Market Microstructure in Practice

This book exposes and comments on the consequences of Reg NMS and MiFID on market microstructure. It covers changes in market design, electronic trading, and investor and trader behaviors. The emergence of high frequency trading and critical events like the"Flash Crash" of 2010 are also analyzed in depth. Using a quantitative viewpoint, this book explains how an attrition of liquidity and regulatory changes can impact the whole microstructure of financial markets. A mathematical Appendix details the quantitative tools and indicators used through the book, allowing the reader to go further independently. This book is written by practitioners and theoretical experts and covers practical aspects (like the optimal infrastructure needed to trade electronically in modern markets) and abstract analyses (like the use on entropy measurements to understand the progress of market fragmentation). As market microstructure is a recent academic field, students will benefit from the book's overview of the current state of microstructure and will use the Appendix to understand important methodologies. Policy makers and regulators will use this book to access theoretical analyses on real cases. For readers who are practitioners, this book delivers data analysis and basic processes like the designs of Smart Order Routing and trade scheduling algorithms. In this second edition, the authors have added a large section on orderbook dynamics, showing how liquidity can predict future price moves, and how High Frequency Traders can profit from it. The section on market impact has also been updated to show how buying or selling pressure moves prices not only for a few hours, but even for days, and how prices relax (or not) after a period of intense pressure. Further, this edition includes pages on Dark Pools, Circuit Breakers and added information outside of Equity Trading, because MiFID 2 is likely to push fixed income markets towards more electronification. The authors explore what is to be expected from this change in microstructure. The appendix has also been augmented to include the propagator models (for intraday price impact), a simple version of Kyle's model (1985) for daily market impact, and a more sophisticated optimal trading framework, to support the design of trading algorithms.Contents: Monitoring the Fragmentation at Any Scale Understanding the Stakes and the Roots of Fragmentation Optimal Organizations for Optimal Trading Appendix A: Quantitative Appendix Appendix B: Glossary Readership: Graduate and research students of financial markets and quantitative finance, Regulators and policy makers, practitioners. Keywords:Market Microstructure;Finance;Financial Markets;Market Liquidity;Financial Regulation;MiFID;Reg NMS;ESMAReview: Reviews of the First Edition: “Lehalle and Laruelle bring [their] experience to bear on every aspect of the discussion, as well as deep quantitative understanding. The resulting book is a unique mixture of real market knowledge and theoretical explanation. There is nothing else out there like it, and this book will be a central resource for many different market participants.” Robert Almgren President and Cofounder of Quantitative Brokers, New York “Charles' and Sophie's book on markets microstructure will improve our knowledge and consequently help us to tweak these potentiometers. In promoting better education, this book is at the roots of restoring trust in the markets.” Philippe Guillot Executive Director, Markets Directorate Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), Paris “This book provides a perspective on today's markets. It reviews institutional changes, discusses them, and provides color through real-world examples.” Albert J Menkveld Professor of Finance at VU University Amsterdam & Research Fellow at TI-Duisenberg School of Finance “Today, there is so much confusion on the actual functioning of capital markets, the impact of regulation, MiFiD in Europe and Reg NMS in the US, on market fragmentation and...