The Role of Daytime Stock Auctions in Intraday Return Seasonality
59 Pages Posted: 4 Sep 2019 Last revised: 7 Oct 2019
Date Written: July 1, 2019
Abstract
The paper provides a fresh look at the role of daytime auctions in intraday periodicity of stock returns. First, I show that daytime auctions, together with market opening and market closing intervals, drive the periodicity of stock returns. Second, by applying the model of infrequent rebalancing, I find that price impact is the highest during the fifteen-minute interval after daytime auctions. Combining this evidence with high realized returns, high volume changes and high return volatility, I conclude that after-auction periods take over a large share of infrequent rebalancing, being attractive for a concentration of liquidity traders. Small, low-fragmented stocks heavily traded on the home market show the strongest evidence for infrequent rebalancing after the daytime auctions. Finally, I show that post-auction returns predict returns before the US market opening and before the domestic market closing, which might be further evidence on clustered liquidity trading.
Keywords: market microstructure, market design, auctions, intraday periodicity
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation