High-Frequency Trading and Price Informativeness
73 Pages Posted: 24 Mar 2019 Last revised: 20 Dec 2021
Date Written: March 9, 2019
Abstract
We study how stock price informativeness changes with the presence of high-frequency trading (HFT). Our estimate is based on the staggered start of HFT participation in a panel of international exchanges. With HFT presence market prices are a less reliable predictor of future cash flows and investment, even more so for longer horizons. Further, idiosyncratic volatility decreases, mutual funds trade less actively and their holdings deviate less from the market-capitalization weighted portfolio. These findings suggest that price informativeness declines with HFT presence, consistent with theoretical models of HFTs' ability to anticipate informed order flow, reducing incentives to acquire fundamental information.
Keywords: High-Frequency Trading, Price Efficiency, Information Acquisition, Information Production
JEL Classification: G14, G15
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation