EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Are retail traders compensated for providing liquidity?

Jean-Noel Barrot, Ron Kaniel and David Sraer

Journal of Financial Economics, 2016, vol. 120, issue 1, 146-168

Abstract: This paper examines the extent to which individual investors provide liquidity to the stock market and whether they are compensated for doing so. We show that the ability of aggregate retail order imbalances, contrarian in nature, to predict short-term future returns is significantly enhanced during times of market stress, when market liquidity provisions decline. While a weekly rebalanced portfolio long in stocks purchased and short in stocks sold by retail investors delivers 19% annualized excess returns over a four-factor model from 2002 to 2010, it delivers up to 40% annualized returns in periods of high uncertainty. Despite this high aggregate performance, individual investors do not reap the rewards from liquidity provision because they experience a negative return on the day of their trade and they reverse their trades long after the excess returns from liquidity provision are dissipated. During the financial crisis, French active retail stock traders stepped up to the plate, increased stock holdings, and provided liquidity. In contrast, mutual fund investors fled from delegation by selling their mutual funds.

Keywords: Liquidity; Retail investors; Crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G01 G11 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (58)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X16000064
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Are retail traders compensated for providing liquidity? (2015) Downloads
Working Paper: Are Retail Traders Compensated for Providing Liquidity? (2014) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:120:y:2016:i:1:p:146-168

DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2016.01.005

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Financial Economics is currently edited by G. William Schwert

More articles in Journal of Financial Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:120:y:2016:i:1:p:146-168