Order-Flow Filtration and Directional Association with Short-Horizon Returns

Aditya Nittur Anantha, Shashi Jain and Prithwish Maiti

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Electronic markets generate dense order flow with many transient orders, which degrade directional signals derived from the limit order book (LOB). We study whether simple structural filters on order lifetime, modification count, and modification timing sharpen the association between order book imbalance (OBI) and short-horizon returns in BankNifty index futures, where unfiltered OBI is already known to be a strong short-horizon directional indicator. The efficacy of each filter is evaluated using a three-step diagnostic ladder: contemporaneous correlations, linear association between discretised regimes, and Hawkes event-time excitation between OBI and return regimes. Our results indicate that filtration of the aggregate order flow produces only modest changes relative to the unfiltered benchmark. By contrast, when filters are applied on the parent orders of executed trades, the resulting OBI series exhibits systematically stronger directional association. Motivated by recent regulatory initiatives to curb noisy order flow, we treat the association between OBI and short-horizon returns as a policy-relevant diagnostic of market quality. We then compare unfiltered and filtered OBI series, using tick-by-tick data from the National Stock Exchange of India, to infer how structural filters on the order flow affect OBI-return dynamics in an emerging market setting.

Date: 2025-07, Revised 2025-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mst
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.22712 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:arx:papers:2507.22712

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().