Reputation and Dealers' Trading. A Microstructure Analysis of the Treasury Bond Market

Abstract

Trading generates not only information about the payoff of the assets traded, but also information about the traders themselves. Over time this information creates reputation. By using a unique dataset on the Treasury bond market we derive a measure of reputation. This is then used to group dealers on the basis of their reputation and to analyze how they react to the reputation of other dealers. We show that the same type of trade, on the same asset, in the same market can generate different volume and volatility patterns depending on the type of dealers originating it. We also identify the "marginal traders" - i.e. the class of dealers that has the highest impact on the market. These results have strong implications in terms of forecastability of future returns, volatility and overall trading volume because they show that most of the explanatory power of trades is due to marginal traders.

Note: This papers title has changed from "Can Strategic Market Making Explain Asset Pricing? A Microstructure Analysis of the T-Bond Market"