals, is different from that in short terms. A diffusion equation with a time dependent diffusion coefficient that describes the fluctuations of the financial market, is subject to a two-scale homogenisation, and long term characteristics of the market such as mean behaviour of price and variance, are obtained. We indic…
Following a Geometrical Brownian Motion extension into an Irrational Fractional Brownian Motion model, we re-examine agent behaviour reacting to time dependent news on the log-returns thereby modifying a financial market evolution. We specifically discuss the role of financial news or economic information positive or negative feedback of such irrational (or contrarian) agents upon the price evolution. We observe a kink-like effect reminiscent of soliton behaviour, suggesting how analysts' forecasts errors induce stock prices to adjust accordingly, thereby proposing a measure of the irrational …
We consider a financial market model which consists of a financial asset and a large number of interacting agents classified into many types. Different types of agents are heterogeneous in their price expectations. Each agent can change its type based on the current empirical distribution of the types and the equilibrium price, and the equilibrium price follows a recursive price mechanism based on the previous price and the current empirical distribution of the types. The interaction among the agents, and the interaction between the agents and the equilibrium price, feedback, are modeled. We a…
Previous studies of the stock price response to trades focused on the dynamics of single stocks, i.e. they addressed the self-response. We empirically investigate the price response of one stock to the trades of other stocks in a correlated market, i.e. the cross-responses. How large is the impact of one stock on others and vice versa? -- This impact of trades on the price change across stocks appears to be transient instead of permanent as we discuss from the viewpoint of market efficiency. Furthermore, we compare the self-responses on different scales and the self- and cross-responses on the…
Investors try to predict returns of financial assets to make successful investment. Many quantitative analysts have used machine learning-based methods to find unknown profitable market rules from large amounts of market data. However, there are several challenges in financial markets hindering practical applications of machine learning-based models. First, in financial markets, there is no single model that can consistently make accurate prediction because traders in markets quickly adapt to newly available information. Instead, there are a number of ephemeral and partially correct models cal…
By incorporating market impact and asymmetric sensitivity into the evolutionary minority game, we study the coevolutionary dynamics of stock prices and investment strategies in financial markets. Both the stock price movement and the investors' global behavior are found to be closely related to the phase region they fall into. Within the region where the market impact is small, investors' asymmetric response to gains and losses leads to the occurrence of herd behavior, when all the investors are prone to behave similarly in an extreme way and large price fluctuations occur. A linear relation b…
Anchoring is a term used in psychology to describe the common human tendency to rely too heavily (anchor) on one piece of information when making decisions. A trading algorithm inspired by biological motors, introduced by L. Gil\cite{Gil}, is suggested as a testing ground for anchoring in financial markets. An exact solution of the algorithm is presented for arbitrary price distributions. Furthermore the algorithm is extended to cover the case of a market neutral portfolio, revealing additional evidence that anchoring is involved in the decision making of market participants. The exposure of a…
