Research
WORKING PAPERS
Cross-Asset Tandem Trading and Extraordinary Volatility with Robert Garrison, Pankaj Jain Under Submission
Cross-asset order flow provides an incremental and novel nonlinear price discovery channel. Structural vector autoregressions of synchronized intraday message data reveal distinct patterns in the comovement of order flow and its influence on returns and volatility. While cross-market order flow usually reconciles prices through small-stakes arbitrage in periods of low volatility and comovement during medium volatility associated with information arrival, it can exacerbate price dislocation from fundamental values during extraordinary volatility. While applying market-wide circuit breakers (MWCB) mitigates the extreme negative spillovers by jointly halting markets, we identify room for further harmonization during the MWCB market reopening process.
Intermediation Networks and Derivative Market Liquidity: Evidence from CDS Markets with Stathis Tompaidis Under Submission
In over-the-counter markets, dealers facilitate trade by providing liquidity and acting as intermediaries. We present a model that links the relationships of these intermediaries to market liquidity, and we empirically test the model using supervisory data from the U.S. single-name credit default swap market. We find that the density of the intermediation network has a significant influence on the liquidity provided by dealers, on both the individual and collective level, as seen through trade volumes and inventory management. Further, we find that network density impacts the cost of trade, as measured by execution costs and bid-ask spreads, differentially in the dealer-to-client and interdealer segments.
Assessing the Safety of Central Counterparties with H. Peyton Young
A proposed framework for empirically assessing a central counterparty’s capacity to cope with severe financial stress. Using public disclosures data for global central counterparties (CCPs), we show how to estimate the probability that a CCP could cover any specified fraction of payment defaults by its members. This framework supplements conventional standards of risk management such as Cover 2 and provides a comparative and comprehensive approach to assessing risk protection across CCPs that is not predicated on a specific number of member defaults. We apply the approach to a wide range of CCPs in different geographical jurisdictions and asset classes and find that there are substantial differences in protection coverage. In particular, large European CCPs appear to be significantly safer than their counterparts in Asia-Pacific and North America. These differences are also reflected in supervisory data that provide CCP members' risk assessments of the CCPs to which they belong.
An Agent-based Model for Crisis Liquidity Dynamics with Richard Bookstaber
Financial crises are often characterized by sharp reductions in liquidity followed by cascades of falling prices. Researchers are making progress in work to understand the levels of liquidity on a daily basis, but understanding the vulnerability of liquidity to market shocks remains a challenge. We develop an agent-based model with the objective of evaluating the market dynamics that lead the market supply of liquidity to recede during periods of crisis. The model uses a limit-order-book framework to examine the interaction of three types of traditional market agents: liquidity demanders, liquidity suppliers, and market makers. The paper highlights the implications of changes in market makers' ability to provide intermediation services and the heterogeneous decision cycles of liquidity demanders versus liquidity suppliers for crisis-induced illiquidity.
[Code: Link ]
JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS
Anatomy of the Repo Rate Spikes in September 2019. (2023) Journal of Financial Crisis. 5 (4), 1-25. with R. Jay Kahn, Matthew McCormick, Vy Nguyen, H. Peyton Young
Central Counterparty Default Waterfalls and Systemic Loss. (2023) Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. 58 (8), 3577-3612. with Samim Ghamami, Simpson Zhang
Internet Appendix: Link
How Safe are Central Counterparties in Credit Default Swap Markets?. (2021) Mathematics and Financial Economics. 15 (1), 41-57. with H. Peyton Young.
Media Coverage: Securities Lending Times
Contagion in Derivatives Markets. (2020) Management Science. 66 (8), 3603-3616 . with Sriram Rajan, H. Peyton Young.
Media Coverage: Wall Street Journal Pro 1, Wall Street Journal Pro 2, Bloomberg Gadfly, SCI,
Interbank Contagion: An Agent-Based Model Approach to Endogenously Formed Networks. (2020) Journal of Banking and Finance. 112, 105191. with Anqi Liu, Steve Yang, Xingjia Zhang.
Media Coverage: Wall Street Journal Pro
Bank Networks and Systemic Risk: Evidence From the National Banking Acts. (2019) American Economic Review. 109 (9), 3125-3161. with Haelim Anderson, Jessie Jiaxu Wang.
Media Coverage: Wall Street Journal Pro
Internet Appendix: Link
An Agent-based Model for Financial Vulnerability. (2018) Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination. 13(2), 433-465. with Richard Bookstaber, Brian Tivnan.
MediaCoverage: Wall Street Journal
Code: please e-mail for code
Stressed to the Core: Counterparty Concentrations and Systemic Losses in CDS Markets. (2018) Journal of Financial Stability. 35, 38-52. with Jill Cetina, Sriram Rajan.
Media Coverage: Financial Times, Reuters, Value Walk, Financial Technology Forum
Effects of Limit Order Book Information Level on Market Stability Metrics. (2017) Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination.12(2), 221-247. with Roy Hayes, William Scherer, Peter Beling.
Code: please e-mail for code
Visual Analysis to Support Regulators in Electronic Order Book Markets. (2016) Environment Systems and Decisions. 36(2), 167-182. with Richard Haynes, Andrew Todd, William Scherer, Peter Beling.
RESEARCH PROJECTS UNDERWAY
The Anatomy of U.S. Overnight Triparty Repo Markets with Carlos Ramirez
Using a comprehensive supervisory dataset, we establish novel stylized facts about how the U.S. overnight triparty repo market operates. Besides uncovering these facts, we show that overnight triparty repo pricing depends on a delicate interplay between the number of counterparties participants use to secure their repo transactions, the identity of such counterparties, and the diversification of trading activity among them. Importantly, such interplay can be materially reshaped in times of stress. We also show that changes in architectural features of the trading network among market participants are associated with changes in average rates and trading volume.
Repo Market Intermediation: Explaing Dealer Collateral and Cash Flow Management across U.S. Repo Markets with Robert Mann
The U.S. repurchase agreement (repo) market, comprised of four major segments, centers around dealers who intermediate cash and securities across them. In this brief, we examine how dealers' intermediation supports the short-term funding of financial institutions by providing one of the first comprehensive examinations of the U.S. repo market. Notably, repo dealers operate similarly to traditional banks in that they intermediate cash between lenders (e.g., money funds) and borrowers (e.g., hedge funds). We document that 65 percent of reverse repo collateral received matches contra repo transactions using the same collateral, of which over 90 percent of outstanding volumes are U.S. Treasuries. The ability to provision this service relies on dealers' management of counterparty, collateral, and maturity risk. Of these risks, we find that collateral risk and the ease of rehypothecating are the primary drivers of the net interest margin dealers earn, while differences in maturity and counterparty risk are sizable, they are less economically material.
POLICY NOTES & CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
Why Is So Much Repo Not Centrally Cleared? (2023) Office of Financial Research Brief Series. with Samuel J. Hempel, R. Jay Kahn, Robert Mann
The Dynamics of the U.S. Overnight Triparty Repo Market (2021) Office of Financial Research Brief Series. with Carlos Ramirez, Matthew McCormick
Intraday Timing of General Collateral Repo Markets (2021) Liberty Street Economics. with Kevin Clark, Adam Copeland, R. Jay Kahn, Antoine Martin, Benjamin Taylor
Visualizations for Sense-making in Financial Market Regulation. (2013) IEEE International Conference on Big Data. with Richard Haynes, Andrew Todd, William Scherer, Peter Beling
Regulatory Management of Distressed Financial Markets. (2013) Winter Simulation Conference. with Gerard Learmouth
Revolutionizing Financial Engineering Education Simulation-Based Strategies for Learning. (2013) ASEE Annual Conference. with Matt Olfat, Roy Hayes, Kari Wold
A Study of Dark Pool Trading Using an Agent-Based Model. (2013) Computational Intelligence for Financial Engineering and Economics. with Kevin Mo, Steve Yang
Agent Based Model of the E-MINI Future Market: Applied to Policy Decisions. (2012) Winter Simulation Conference. with Roy Hayes, Andrew Todd, William Scherer, Peter Beling
An Agent Based Model of the E-Mini S&P500: Applied to the Flash Crash Analysis. (2012) Computational Intelligence for Financial Engineering and Economics. with Roy Hayes, Andrew Todd, Steve Yang, William Scherer, Peter Beling
[Paper Code: please e-mail for code, Volatile Market Code: please e-mail code for used in Mankad et. al. (2013)]
Behavior Based Learning in Identifying High Frequency Trading Strategies. (2012) Computational Intelligence for Financial Engineering and Economics. with Roy Hayes, Andrew Todd, Steve Yang, Andrei Kirilenko, William Scherer, Peter Beling
Strategies for Hedging and Trading in the Emerging Ethanol Commodities Market. (2008) IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium, 295-300. with Ginger Davis